Floor Statements

Mr. President, now, on the shutdown: Well, somehow, Republicans are even in a bigger mess now than when they left Washington 2 weeks ago. It was hard to make things even worse, especially while we were on the July 4 recess, but they did. Donald Trump is the mastermind at making things worse and worse and worse.

Just this morning, Donald Trump told ``FOX & Friends":

Republicans have to [terminate the filibuster]. It's so

insane. Otherwise, we're gonna have a shutdown in September.

The Trump shutdown--he is bragging about it; he is predicting it. Republicans have to terminate the filibuster, or we will have a shutdown in September, says Donald Trump.

So it is clear. It is very clear. I know the Senator from Wyoming talks about Democrats wanting a shutdown. Well, he ought to listen to Donald Trump. He is the one who wants it. It is clear, if we head toward a shutdown in September, it will be Trump who is responsible. He is telling the American people he wants a shutdown.

Oh, Donald, do you remember the last time you called for a shutdown, when you challenged Nancy Pelosi and I in the Oval Office and told us you wanted a shutdown? Donald, it didn't work out too well for you then. It won't work out well for you now either.

And to all the Republican Senators, including my good friend from Wyoming, who keep insisting that Democrats are hell-bent on shutting down the government, well, they ought to listen to what their own President is saying. Democrats aren't saying we want a shutdown; Trump is. Donald Trump is saying the quiet part out loud. He has no issue with shutting down the Federal Government to force through his radical agenda.

If Republicans want to clean up their mess, it will require working with Democrats, not seeing us as partisan foes but as fellow Americans. Instead, what are Republicans doing? They are advancing a lopsided, partisan spending bill that would supersize the budget for Trump's disastrous war with Iran without providing cost relief to working families or reining in Donald Trump's corruption. That is unacceptable.

Let's put Republican accusations to rest. Democrats want to fund the government and avoid a shutdown and pass strong, bipartisan appropriations bills that improve people's lives. Democrats believe our budget ought to help families make ends meet. Democrats want a budget that invests in bringing down American costs, not one that burns taxpayer dollars on Donald Trump's reckless war.

Republicans have plenty of time to drop their ``my way or the highway'' partisan game. Most Republicans know how ridiculous the SAVE Act is, how unconstitutional it probably is. But Trump is still insisting on it because he thinks it is the only way he can win an election is by fixing it, by eliminating tens of millions of people from the voter rolls. And so he says: Unless I get my way--a little temper tantrum here, Donald--I am going to shut down the government. It is something that the American people can see through in a minute, as they can see through the very unpopular SAVE Act.

If Republicans follow Trump over the cliff and insist that the government shut down if they don't get their way, it will be Donald Trump's disaster.

Mr. President, on the Blanche nomination, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has spent this confirmation fight doing what he has always done for his client--his No. 1 client--Donald Trump: denying the obvious, defending the indefensible, and lying under oath.

As Attorney General, your No. 1 client should be the United States of America; but here, Blanche, his No. 1 client will be Donald Trump, who has no regard for our Constitution, for our values, for the rule of law, for honesty. Blanche's resume reads like a rap sheet. In his time at the Department of Justice, Blanche has helped the administration defy dozens of court orders blocking their illegal policies. Blanche continues to withhold 3 million pages of the Epstein files and lied under oath to Congress about meeting the Epstein survivors--something they deny.

Blanche was the mastermind behind and the champion of one of the most despicable acts of corruption ever in the American government: the $2 billion MAGA slush fund to give taxpayer-funded cash payouts to Trump, MAGA billionaires, and January 6 insurrectionists.

Can you imagine having this guy as Attorney General when he came up with this slush fund and propounded it? One of the most corrupt acts anyone has proposed--any Attorney General--and they want to put him in. Oh, my God.

I am pleased a Federal judge rebuked that blatantly corrupt slush fund and sweetheart immunity deal for Trump and his family, but we haven't seen the last of this administration's corruption. Blanche has devoted his career to serving Donald Trump and particularly his corrupt purposes. Blanche has gone after Trump's enemies, covered up Trump's crimes, and shielded Trump from the consequences.

Who does Trump pick in these very important law enforcement offices? People who represented him, people he knows will lie for him. If he becomes Attorney General, Blanche's letterhead might change, but his loyalty to Trump won't. Again, his No. 1 client will be Donald Trump and his lies and not the United States of America. Blanche has already made it clear we can't trust a word that comes out of his mouth. Republicans ought to remember that during the confirmation hearings.

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

Mr. President, with their dreadful, horrific Dobbs decision 4 years ago today, six far-right wing MAGA Justices broke nearly 50 years of precedent to rip the right to choose away from millions--millions--of American women.

You can sum up both the dreadful Dobbs decision and the whole far- right philosophy the same way: less freedom in your life; more government interference in your personal decisions. That is the MAGA way.

Dobbs will go down as one of the most damaging, legally dubious, and deeply out-of-touch Supreme Court decisions in American history. It is a disgrace that the Supreme Court did it. It is a disgrace on the Supreme Court itself.

Trump may not like talking about his crusade against women's reproductive rights, but he cannot hide from the pain he has inflicted on women across America. Mr. President, 20 States--20--have enacted total or near-total abortion bans, which means that nearly 40 percent of women of reproductive age live in a State with an abortion ban.

The human cost of the Republican assault on women's reproductive freedom is sickening. I have heard so many women share their stories of the horrors they have experienced in Trump's post-Roe America.

Republicans are letting women die by restricting necessary care. Some women have to travel hundreds of miles--even thousands--to get the treatment they need and deserve and are entitled to. Parents, patients, and doctors have been punished like violent criminals for lifesaving procedures that were legal just a few years ago and had been for decades before that.

The GOP is treating mifepristone like it is poison and Planned Parenthood like it is an enemy of the State. It is despicable.

Even before the Justices behind Dobbs were confirmed, anyone could see they wanted to overturn Roe. Every Republican Senator, who voted to confirm these radical Justices who stripped away these fundamental rights to choose that women have had for so long, will have to answer to the American people.

We will not--we Democrats--will not let Republicans brush their radical efforts to ban abortion under the rug. The American people know it, and we are going to keep showing the difference between the two parties on this issue when the American people are strongly on our side.

Mr. President, now Trump's visit to the Capitol. Seeing Trump come to the Capitol today to meet Senate Republicans is like watching the clown car pull up to the circus, made even more so by Trump's canceling of the bill signing, which I will talk more about in a minute.

When Trump comes to the Hill today, he will find the MAGA Senate majority in meltdown. They are one big, hot mess--that is what the Republican Senate is right now. Republicans are wringing each other's necks. They can't govern their own conference of 53 people, let alone a country of hundreds of millions.

After being doublecrossed, blindsided, and embarrassed by Trump, Senate Republicans can either keep bending the knee to the President or start demanding answers on behalf of the American people.

The reason that Republicans are such a hot mess is obvious. Trump's views are totally out of touch with the American people's views, and Republicans are afraid to tell him he is wrong.

Speak up. Stand up to Trump. Tell him what you think, Republicans. That might do your party some good. It might even do Trump some good if he would ever listen.

Americans want to know what Republicans are doing to bring down costs. Americans want to know how Trump plans to end his disastrous war with Iran. Americans want to know whether the GOP will continue going along with Trump's all-out assault on voting rights with legislation like the SAVE Act.

If my colleagues across the aisle have any sense at all, they ought to grill Trump on affordability, on his failed war with Iran, on his effort to hold American national security hostage, and all his other policies that are hurting the American people.

When they emerge from their meeting, will Republicans have told Trump the truth? Will they speak truth to power? Will they do their job? Or will they just bend in obedience to him and get more frustrated, more angry, and more ineffective than they have ever been?

Mr. President, everywhere you look, Republicans are one big, hot mess. The reason is simple: Donald Trump is pursuing policies that are terrible for America and despised by the American people.

The Republicans know just how unpopular Trump's agenda is, but they fall into line out of fear or blind loyalty or some of each. Republicans better smarten up and press Trump to back off his radical proposals during their lunch tomorrow or they will pay a price for ignoring the American people.

Mr. President, on Iran, with his failed and reckless war in Iran, Trump has turned ``the art of the deal'' into ``the art of the blunder.'' Donald Trump, Marco Rubio, and JD Vance are too afraid to come in front of the American people and the whole Senate to defend their war and so-called understanding, so now Trump will talk only to Senate Republicans behind closed doors. Senate Republicans need to grill Donald Trump for answers--for answers on where negotiations stand--when he meets with them at the Capitol tomorrow.

Trump and Vance hadn't even finished their phony victory lap yesterday when Iran announced that it did not make any commitments to allow nuclear inspections--no commitments to allow nuclear inspections--even though that was supposed to be one of the mainstays of what Trump was pursuing. Trump also claimed that the Strait of Hormuz was fully open even though shipping through the waterway remains a small fraction of what it was before the war. In more than a week after announcing side deals and so-called understandings with Iran, the administration still hasn't briefed Congress or the American people on what has actually been agreed to.

Wishful thinking won't end this war, and certainly Senate Republicans' calls to pump hundreds of billions of dollars more into Trump's fiasco will make matters even worse.

Republicans can complain about Trump's war, his secrecy, and his disastrous deal with Iran all they want behind closed doors, but the only way to ensure this war ends once and for all is for Republicans to act.

Later today, Democrats will once again put Republicans on the record as to whether they want Trump's disastrous war to continue by forcing a vote on a House-passed Iran War Powers Resolution for the first time. We have held nine other votes on our War Powers Resolutions to end the war, and Senate Republicans have left the American people disappointed each time. We have forced this fight on the floor again and again for more than 100 days: Only Congress has the power to take our Nation to war, not Donald Trump alone.

Republicans need to support our War Powers Resolution to end the war, and they need to hold Trump's feet to the fire in their meeting tomorrow.

Mr. President, on the SAVE database, yesterday's court decision bodes very poorly for the SAVE Act's survival.

Free and fair elections in America got a big boost in court yesterday when a judge, a Federal judge, blocked Donald Trump's effort to set up a massive voter purge database. The absolute last person Americans want combing through their personal data is Donald Trump. Letting Trump scrape through Americans' private data to purge them from the voter rolls isn't just unpopular, it is illegal.

Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and Russel Vought wanted to plug Americans' sensitive, personal information, including Social Security information, into their shoddy database and have DOGE's algorithm decide who gets to vote. It is sci-fi voter suppression--authoritarianism by algorithm.

Trump cares so little about Americans' freedom that he is trampling on their right to privacy just so he can take away their right to vote.

For months, I have been saying this database was one of Trump's most sinister strategies for subverting our elections in November. That is why Senate Democrats have blocked the SAVE Act--Trump's extreme anti- election legislation--over and over and over again. Democrats will keep fighting Trump's plan to rig the rules in November because in our country, Americans decide elections, not algorithms installed by Musk, DOGE, and Trump.

Mr. President, on Tulsi Gabbard and the Pulte purge, there are reports that Tulsi Gabbard was receiving instructions from a so-called guru and repeating them word for word. That ought to concern all of us if it is true. No one knows who this guru really is, what his connections are, and where the instructions came from. Maybe it was completely innocent or maybe not, but we need answers.

In appointing Bill Pulte to act as Acting DNI after Tulsi Gabbard, Donald Trump is replacing a guru with a grifter. Bill Pulte doesn't have an ounce of national security experience or an ounce of integrity, and he has already started to purge the intelligence experts who have that integrity. God only knows what Pulte plans to do next. Will Pulte interfere in our elections? expose intelligence sources? abuse Americans' private data? go after Trump's political enemies like he has done so many times before?

With his insistence on installing Pulte, Trump has embarrassed his own party, weakened our national security, and endangered the American people--all to serve his personal political interests.

When it comes to protecting Americans' national security, we need an adult in the room, and Pulte is removing them left and right.

Finally, Mr. President, on our spotlight forum on the Dobbs decision, later today, we will join Senator Murray and other Senate Democrats for a spotlight forum on Republicans' extreme war on women's reproductive freedom ahead of the fourth anniversary of the Dobbs decision.

Donald Trump may want to brush his extreme effort to curtail women's reproductive rights under the rug, but we won't let him.

On the campaign trail in 2024, Donald Trump said that women ``won't be thinking about abortion'' if he got elected, but the truth is that they have to think about it more than ever before because of this awful decision.

Ever since the Dobbs decision 4 years ago, Republicans have been working around the clock to restrict access to abortion care. So today, we are going to hear from people who have been forced to live with the consequences of Republicans' radical assault on women's reproductive freedom, and we will discuss how we are fighting back. We are going to remind Donald Trump that women haven't stopped thinking about his efforts to take away their rights; they are mad as hell.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, for years, Trump promised to put maximum pressure on Iran, but he ended up delivering maximum confusion, maximum chaos, and maximum cost to the American people with his disastrous war.

Every second this war continues, the costs to the American people go up.

And this is the 10th time Democrats have forced Republicans to vote on a War Powers Resolution to end the war. Time after time, the vast majority of Senate Republicans sided with Trump and his war, instead of the American people.

The American people have paid the price for Trump's historic blunder in Iran. It will go down in the history books as one of the worst foreign policy forays America has ever made or any country has ever made. It is so, so ridiculous, costly; achieving no goals that Trump set forward--virtually none.

The American people have seen skyrocketing gas prices, soaring costs, and, tragically, the loss of 13 servicemembers and the wounding of hundreds more.

And, meanwhile, Iran took Trump to the cleaners. Trump gave Iran everything--their terrorist proxies, their control over the strait, their own revenue, their hundreds of billions of dollars in reconstruction aid. And it is still unclear what we have gotten in return.

Trump, Vance, and Rubio refused to come before the American public and answer questions. No one knows what side deals there are. No one knows what actually was said. No one knows the details of this so- called understanding, and the reason is they are probably afraid to show it because they know how badly they have done.

Trump won't brief Congress. Trump won't defend his deal. Trump won't end his war. But Democrats will keep forcing this vote--and we are going to keep doing it--because only Congress has the power to take this Nation to war, and this one must end. In fact, Trump never, ever should have started it.

I yield back all time, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, on Iran, Donald Trump's foreign policy by clown car continues to careen toward disaster. After this failed war with Iran, Trump needs to rename ``The Art of the Deal'' as ``The Art of the Face Plant''--``The Art of the Face Plant.'' Just days after Trump boasted he had reopened the Strait of Hormuz, Iran announced it was closing the strait again. Trump hasn't been able to guarantee safe passage through the strait yet, but he already has waived the sanctions to allow Iran to bring billions of dollars in oil revenue. Iran gets what it wants; Trump dithers.

Now Trump and Vance are patting themselves on the back about getting Iran to agree to nuclear inspections that only stopped after Trump's 2025 strikes. And what exactly will this access look like? Trump and Vance refuse to provide details, just like the rest of this so-called understanding.

Trump's memo of understanding reads like an Iranian wish list. After Trump's war, Iran gets to keep backing its terrorist proxies, to keep building ballistic missiles, to maintain a stranglehold on the global economy, and to rake in hundreds of billions of dollars in reconstruction aid and maritime tolls. Trump got taken to the cleaners by Iran.

The administration keeps telling us not to read too much into the understanding, but there is one thing that is very easy to read: The American people hate this war. They want it to end. Roughly 80 percent of Americans say they want this war to end immediately. Two-thirds-- two-thirds--disapprove of how Trump has handled Iran. And can anyone blame them? All the American people have gotten from Trump's war are skyrocketing gas prices at the pump, backbreaking inflation, and the tragic loss of 13 servicemembers and the wounding of hundreds of others.

The story of Trump's ruinous war has been the same since day one: The Iranian regime gets emboldened, the

American people get screwed, and Donald Trump gets himself into a deeper and deeper hole.

The cost of this war will only get worse every second it continues.

We need a full accounting of everything Trump has given away as part of his 14-point understanding. I continue to call on Trump, Secretary Rubio, and the rest of the leadership team to brief the full Senate without delay. It is outrageous that none of us have gotten a briefing yet. Why don't they want to give us a briefing? Are they embarrassed? Is it so vague that they told Iran one thing and will have to tell the world another? Is it because Trump got taken to the cleaners? Is it because Trump is embarrassed to have this understanding fully discussed by the people who put it together? It has been 8 days since this so- called understanding was announced. Why is the administration so scared to come to Congress and the American people and defend their war and their deal?

Trump ought to listen to what Senate Democrats and the American people have been saying for months and end this war for good.

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

Mr. President, well, everyone who bought Trump's book ``The Art of the Deal'' ought to ask him for a refund because what Trump has done in Iran is the ``art of the disaster.''

The United States is worse off because of Trump's incompetence, his ego, his inability to listen to facts. Iran took Trump to the cleaners with this so-called understanding.

Iran doesn't have to cut off support for its terrorist proxies. Iran doesn't have to give up ballistic missile production. Iran doesn't have to make any hard commitments on its nuclear program now, and there is no guarantee they make any in 60 days. But Iran does get to rake in billions of dollars in oil sales, hundreds of billions in reconstruction aid, and God knows how much more in potential fees Trump may let it impose on ships in the Strait of Hormuz.

Not to mention the benefits Iran will get from the sanction relief that Trump has promised with no idea of what he will get in return.

Again, Iran took Trump to the cleaners. In Iran, ``the art of the deal'' has turned into the ``art of disaster.''

If Trump wants to send hundreds of billions of dollars to Iran, then he will need to do it with Republican votes because I will tell you, Democrats certainly won't be helping Trump send $300 billion to Iran.

Are my colleagues on the other side of the aisle prepared to send Iran $300 billion when economic needs are so severe here at home? But that is what Trump wants them to do.

Now, back in 2015, Trump said that America's ``deal with Iran will go down as one of the most incompetent ever made. The U.S. lost on virtually every point. We just don't win anymore!''

Trump is eating these words on a silver platter served up by Iran. Again, in 2015 he said the ``deal with Iran will go down as one of the most incompetent ever. The U.S. lost on virtually every point. We just don't win anymore!''

He is eating those words now because those apply so aptly to the deal that he just announced, so-called understanding, with Iran. He is eating those words on a silver platter served up by Iran.

Even members of the Trump administration seem to be trying to put some distance between themselves and this so-called understanding, telling the public not to read too far into the text and that there are secret deals in the works. Well, I will tell you right now, Trump needs to reveal any secret deals to Congress and the public immediately. He has got to do it right away.

If the secret deals are anywhere near as bad as the understanding we have seen, we need to know about them.

This war needs to end permanently. Americans need to know how Trump plans to do it. Crucially, Americans are wondering what they got out of this war because Trump's blunder has left our country worse off by every measure. Thirteen Americans have been killed and hundreds more wounded. The Iranian regime is richer and more radical than before Trump's war. Iran has greater control over the Strait of Hormuz than before the war began.

Gas prices are still much higher than before the war, with families having paid hundreds of dollars extra to fill up their tanks these past few months.

The cost of everything from groceries to basic household necessities are higher than before the war as well. Trump's so-called understanding is the culmination and representation of his ruinous strategy in Iran since day one and his inability to govern in general.

In Iran and in so much else he does, Trump leads by whim, by ego, by greed. His strategy doesn't work in the time of peace, and it certainly doesn't work in the time of war.

He is about the most incompetent President we have ever seen. In Iran, as in everything, the American people pay the price for Trump's incompetence.

So as I have been saying for months, it is long past time that Trump end this war, which never should have started in the first place.

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act

Mr. President, on FISA, Trump has made it clear beyond a shadow of a

doubt that he doesn't care about our national security and cares even less about reauthorizing FISA. Trump has embarrassed Republicans, pulled the rug out from under them, and blown up the FISA negotiations at every step.

Trump has lobbed a grenade into Jay Clayton's nomination. Insisted on making his personal fixer, his own attack dog, Bill Pulte, the Acting DNI. And he is demanding to tie FISA to the extreme SAVE Act to attack Americans' voting rights.

Trump is so hell-bent on taking away Americans' voting rights that he is willing to put them in danger to do it. Trump would rather have our intelligence community go after his political opponents than protect the American people.

Can Trump get any more reckless?

Make no mistake, Donald Trump is holding America's national security hostage for his own political gain. Republicans can point fingers at Democrats all they want, but Trump has himself owned up to blocking

I announce that the Senator from Maryland (Ms. Alsobrooks), the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Bennet), the Senator from Delaware (Ms. Blunt Rochester), the Senator from Illinois (Ms. Duckworth), the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Durbin), and the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Kelly) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Maryland (Ms. Alsobrooks), the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Bennet), the Senator from Delaware (Ms. Blunt Rochester), the Senator from Illinois (Ms. Duckworth), the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Durbin), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Kelly), and the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Kim), are necessarily absent.

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