Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to a true patriot, a dedicated public servant, and a lifelong defender of the United States: Major General Arthur Holmes.

Major General Holmes celebrates his 95th birthday this month. As such, I would like to honor his distinguished career of service to the United States. Major General Holmes was a founding member of my U.S. Service Academy Advisory Board and served over 20 years as its leader. In that capacity, he played a key role in advising me on the nominations of the young men and women who will enter the service academies and become the future military leaders of our Armed Forces. Major General Holmes carried out his duties with thoughtfulness, integrity, and a deep understanding of the qualities that are required to serve our country in this significant way. I am grateful to him for his two decades of service on my advisory board.

Our country owes Major General Holmes immense thanks for his devoted service to our community and Nation in a myriad of ways.

Arthur Holmes, Jr., was born on May 12, 1931, in Decatur, AL. He earned his bachelor's degree in chemistry from Hampton University and his master's degree in business administration from Kent State University in Ohio. Major General Holmes is also a graduate of the Naval War College.

Major General Holmes began his military career through the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) Program and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1952. He served in both the Korean and Vietnam wars, holding various positions, including maintenance battalion commander, member of the Logistics Directorate for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and chief of ordnance branch at the U.S. Army Personnel Center. Major General Holmes made history as the first combat service support officer to serve as executive officer to the Secretary to the Army. Holmes later commanded the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Command. He retired as a commanding general, earning the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star Medal, and the Distinguished Service Medal.

Major General Holmes also contributed 12 years of tremendous service to Maryland's Montgomery County. He served as the director of Go Montgomery!--an agency dedicated to implementing the county's master transportation plan--before assuming the role as director for the department of transportation. Notably, he worked to significantly improve transportation infrastructure surrounding Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after the Base Realignment and Closure Act of 2005.

In all his endeavors, Major General Holmes has been continually strengthened by the faithful partnership of his wife Wilma Holmes, with whom he has enjoyed 47 years of marriage. He is also supported by his daughters Deborah Cook and Sharon Key; his stepdaughters Sharon and Ricki Fairley; and six loving grandchildren--all of whom are his pride and joy.

In short, Major General Arthur Holmes is an American hero. I am honored to call him not only my constituent but also my friend, and I am truly grateful for all that he has done to make a difference in our community and in our Nation. I had the privilege of his leadership on my academy advisory board, and I know that his contributions will continue to guide the board in the years to come. I ask my colleagues to join me in thanking this outstanding American for all that he has done for our country.

Mr. President, I rise today in strong support of Senator Schiff's War Powers Resolution to end President Trump's illegal war against Iran.

Let's begin with a simple fact. We are now over 60 days into this illegal war. The war was started on February 28. A few days later, on March 2, President Trump and his administration submitted the notice to Congress. So even if you take the date of submission, tomorrow will be the 60 days. Of course, we don't want to create incentives for any administration to delay the submission of the notice. So the clock has run. But let's just be clear. Accepting their view of the world, tomorrow will be the 60th day--60 days since President Trump, together with Prime Minister Netanyahu, started this war against Iran--a war started without congressional authorization, without articulating any clear American interest, and without telling the American people the truth about what this war would cost.

This war is making Americans less safe, and we are worse off because of it. The American people know that, which is why they overwhelmingly oppose this war and they want to see us bring it to an end now. Yet here we are over 60 days later. Fourteen American soldiers have been killed, hundreds of American troops wounded, thousands of civilians in the region killed, and at least $25 billion of taxpayer money already burned. We face even more regional instability in an already volatile part of the world. And we have an administration that cannot explain what it is they are trying to achieve. They can't explain it today. They couldn't explain it the day they started the war.

In fact, over the last few weeks, President Trump has repeatedly pledged that the war would be resolved ``quickly''--a promise he has made and then broken many times.

In fact, you may recall, colleagues, it was over a month ago that President Trump declared that we had won. He said: ``We won.''

Well, if we won, what the hell are we doing there? And the reality is we haven't won anything. Negotiations to

end it are off again. Then they are on. Then they are off.

Of course, a big part of these negotiations is about reopening the Strait of Hormuz, which was open the day before this war started. And now, reportedly, the President is preparing for an extended blockade of Iran, prolonging a conflict that has already driven up prices daily in the United States.

We just saw that average gasoline prices have reached a 4-year high in the United States. He has also kept American servicemembers deployed overseas for recordbreaking periods and expended a huge amount of munitions, creating shortages in our supplies elsewhere.

So what is the plan? What is the plan? Just to pursue an open-ended blockade, costing taxpayers billions of dollars--in fact, $1 billion a day--and further jeopardizing the global economy, offering no clear path to ending the war?

Sometimes, President Trump says that this war was to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. Well, this is the President who tore up the Iran nuclear deal, or JCPOA, that was negotiated by President Obama, which kept Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon and had probably the most intrusive inspection regime in arms control history.

And last year, before President Trump started this war, his own DNI said that Iran was not pursuing a nuclear weapon. And, of course, after the military operations, in June of last year, against Iran's nuclear program, President Trump told the country that Iran's nuclear program was ``obliterated.''

I also think it is worth reminding people what Citizen Trump said back in 2011 because it is revealing as to the President's mindset. We know that this President often engages in projection. Here is what he said, back in 2011, about then-President Obama. He said:

Our President will start a war with Iran because he has

absolutely no ability to negotiate. He's weak and he's

ineffective. So the only way he figures that he's going to

get reelected--and as sure as you're sitting there--is to

start a war with Iran.

Citizen Trump back in 2011 about President Obama.

Well, President Obama negotiated an agreement to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. President Trump, in his first term, tore it up.

But here is Donald Trump, essentially telling us what he thinks. Obviously, Donald Trump couldn't negotiate a deal with Iran, and so he started a war with Iran, exactly what he was claiming that President Obama would do, because he claimed President Obama didn't have the skills to negotiate an agreement to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

So here we are. Just to recap, the President started a war to stop what he had called an ``obliterated'' nuclear program and to reopen an international waterway that was open before he started the war. And since he started this war, along with Prime Minister Netanyahu, the justifications have been inconsistent and ever-changing, zigzagging here and there.

But the results are clear, which is that President Trump has led this country into a complete strategic mess, with no end in sight, and ever- rising costs that Americans have to bear, both in tax dollars expended and in higher prices at the pump and elsewhere.

And the reason for so many weeks that this administration refused to have one of their decisionmakers testify in front of Congress was because what he heard behind closed doors revealed that there was no plan and no endgame.

Now, in the last 2 days, we are hearing, finally, from Secretary Hegseth, and the American people can see in plain view that they have no plan. And yet this is the Secretary of the administration that is now asking this Congress to provide a $1.5 trillion defense budget.

They just want to blow the roof off of the budget. And, of course, this is a Pentagon and Defense Department that have been unable to meet an audit.

So what are we going to do at this point? We have got $25 billion gone. In fact, many people think that is a lowball estimate. But the reality is that we could put that money to much better use.

We could use it to help our fellow Americans. But, no, Donald Trump said: We can't do that. We don't have the resources for that because we need the resources for this war--a war he said he would never start. In fact, what he said is--and I am quoting:

It's not possible for us to take care of day care, [and]

Medicaid, [and] Medicare, all these individual things

[because] we're fighting wars.

The wars he said he would never start.

Well, maybe higher gas prices don't matter much to President Trump and his billionaire buddies and the biggest billionaire Cabinet in American history by far. Maybe they don't care about higher gas prices. But, I can tell you, Americans who are going to fuel their cars at the pump, they care. They are the ones bearing the burden here in America of this illegal Trump war.

And we also know that we are burning through our munitions at a very rapid rate, munitions that should have been reserved for real national emergencies that we might face elsewhere in the world.

We also heard something very disturbing again from Secretary Hegseth, when he testified in the House yesterday, which is his utter contempt-- his utter contempt--for the guardrails we put in place to prevent civilian harm in war. That is why I led nearly the entire Democratic caucus, a few weeks ago, in demanding answers and accountability on the U.S. airstrike that hit an elementary school in Iran, killing over 175 people, most of them children.

But Secretary Hegseth, he is dismissive of all of these concerns. In fact, he said that the rules of engagement were ``stupid''--rules designed to prevent innocent people from getting killed in war.

He should never have been nominated. He should never have been confirmed, and he should be relieved of duty today.

And how can we trust an administration with additional funds when they so brazenly say they don't want to comply with rules designed to prevent civilian harm which, in the long run, are also designed to help protect the lives of our troops?

And yet they are asking for more money and more resources, and all without any congressional authorization to go into this war.

Now, I want to just say something about the War Powers Resolution here because, as I cited at the top of my remarks, we are now 60 days into this war, yesterday, or if we accept the administration's interpretation, tomorrow--60 days.

Now, under the War Powers Resolution, the President doesn't have the authority to start a war and fight a war for 2 days, 3 days, 4 days-- let alone 60 days. But that is what President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu did. They started the war.

The idea behind the War Powers Resolution is, if the United States faces an imminent threat that requires the President to engage in hostilities overseas, that we will have a clock to make sure that Congress, as representatives of the American people and given the power in the Constitution to declare war, has time to consider and debate. And it says you have 60 days, even if you are fighting a war that somebody else started.

So we are hearing that the Trump administration--the President--may exercise the ability under the War Powers Resolution for another 30 days, on top of the 60 days. So that gives you 90 days.

But here is the thing. The War Powers Resolution is very clear. That additional 30 days is not to ramp up a war. It is to ramp down a war. It is to bring American troops who are in hostility safely home. And yet here we are, around the 60th day, and President Trump, reportedly, is contemplating upping the tempo of the war, increasing strikes against Iran.

That is a gross violation even of my Republican Senate colleagues' interpretation of the War Powers Act. Are they going to sit here and say nothing and do nothing while the President blatantly violates the War Powers Resolution? So far, they have been silent as he violated the constitutional requirement that only the Congress can declare war.

But even if you adopt the world view that some of my Senate colleagues have expressed, the plain reading of the War Powers Resolution says: The next 30 days have to be used to wind down hostilities.

Now, I understand that Secretary Hegseth, today, in the Armed Services Committee here in the Senate, said: Well, we are now in a cease-fire. So the clock was paused. It is not ticking.

What a pile of nonsense. Here we have a full-on blockade, which we know is an active war, and the Secretary of Defense, who clearly just makes things up as he goes, is arguing that that somehow paused the statute.

I hope my Republican Senate colleagues have the self-respect not to buy into that ridiculous interpretation of the law. But that is apparently the lie that the Secretary of Defense is trying to perpetrate as we speak.

So let's be honest with the American people. We have a situation where the President, along with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu, started a war against Iran. There was no imminent threat. They started it, and they did it without any congressional authorization.

In fact, our colleagues here won't put forward a resolution to authorize the use of force. It would be great to see people take that kind of accountability. If you support the President's action, put forward an authorization for the use of military force--not a peep about that.

But now, we have an actual statute that has already passed, the War Powers Resolution, which even the interpretation of Senate Republicans requires the President of the United States to spend the next 30 days winding down this war, not stepping up this war.

So really, colleagues, you should level with the American people. We have a President who promised to keep us out of wars. We have a President who said he was going to bring down prices.

He has done the exact opposite. He started wars. Prices are going up. Americans have been killed. Americans have been wounded. Thousands of civilians have been killed, thousands more wounded. And we are less safe and worse off.

When you are digging a hole, stop digging.

Vote for this War Powers Resolution, and let's put an end to this illegal war.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to recognize David S. Schless, a strong advocate, leader, and Marylander who has dedicated his career to caring for others with a true passion for helping our Nation's seniors.

Mr. Schless discovered his interests in gerontology and related policy at an early age and earned his bachelor of science degree from the Center for Aging and Human Development at the University of Connecticut. He then went on to earn a master of science degree from the Department of Applied Gerontology/Center for Studies in Aging at the University of North Texas.

Mr. Schless has been president and chief executive officer of the American Seniors Housing Association, ASHA, since its inception in 1991. He has tirelessly pursued a comprehensive approach to senior living and care. He helped launch the senior housing industry's first- ever consumer education initiative ``Where You Live Matters,'' which supports seniors and their families in identifying ideal housing and care options. Under Mr. Schless' leadership, ASHA membership has grown to over 500 owners, operators, and developers of senior living and their support providers.

A devoted philanthropist, Mr. Schless has led ASHA in the fight against Alzheimer's disease. Since 2014, ASHA has worked to support expanded care and support for those affected by Alzheimer's and other dementias, along with research in risk reduction and early detection.

Mr. Schless resides in Rockville, MD, with his wife Sue Schless and their two children Ethan and MacKenzie. He is a member of the advisory board of the Cornell Institute for Healthy Futures and the Granger Cobb Institute for Senior Living at Washington State University. Mr. Schless is also a member of the advisory council of the Vision Centre, which seeks to grow academic programming focused on senior living leadership.

I invite my colleagues to join me in recognizing Mr. Schless' incomparable efforts to secure accessible, affordable, and diverse housing options for our seniors, an end to Alzheimer's, and a stronger future for all Americans.

Mr. President, I rise today in support of this War Powers Resolution to make clear that the United States will not be dragged into yet another conflict, this time with Cuba--a conflict that would not serve American interests and does not have authorization from this U.S. Congress.

Americans are already paying the price for President Trump's illegal war against Iran--a war that has no end in sight, a war that is making us less safe and worse off. And, of course, before the war in Iran, we saw Trump's illegal act of war against Venezuela, where he put our troops in danger in order to grab Venezuela's oil for his billionaire buddies. The administration continues to carry out illegal, monthslong boat strikes in international waters, which have killed at least 185 people since September. Now President Trump has also floated the idea of using force against our allies, like his scheme to seize Greenland, which, of course, is part of Denmark, which is part of the NATO alliance. And the list goes on and on and on.

Our Constitution is explicit: The power to declare war rests with Congress--with the Senate and with the House--not with the President of the United States. Yet we are once again confronted with a situation where Trump appears ready to tear up our Constitution--a Constitution when he was once asked whether he had to abide by, he said: I don't know. And we are seeing that mindset in action every day.

We have seen deeply alarming rhetoric and actions from the administration when it comes to Cuba. What began as economic warfare has now edged into open discussions of military intervention. President Trump himself has said:

Taking Cuba. I mean, whether I free it, take it. I think I

can do anything I want with it.

But we all know that Cuba is not property to be acquired by Donald Trump, and military force is not supposed to be a tool for Presidential impulse or political theater. And no President--no President--has the legal authority to unilaterally send American troops into conflict starting a war. But Trump has shown again and again that he thinks he is above the law and above the Constitution.

Many of us just joined the King of England, King Charles, where he talked about the Magna Carta and checks and balances. This President of the United States thinks he is a King and thinks he is not bound by checks and balances. Any of our colleagues who aid and abet him are complicit in undermining the Constitution of the United States--one that he has shown disdain for time and again.

To understand why we are here, we need to look at the choices this administration and previous administrations have made and the consequences that have followed.

President Trump's current policy on Cuba is not a total aberration; it is him and Secretary Rubio doubling down and putting on steroids over 65 years of a failed, bankrupt policy.

Since 1960, Republicans and Democratic administrations alike have pursued a policy of isolation and economic pressure and strangulation toward Cuba. After 6\1/2\ decades, the promise of political change still has not been realized.

You would think that when you keep doing something and don't get the result you want, you would do something different. Instead, we see the Trump administration doubling down and putting their foot on the gas of failed policies.

I recall that under President Biden, the United States began to turn the tide. It began to take some positive steps. The Obama administration restored diplomatic relations, expanded travel, and made an effort to engage with Cuba in a way that had not been done in decades.

I had a chance to see this newfound diplomacy up close. My first trip to Cuba was to visit an American called Alan Gross. He was part of an international development contractor with USAID, and he was a constituent of mine in Maryland.

He was imprisoned by the Cuban Government for 5 years. I worked closely with the Obama administration to help secure his release and joined the bipartisan delegation that included Senator Leahy and Senator Flake at the time that ultimately brought Alan Gross home in 2014.

That breakthrough played a role in opening the door to a new chapter in U.S.-Cuban relations. At the time, we began to see some shoots of real progress and liberalization in the Cuban economy. The problems at hand were, of course, not solved overnight, but the light at the end of the tunnel was beginning to look bright, and it was clear that this new approach had real potential. But that chapter was short-lived, as President Trump in his first term reversed course, reimposing strict travel restrictions and tightening sanctions--back to the failed playbook of over 60 years.

A diplomatic relationship cannot be repaired overnight--especially with two countries with decades of fraught history like the United States and Cuba--and the Biden administration failed to take meaningful steps to get us back on the course that the Obama administration had taken us, which brings us to where we are today, with the Trump administration not only reverting to their first-term policies but doubling down on this hostile, ineffective, and proven failure of an approach.

The Trump administration has pursued an aggressive pressure campaign against Cuba: tightening restrictions, cutting off critical fuel supplies, and effectively imposing an oil blockade on the island--an oil blockade that is exhausting the country's supply of fuel, restricting both travel and daily life within the country while also crippling the Nation's healthcare system, resulting in preventable deaths. Here is a headline from the March 26 New York Times. It reads ``Cuban Patients Are Dying Because of U.S. Blockade, Doctors Say.''

The stated goal was to force political change in Havana, but months into the Trump administration's belligerent approach, it is clear they have not begun to achieve the intended result. Again, same old policy, no better results--in fact, worse. The Cuban authoritarian government remains fully in control. Instead, what we are seeing is the rapid deterioration of conditions for the people of Cuba.

Across the island, families are living through prolonged blackouts and an energy crisis that has crippled infrastructure across the island. Without sufficient fuel, hospitals cannot function properly, schools and businesses are forced to close, and families are left to navigate daily life without the most basic necessities.

The only change--the only change--that the United States has succeeded in forcing upon Cuba is a humanitarian crisis affecting millions of people, because of Trump and Rubio's reckless blockade that is punishing the Cuban people, not the Cuban regime.

We have seen this approach before. We have seen it for 60 years. We know how it ends. The longer we continue down this path, the more severe the consequences will become--not for those in power but for the millions of people caught in the middle.

That should force all of us to ask a critical question: What exactly is the Trump-Rubio strategy here?

We see they don't have a strategy in Iran, and they clearly don't have a strategy here, because if the goal is to support the Cuban people, then it is failing--failing, failing, failing--because what we are seeing is yet another policy built on the assumption that maximum pressure will produce quick political change. Instead, it has produced maximum citizen and civilian suffering with minimal results.

Now, instead of reconsidering this failed approach, the administration appears to be considering an even more dangerous step-- that of military escalation. Of course we want democracy and fundamental freedoms for the people of Cuba, but we have seen over decades that economic strangulation does not work, and we have learned the hard way in Afghanistan and now Iran that bombs don't turn dictatorships into democracies. Yet here we are with reports that the administration is considering yet another war that is not in this country's interest.

Americans are asking for stability. They are asking for lower costs. The idea of launching another illegal, costly, regime-change war is completely out of step with what their hopes and aspirations are. Yet that is what this administration is pursuing even though Candidate Trump promised he would focus on bringing down prices and keeping us out of war.

The American people are already bearing significant costs of the war in Iran--lives lost, treasure expended, making us less safe--and all of this not authorized by this Congress. And now, instead of bringing that conflict to an end, this administration is signaling it may open the door to yet another one in Cuba.

We have to ask what gets crowded out when we have a President and a White House that are focused on getting Americans into war rather than on the economic well-being of the American people.

We have a responsibility here to the American people to represent them and to act in their interests. And decisions of war and peace, whether it is Iran or Cuba or anywhere else, must be made with the involvement of the representatives of the American people. That is not just my sentiment; that is what is in the Constitution of the United States.

So we have the opportunity today to get ahead of another bad decision by the Trump administration, another bad decision to drag us into an illegal war, and to do it now before that conflict begins instead of hoping we can end it once the fuse is lit. In fact, it is our duty--it is our duty--to uphold the Constitution and make clear that we will do our jobs here in the U.S. Senate.

So I urge my colleagues to support this resolution to uphold our constitutional responsibilities and to vote in favor of this War Powers Resolution.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, as we gather here, prices and costs around the country are going up and up and up. The cost of gas is going up. Electric bills are going up. The price of groceries is going up. The costs of rent and mortgages are up. Childcare costs are up, and the list goes on and on. So rising costs and prices are clearly on the minds of the American people as they try to make ends meet.

Dealing with those costs should be a priority for this Congress, but in this bill, Senate Republicans are telling the country--telling our fellow Americans--that rising costs and affordability are not their problem, are not their priority.

Budgets always tell us a lot about what the President and the Congress think is important, and the budget reconciliation process that Republicans are using right now specifically tells us a lot about what the Senate majority's priorities are. It tells us what, in this moment, Senate Republicans are focused on.

That is because it is a special procedure that allows the majority party--in this case, the Republican Party--to pass something without a single vote from the minority party. The Senate Republicans are preparing to pass this without any Democratic vote. You can only do this once per fiscal year. So it is reserved for the biggest goals, the top priorities, the things that the majority party--the Senate Republicans--thinks are the most important, the things it wants to become law.

When the Democrats were last in the majority, we used the budget reconciliation process as well. We used it to pass the Inflation Reduction Act. That allowed us to require Medicare to negotiate lower prescription drug prices. We used it to cap the price of insulin for seniors. We used it to accelerate the deployment of clean energy to create good-paying jobs and to expand Affordable Care Act tax credits to make healthcare more affordable for millions and millions of our fellow Americans. That is what we used it for. In fact, it was those Affordable Care Act tax credits that Republicans allowed to expire at the end of last year.

So, last year, Republicans passed a reconciliation bill as well. They called it their Big Beautiful Bill. Well, it was beautiful if you were a billionaire, but it was pretty much a big betrayal for everyone else. It provided permanent tax cuts for the wealthy, and it was in that bill that Senate Republicans and the President allowed the Affordable Care Act tax credits to expire, causing premiums to go up for 22 million of our fellow Americans. In fact, they went up so high that 4 million Americans lost their coverage altogether. But in that bill, wherein tax credits for working Americans to better afford healthcare were not extended, Republicans and President Trump provided big, permanent tax cuts for the rich.

I want colleagues to focus on this chart for a moment because it tells you exactly what the tax priorities were in the Republicans' reconciliation bill from last year.

As I said, it was a Big Beautiful Bill if you were a billionaire. As you can

see, 72 percent of the tax benefits went to the richest 20 percent of the American people--72 percent of the tax benefits went to the top 20 percent. In fact, it gets even more skewed than that. If you zero in more closely with a magnifying glass, 22 percent of the total tax benefits went to the top 1 percent--the richest Americans. That is what Republicans did in their so-called Big Beautiful Bill. That is why I say it was beautiful if you were a billionaire. We know that it was skewed in that direction not only by the numbers but because Republicans chose to make the tax cuts for billionaires and the very rich permanent. Those go on forever.

I asked the Director of the President's Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, about this phenomenon in a hearing just last week. He conceded that the bill last year, the reconciliation bill, provided permanent tax cuts for the very rich, and he conceded that the tax cuts and benefits for everybody else, which are much smaller as a proportion of the whole, were made temporary. For example, the ``no tax on tips'' provision will expire at the end of 2028. Smaller tax cuts for working people--temporary. Big tax cuts for wealthy Americans--permanent. They have admitted to it. That was a choice that was made by Republicans as part of that bill.

That is why I introduced an alternative, the Working Americans' Tax Cut Act, which provides 100 percent of its tax benefits not to the richest 20 percent but to the 80 percent of American taxpayers who are working hard--paycheck to paycheck--to make ends meet for themselves and their families.

Now, the Trump tax plan that he worked on and passed with Republicans not only provided very wealthy individuals with these big tax cuts but also big profitable corporations. In fact, the changes that were made by President Trump and Republicans have enabled 88 of the largest corporations in America to pay no--zero--Federal income taxes, despite having more than $100 billion in total profits among them. At the same time that these huge tax cuts were given to big corporations and the very wealthy, Republicans cut by $1 trillion our investments in health and nutrition programs for our fellow Americans. By the way, all told, it adds $4 trillion to our national debt.

There was another major part of that bill that Republicans passed last year with the President, and it was a massive slush fund for their mass deportation agenda. They put in that bill $140 billion for ICE and CBP. So, just for comparison's sake, for ICE, that was seven times their previous annual appropriation. They stuffed that into that one so-called Big Beautiful Bill. You know, that is as much money as many countries spend on their militaries in a year.

The results have been predictable--a bloated, unaccountable Agency that is not focused on deporting the ``worst of the worst,'' as the President said he would do, but that goes into communities and indiscriminately abducts people, ships them around the country, and then tries to deport them. Overwhelmingly--overwhelmingly--they are people with no criminal records who, according to DHS' own data, pose no risk to our communities: small business owners, pastors, veterans, parents taking their kids to school, even children.

When the American people rose up against these brutal policies and exercised their right to protest, when they took to the streets to exercise their First Amendment rights and to take pictures of what ICE agents were doing, we saw in Minneapolis two American citizens shot and killed--a mom, Renee Good, who was killed as she tried to drive away from ICE agents who were aggressively approaching her car, and a VA nurse Alex Pretti, who was killed when he stopped to help a fellow observer. He was shot in the back by CBP agents.

And the Trump administration--what was their response? They called the victims--they called Renee Good and Alex Pretti--domestic terrorists.

That is the mindset of this out-of-control, lawless ICE operation.

Well, my constituents in Maryland and Americans across the country have been horrified by these actions. They said it has to stop, and it needs to stop. These Agencies need to be held accountable. They need to be reined in. We need independent investigations.

So Democrats put forward some pretty straightforward proposed reforms: require Federal agents to show identification, take off the masks that allow them to evade accountability. Our local police officers don't wear masks. Our local police officers provide identification.

We also said: You have got to cooperate with State and local law enforcement investigating these incidents. When you have an administration calling the victims domestic terrorists, it is hard to trust the outcome of an administration that is doing the investigation. We want the local and State law enforcement authorities involved.

And our list of reforms went on, but they were rejected by Republicans and rejected by the White House. They didn't want meaningful reforms. They wanted to keep the blank check going.

And so then Democrats proposed that: OK, let's set aside ICE and CBP, and let's negotiate those, but let's immediately fund other parts of the Department of Homeland Security, like TSA, FEMA, and the Coast Guard. We were resisted for a very long time, and then finally Senate Republicans agreed. There was no reason to hold TSA, for example, hostage to an out-of-control ICE operation. So we passed that out of the U.S. Senate, allowing those other entities to get funding.

But what happened in the Republican-controlled House? Speaker Johnson refused to even let it come to a vote.

And so here we are, and Republicans are putting forward their reconciliation bill for this fiscal year. Their top priority? At this moment, when Americans are seeing their bills go up, their costs rise, when American families have had to absorb the huge increases as a result of Trump's illegal, unconstitutional tariff taxes--which is estimated, on average, to cost American families $1,700 a year. By the way, the President should give those families their money back, and do it now.

But as all of these costs are rising, Republicans here in Congress have decided to focus, instead, not on affordability but on using this special, rare process to do something else: to add to the slush fund for ICE and Customs and Border Patrol. And they are doing it in a way that doesn't require any Democratic votes. So this is Republicans only, so that is how we know that this is their top priority.

And, by the way, they are wasting a ton of taxpayer money in the process--a lot of taxpayer money--on these warehouses that they are buying up around the country to retrofit for detention centers, often paying way over market value. In my State of Maryland, they have spent $102 million to buy a warehouse in Western Maryland to turn into a detention center. They did so without adequate notice, without consultation with the community, and it is going to put strains on local water supplies and sewage capacity.

That warehouse project has been halted by a judge and is now being reconsidered by DHS, but $100 million of taxpayer money, already wasted.

I don't think any of us are surprised by the priorities that have been put forward by the Trump administration and now with Republicans in Congress because it was right down the hall here that Donald Trump was sworn in, and he promised a golden age for America, for Americans. Well, he has been delivering a golden age--a Gilded Age--for his billionaire buddies.

And despite what he said during his campaign when he said he was going to stop wars and bring down prices, he has started wars. Prices are going up. He is focused on building a gold-plated ballroom in the White House and new monuments to himself. He is focused on hiding portions of the Epstein files from survivors and the American people. He has been busy lying to the American people time and time again, telling them that prices are going down and the world is more peaceful and everybody is doing just great.

He wants everybody to believe the dear leader; and, unfortunately, if you look at a Cabinet meeting these days, you can see all the Cabinet officials--the most billionaire-filled Cabinet in history--nodding along.

But we can do better than that, and we should do better than that. We should listen to the concerns being expressed by people all over the country, and we should focus on bringing costs down and letting people have and keep

a little bit more of their hard-earned money--working people, not mostly the billionaires.

Instead, we see this effort by Republicans simply to fatten an Agency that is out of control, engaged in lawless activity, instead of what is important to the American people.

So I urge all of my colleagues to oppose--to strongly oppose--this reconciliation bill, which is simply an effort to stuff an illegal Agency like ICE at the expense of the American people.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to honor the life and legacy of Mr. James McArthur ``Mack'' Alsobrooks. Mr. Alsobrooks was a beloved husband, father, neighbor, and friend who centered kindness and faith in all that he did.

Mr. Alsobrooks was born on January 24, 1948, in Wadesboro, NC, to Adam Willis Alsobrooks and Sarah Daisy (nee Tillman) Alsobrooks. The eldest of three children, he stepped into his role as big brother with ease. He was a product of the District of Columbia Public Schools system, having attended Charles Young Elementary School, Brown Junior High School, and Spingarn High School. He continued to pursue his appetite for knowledge with the help of his teachers, including his music teacher, Roberta Flack.

On December 6, 1969, Mr. Alsobrooks married Patricia Ann Thompson. They raised their incredible daughters, Kimberly Patrice and Angela DeNeece in Suitland, Prince George's County, MD. Mr. Alsobrooks' daughters were the light of his life, and he sacrificed endlessly to provide them with the opportunity to chase their dreams. He was always their fiercest supporter and was able to stand by his daughter, our colleague, as she was sworn into the U.S. Senate. I saw him beaming with pride that day.

Mr. Alsobrooks applied his deep belief in humanity to every aspect of his life. He cofounded the Alliance of Concerned Men, an organization committed to interrupting cycles of violence and pursuing community healing. Through his church, he participated in a program to counsel, support, and uplift young men. He also served on the Prince George's County Commission on Fathers, Men, and Boys, where he advocated for policies and programs that empower men across generations.

Mr. Alsobrooks was also a man of profound faith and a lifelong member of the church. He worshipped with the Ebenezer AME Church in Fort Washington, MD, for over four decades.

The outpouring of love from friends, family, and community members since Mr. Alsobrooks' passing is a testament to the kind of life he lived, one filled with joy, devotion, and an uncompromising belief in humanity. He will always be remembered for his wit, his empathy, and his love for a good game of pool.

He is survived by his beloved wife Patricia; his daughters Kimberly and Angela; his adored granddaughter Alexandra; his sisters Carol and Barbara; his nephew Aaron; his godson Avery; and many dear family members and friends--all of whom will carry his legacy forward.

I invite my fellow Members to join me in offering our sincere condolences to our colleague Senator Alsobrooks and to her family.

Mr. President, I want to thank my colleague from New Jersey for his powerful words, and I, too, rise in support of this War Powers Resolution put forward by our colleague Senator Duckworth, who knows a thing or two about the costs of war.

This is a resolution to halt President Trump's unjustified, illegal war against Iran--a war that the overwhelming majority of American people want to see end; a war that this Congress never authorized and where we have never had a hearing from a Trump administration decisionmaker about the war; a war that was started by President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu that has made us less--not more--safe; and a war that has made us much worse off, not better off.

We have lost 13 American servicemembers. Hundreds more have been wounded. Thousands of civilians, innocent civilians, have been killed throughout the region.

And the sacrifice of our servicemembers deserves more respect than the President casually remarking that ``[s]adly, there will likely be more. . . . That's the way it is.'' That is what President Trump said.

Well, that is not the way it is, and it is not the way it should be, and it is not the way an American President should talk about our troops. We must not and cannot normalize President Trump's reckless actions that have brought us to this point.

The costs of this war are mounting. We just saw it today: The President intends to send thousands more troops to the Middle East-- 6,000 as part of a naval deployment and thousands more to come later.

This war has already cost us, in addition to lives, $52 billion--$52 billion--and another billion dollars every day from the American taxpayers. On top of that, on top of what taxpayers will be shelling out, we are seeing Americans struggle with rising prices: gas prices, oil prices. Of course, when you have rising gas and oil prices, it drives up prices on everything else, like fertilizers that our farmers need as we go into the season of growing. And all this coming from the President who promised that he would focus on lowering prices and ending wars. He promised the American people he would be ``a peacemaker,'' and he is a warmonger. He lied, and because of his lies, people are dying.

Now the President wants to put even more lives at risk to open the Strait of Hormuz. We should all remind our fellow Americans that the Strait of Hormuz was open before the President started this war. It was open before the President started this war, and now the President's main goal is to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

The President also said the other day that we achieved regime change. He just didn't tell the American people that when he knocked off some of the top Iranian leaders--the ayatollahs--they were replaced by an even more militant and even more radical regime. That is the President's definition of ``regime change.''

Now, the President likes to claim periodically that we won. In fact, more than 3 weeks ago, the President of the United States said ``We won,'' the United States won. He said that a few days ago. The President said ``We won.''

My question for my Republican colleagues is, If we won, what the hell are we still doing there? If we won, why are we still there? Why are we still putting American lives at risk? Why are we spending a billion dollars of taxpayer money a day if we won?

Well, we didn't win. And it is impossible to measure how you win because the President never set forth clear rationales for this war because there wasn't really one to be had. And certainly they have advanced no endgame, like what does it mean for him to win the war that he already said that he won.

So we know from the President's own words that there is no clear endgame here, and it is clear every day that this war is not in the interests of the American people.

Now, we have seen from President Trump not strength or leadership. What we have seen is recklessness. Now we in the Senate should apply some brakes and accountability. We have seen a President threatening massive war crimes in the name of the American people, threatening to end a civilization.

Colleagues, this is a time for sober and serious American leadership, and Donald Trump is not a serious leader.

In addition to threatening to end a civilization, he has attacked the Pope because the Pope seeks peace. He has posted an image of himself as Jesus Christ. This is the man in the White House who is running this war. He is putting American lives at risk and endangering people throughout the world, and he is simply not fit to be Commander in Chief.

So all of this without the consent of the American people. That is where Congress is supposed to come in.

So when the Presiding Officer is looking at a President of the United States who is so unhinged, how is it that we can only find one Republican Senator, Senator Rand Paul--how is it that we can only find one to stand up for the Constitution and against this President who clearly is not following the will of the American people, a President who took us into an illegal war that is making us less safe and worse off? That is our job. That is our job, and this Senate keeps ducking its responsibility.

This resolution put forward by Senator Duckworth is another opportunity for our Republican colleagues to show that they are going to exercise their responsibilities under the Constitution of the United States. We will keep offering War Powers Resolutions so the American people know that we are working every day to end this war which they want to see come to a close. Maybe we can begin that process today.

I thank Senator Duckworth for offering this resolution and really urge my colleagues to search their souls and talk to their constituents and vote yes.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise in support of the two resolutions offered by my colleague Senator Sanders that would bar the transfer of certain offensive weapons and equipment to the Netanyahu government.

Specifically, these resolutions would block the transfer of 12,000 1,000-pound bombs and 132 armored bulldozers, valued at more than $446 million and funded entirely by American taxpayers.

We cannot continue to provide a blank check to the Netanyahu government as it continues to use U.S. weapons in violation of U.S. and international law.

As I have long said, Israel was justified in its war against Hamas after the horrific attack of October 7, 2023. But the Netanyahu government is not justified in imposing collective punishment on all the people of Gaza.

As Senator Merkley and I wrote in our report after traveling to the region in August 2025, ``The Netanyahu Government is Implementing a Plan to Ethnically Cleanse Gaza of Palestinians. America is Complicit.''

And now, as Senator Sanders indicated, Israeli leaders are saying out loud they plan to apply the same plans in southern Lebanon as they implemented in Gaza.

Senator Sanders mentioned threatening what they did in Khan Yunis. As recently as March 31, Israeli Defense Minister Katz said:

All homes in Lebanese villages near the border will be

destroyed--in accordance with the Rafah and Beit Hanoun model

in Gaza.

Well, colleagues, I visited Gaza. I visited the Gaza crossing--the Rafah crossing--twice, along with my colleague Senator Merkley, first in January 2024, when Gaza's population had quadrupled from prewar levels to more than 1 million people who had been displaced within Gaza, from northern Gaza.

And then we traveled to the Rafah crossing, in August 2025, after the IDF's offensive against Rafah, one that the Biden administration claimed that they tried to stop. And on that visit, Senator Merkley and I climbed a rooftop, and you could look into Rafah--obliterated, reduced to absolute rubble.

And as we were told by former IDF soldiers--eyewitnesses who had the courage to speak with us--Israel has systematically dismantled essential infrastructure and brought near-total destruction of civilian sites throughout Gaza, including through the use of these bulldozers and 1,000-pound bombs. And now the Israeli Minister of Defense says they are going to do the same thing in southern Lebanon.

And, indeed, since the war in Lebanon restarted, Israeli forces have killed over 2,000 people, including 250 people in 10 minutes, the day after the cease-fire was announced. Entire villages have been destroyed and over 1.1 million people displaced.

Now, let's not forget how we got into this most recent round of destruction in the region. President Trump is fully responsible for getting America into this war, period.

But we know from Trump administration officials and public reporting how Prime Minister Netanyahu, for his own reasons, was pushing Trump to attack Iran. Indeed, he said it himself on April 11. Netanyahu boasted to the Israeli public that Israel was ``first to act because we knew what was at stake. But if I had told you a year ago that our pilots, men and women, would fly in Iran, who would have believed it?'' So said Prime Minister Netanyahu.

He went on to say:

If I had told you a year ago that the United States of

America, the strongest power in the world, would fight by our

side, shoulder to shoulder, wing to wing, for nearly 40 days

against the common enemy, who would have believed it?

And then Prime Minister Netanyahu went on to say:

All this happened because we initiated, we acted, we

attacked.

Now, those of us who have been around here a little while know that Prime Minister Netanyahu has been pushing for a war with Iran for a very long time. In fact, he recently publicly acknowledged that the current U.S.-Israeli war on Iran ``allows us to do what I have been hoping to do for 40 years.''

That is what Prime Minister Netanyahu said.

I remember when Prime Minister Netanyahu actually spoke before a joint session of Congress, asking us not to support the JCPOA, which, of course, prevented Iran from getting a nuclear weapon.

Of course, the current President then tore that up when he first came into office.

So Prime Minister Netanyahu had been trying to get previous Presidents to join him in attacking Iran, but no previous President was stupid enough or reckless enough to actually do it.

So here we are without facing any imminent threat, and President Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu started an illegal war against Iran.

It is a gross violation of international law. Indeed, on April 2, a group of over 100 international law experts, people who actually believe in international law, which included former U.S. and U.N. officials, published an open letter stating that ``the initiation of the campaign was a clear violation of the United Nations Charter'' and that the conduct of the United States and Israeli forces in the war ``raise serious concerns about violations of international human rights and international humanitarian law, including potential war crimes.'' That is on top of the illegality of initiating a war against Iran.

Look, earlier this afternoon, nearly all Democrats voted together to end Donald Trump's illegal war against Iran. Many of us have vowed that we will not support 1 taxpayer dollar to continue this war that is making us less safe and less well-loved.

Well, that commitment and determination should apply to the Trump administration and to the Netanyahu administration. We need to rein in Trump in this illegal war, and we need to rein in the Netanyahu administration in this illegal war.

Now, colleagues, I want to focus for a moment on the portion of the Sanders resolution that bans the transfer of bulldozers to the IDF. These are the bulldozers that helped raze Rafah in Gaza to the ground.

For those who don't remember, I ask them to recall the case of Rachel Corrie, a 23-year-old American peace activist who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer while trying to block the razing of buildings in Rafah over 20 years ago. Rachel Corrie has never gotten any justice, and her family will tell you that today.

In fact, just since January of 2022, at least nine more American citizens have been killed by extremist Israeli settlers or security forces in the West Bank. Not one of them--not one--has gotten justice, just like Rachel Corrie--no accountability.

There is no piece of equipment that has helped Israel and the Netanyahu government destroy civilian infrastructure in the West Bank and Gaza and now Lebanon more than the bulldozer.

Just look at the titles of some of the reporting coming from what is happening in southern Lebanon. The Guardian title: `` `Everything is gone.' Israel destroys entire villages in Lebanon.''

And you can see it for yourself. I really encourage my colleagues just to look at the videos. Some of them have been shared by members of the Israeli military themselves. They showed controlled detonations and destruction of entire villages.

This isn't new. During the last war in Lebanon, Amnesty International documented how the Israeli military carried out extensive and deliberate destruction of civilian property across almost the entire Lebanese border with Israel, including 10,000 structures, primarily through the use of manually laid explosives and bulldozers.

In the West Bank, as we speak, we are seeing violent Israeli settlers kill Palestinian citizens with impunity. We are also seeing the use of these bulldozers to demolish Palestinian homes in the West Bank and other civilian infrastructures. Again, you can see it for yourselves in the videos.

This is all part of a slow-motion ethnic cleansing effort in the West Bank and de facto annexation of the West Bank. Indeed, the New York Times in September 2024 spoke about raids in the West Bank villages of Tulkarm and Jenin. The headline is this: ``Israeli Bulldozers Flatten Mile After Mile in the West Bank.'' In total, since the Gaza war started, Israeli authorities have demolished at least 4,900 structures in the West Bank and displaced 9,000 Palestinians there.

As this has gone on, so has settler violence, often with the complicity of the IDF. In the West Bank, over 1,000 Palestinians, including 230 children, have been killed with virtual impunity since October of 2023--with impunity. The Israeli human rights organization Yesh Din said that between 2000 and September 2025--that is a 20-year period--more than 93 percent of police investigations into settler violence in the West Bank concluded without an indictment.

So what are we going to do about this? We need to stop providing the Netanyahu government with an absolute blank check. We need to demand accountability for American citizens who have been killed there.

So I urge my colleagues now to support this resolution. If we want to rein in a Trump administration that wants an illegal war against Iran, we should also rein in the Netanyahu administration. It is doing exactly the same thing with American taxpayer dollars.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to the life and legacy of a remarkable Marylander, Dr. Mark Hallett. Dr. Hallett was a pioneer, a prolific researcher, and an unforgettable mentor. The impacts of his work will be felt for generations to come.

Dr. Hallett was born and raised in Philadelphia, PA, where he graduated high school before attending Harvard College. He then received his M.D. at Harvard Medical School and completed his internship at Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston.

In 1970, Dr. Hallett began his work at the National Institutes of Health and quickly discovered his interest in motor control research. He completed his residency at Massachusetts General Hospital and his fellowship at the Institute of Psychiatry in London before returning to Peter Bent Brigham Hospital as chief of the Clinical Neurophysiology Laboratory.

Dr. Hallett later returned to NIH and created the Human Motor Control Section with the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. He pioneered new methods to research human movement, motor control, and various motor disorders, and treated countless patients. He played a crucial role in the discovery of Havana Syndrome in American diplomats and successfully helped renowned pianist Leon Fleisher recover use of his hand.

For all his professional accolades, Dr. Hallett remained modest and treated everyone he encountered with dignity and respect. He served as a mentor to hundreds of researchers around the world. His leadership qualities were undeniable, earning him several influential positions, including with the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology, the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society, and the American Academy of Neurology. His pioneering work has advanced the field of neurology and left an indelible mark on the way healthcare facilities treat countless illnesses and disorders.

Above all, Dr. Hallett's proudest achievement was his beautiful family, and we in the Congress have been fortunate to have the benefit of his wonderful wife Judy, an incredible researcher, brilliant historian, and storied leader whose work has defined generations of academic development. I invite my colleagues to join me in offering appreciation and condolences to Judy, his children Nicholas and Victoria, his grandchildren Celeste and Flora, and his siblings Eileen and Bruce.

Mr. President, I know we are waiting for the Senator from Nevada to come to the floor to make a few remarks, and I want to thank Senator Wyden for his remarks.

I am just looking around the floor here and thinking this would be a great time to propose a unanimous consent request that we fully fund TSA. I won't do it at this moment. I see the chairman of the Finance Committee here. But I want to make the point, Mr. President, that we could get it done right now. We could end the lines at airports around the country, we could fund TSA, we could fund FEMA, and we could fund the Coast Guard as we continue negotiations to rein in a lawless

ICE operation--an ICE operation that took the lives of two American citizens in Minneapolis; a lawless ICE operation that is not focused, as President Trump promised, on the worst of the worst; a lawless ICE operation that is trampling over people's First Amendment rights around the country and due process rights.

So as I was looking around the floor, I didn't see any Republican colleagues for a moment, and I think it is worth making the point to folks watching that we could have gotten unanimous consent to open FEMA, to open TSA, and to open the Coast Guard. That is what we should do, and we should do it now.

I see the Senator from Nevada.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I think all of us know here in the Senate that Senators have the ability to write the titles of their own bills. You can give a bill whatever name you want, whether it is accurate and true or misleading. And in this case, we have a bill that has been entitled the SAVE America Act. But make no mistake, this is not about saving America. That is a fraud on the American people.

And what we are hearing from our Republican colleagues and what we hear from the President of the United States is that there is this rampant noncitizen voting in our elections. Donald Trump says there are so many noncitizens voting at the polls that they are rigged. In fact, that is why he lost in 2020, he says.

But, of course, we know there is zero proof for that. We know, in fact, that it is a big lie.

It is already illegal to vote if you are not a U.S. citizen. And the cases of noncitizen registration and noncitizen voting are vanishingly rare, almost nonexistent.

So what is this really about? Well, it is about Trump's obsession with a Federal takeover of our elections. That is not my word; that is his. He said he wanted to ``takeover'' our elections. And they do-- Donald Trump does--want to make it particularly hard for voters who they think will vote against them. He wants to make it particularly hard for those voters to actually be able to cast their votes.

And that is what this bill is all about. It is about making it more difficult for millions and millions of Americans to exercise their right to vote, and it is calculated to try to make it harder for those Americans who President Trump assesses will vote against him or against Republicans.

Why else would Donald Trump have said it will ``guarantee the midterms''? By ``it,'' he meant this bill. So the President of the United States is saying that if Republicans pass this bill, it will guarantee them the midterm elections.

The only way that could be true is if this bill were designed to try to prevent, slow down, make it harder for millions of Americans to cast their vote who Republicans and Donald Trump think will vote against Republicans in the midterms.

He goes on to say: ``If you don't get it, big trouble''--meaning, if we actually let American citizens vote and we don't put up these additional restrictions, President Trump assesses that Republicans will lose the midterms.

And he is desperate to change that. We already saw that in the redistricting effort in Texas and other places around the country. This is part and parcel of that effort.

Donald Trump said that was the goal, and, in fact, recently fired former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said the same thing in different words.

Here is what she said, a few weeks ago, in Arizona: ``We have been proactive to make sure that we have the right people [to vote]--

And then she said the other part out loud--

[to vote to elect] the right leaders.

In other words, let's try to shape the electorate by passing this bill so that we--we the Republicans and President Trump--get the voters they want to elect the ``leaders'' they want, meaning Republicans.

That is what this is all about. It is not about saving America. It is about saving Republicans in the midterm elections and beyond.

And they do this by making it harder for citizens to vote. So, yes, it is suppressing the vote. If you make it harder for anyone in this room who is an American citizen or anybody around the country to go out and cast their vote, if you put up hurdles to casting those votes, yes, it is making it more difficult to vote. That is suppressing the vote.

So let's look a little more deeply at the underlying claims behind this bill--the claim that we have all these noncitizens that are voting.

They can't prove it. In fact, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, said that noncitizens voting is something they know is happening ``intuitively''--``intuitively.''

He went on to say:

But it's not been something that is easily provable.

Not something easily provable--that is ridiculous. Of course, it is provable. People go into a voting booth. They give their name. That is a matter of the official record. And you can go about finding out whether the person who registered and cast their vote, in fact, is an American citizen. It is provable.

And the problem Republicans have is they set out to prove it and came out completely empty--completely empty.

Let's look at the findings of the conservative Heritage Foundation. So this is a conservative think tank, a Republican think tank. They could only find 24 instances in 20 years of somebody who voted without being a citizen, or maybe it was just registered to vote--but 24 instances between the year 2003 and the year 2023. This is what they are calling a rampant problem.

The Cato Institute, which is not a liberal organization, put out a report last month noting that Utah--the State of Utah--reviewed its approximately 2.1 million voters, and found 1 confirmed noncitizen who had registered but never voted.

I mean, it is certainly possible that if you are a permanent resident, if you have a green card, you might mistakenly believe you can vote in an election and register, and then realize you really can't and then not cast the vote.

So Utah looked at 2.1 million voters, and not a single one--not a single noncitizen among them--cast a vote and only 1 registered.

In Georgia, out of 8.2 million registrants, Georgia found only 20 who were noncitizens. I don't even know if they ended up voting or not.

So, obviously, in this country, we want only American citizens to vote, and that is what is happening. American citizens are the ones who are voting, not noncitizens.

And if you think about that, it makes intuitive sense, right? The penalty--the Federal penalty--for providing false information when you register is up to 5 years in prison. And then, if you actually go ahead and cast a vote as a noncitizen, it is up to another 1 year in prison.

Nobody--nobody--is going to risk going to prison for 6 years in order to cast a vote in an election. I mean, that defies common sense, and it also defies the fact, which is why Republicans can't come up with any proof to support their claim, which they argue justifies this bill-- none.

Again, the Speaker says it is an intuition. In other words, it is a feeling he has got, but there is no proof to support it. It is because there isn't any.

So that is the false claim being made to justify this bill. In other words, it is a bill in search of a problem, but actually the problem doesn't exist. So it is obviously in search of something else, and that something else is making it harder for millions of Americans to vote.

As I mentioned, Donald Trump thinks if this bill is passed, it will ``guarantee'' the Republicans ``the midterms.'' The former Secretary of Homeland Security says we need this bill to get the right voters to vote for the ``right leaders.''

Now, I was just listening to one of my Republican colleagues on the floor talk about how we need ID for all sorts of things, and, of course, that is true. You need a license to drive a car. But guess what. That license that you get, that is not proof of citizenship. That doesn't qualify under this bill. Even the new REAL IDs don't qualify for proof of citizenship under this bill because there are noncitizens who have those forms of ID. So when Republican Senators talk about these other forms of ID that we use every day, suggesting that they could be used for this purpose, that is just not true.

What this bill does is essentially narrow the forms of ID that you need to prove that you are a citizen in the first place to essentially two categories.

One is a passport. Now, it turns out that only about half of Americans have a passport. So that means half of the American citizens that are preparing to go out and vote will not be able to vote because they wouldn't have the proof of citizenship. They don't have a passport.

Or it is an original birth certificate. Well, I think we all know that there are lots of Americans that don't have their original birth certificate.

In fact, if you are a woman who has gotten married and changed her name, that original birth certificate won't provide you the proof of citizenship required under this law.

And research at the Brennan Center at the University of Maryland shows that more than 21 million American citizens do not have these required documents readily available--21 million American citizens who will be forced to go through all these additional hoops and, by the way, pay money in order to get the required ID.

And, of course, in America, we are not supposed to have a poll tax. You are not supposed to have to pay the government any money for the right to exercise your right to vote. But that is what this bill does for maybe up to 21 million of our fellow American citizens.

So if there really were proof of an epidemic of noncitizen voting, of course, we would need to look for ways to prevent that from happening. We would have to come up with some form of required ID to meet that problem. But there is no proof there. There is no ``there'' there.

Now, one of the ways that the Trump administration proposed for trying to get to the bottom of all this claimed fraud was to require States to send the Department of Homeland Security their voting information. In fact, the Department of Justice has been asking a lot of States for this information. You may recall that Attorney General Bondi and former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem were telling people in Minnesota: You know, we will call back ICE and their lawless efforts if you give us your voter ID information.

Of course, in our country, we have State-based elections, thank goodness. Thank goodness we count our elections at the State level. Can you imagine if we did what Donald Trump wants to do, which is federalize the elections and count them at the White House? I mean, do you remember in 2020, after he lost, the President of the United States was calling down to Georgia--Fulton County--and saying: Find me--what was it?--6,000-some votes.

Thank goodness we don't have centralized Federal elections in the United States of America because you can be sure that President Trump would make sure, when he conducted the count at the White House, it would come out his way.

So we don't have that, but we now have a Department of Homeland Security that is essentially demanding that States provide the Federal Government with their voter information. A lot of States are suing. They are fighting back. Some States have been providing that information to the Department of Justice and to other entities. But it turns out that when the States hear back from the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Homeland Security is giving them all sorts of misinformation.

Let's look at a couple examples of States that have already shared their voter roll data with DHS. This was, again, for the purpose of DHS checking to make sure that voter rolls in those States did not include noncitizens. So DHS was going to scrub those records and let the States know what kind of problems they have.

Well, Missouri's records were reviewed by DHS, and it turns out that DHS found hundreds of voters that DHS said were ineligible to vote. Guess what. It turned out that DHS was wrong and that they were eligible voters. So DHS was essentially telling the State of Missouri that eligible American citizen voters in fact were not eligible.

One county clerk in Missouri said of the DHS system:

This is not ready for prime time. And I'm not going to risk

the security and constitutional rights of my voters for bad

data.

That is a clerk in the State of Missouri.

An election administrator in Texas said:

I really find no merit in any of this.

That was after three eligible Texas voters--in other words, eligible American citizen Texas voters--had been flagged for removal by DHS.

So here is the State of Texas: OK, DHS, take a look at our voter files, and you find all those people that are really not American citizens.

Well, guess what. They didn't get any back that flagged people who were not American citizens. They did get back people that DHS claimed were not eligible, but when Texas inspected it, it turns out they were eligible to vote. That is the kind of operation the Trump administration is running at DHS.

In addition to requiring this essential Federal takeover of review of the voter rolls, this second bill that has been introduced by Republicans in the Senate is even worse than the first. The first was called the SAVE Act. This one is called the SAVE America Act--which, as I said, the real purpose is to ``Save the Republican Party in the Midterm Elections Act.''

But this second one actually makes it harder for people to register to vote and to vote. It includes new provisions that President Trump has demanded prohibiting vote-by-mail except in very, very narrow circumstances.

In order to vote by mail, a voter would have to submit sworn certifications to the specific circumstances, including their health status or travel plans, to their board of elections. Even after that, you can't just drop the ballot in the mailbox; you have to send it by certified mail, with signature verification.

So this isn't a voter ID bill. That is just untrue. It is a specific kind of ID that is required, which millions of American citizens don't have. It is really a ``Show Me Your Papers Voter Purge Bill,'' making it harder for American citizens to exercise their right to vote.

As I said earlier, the real purpose is not to prevent noncitizens from voting; it is to prevent citizens who the Trump administration and Republicans assess will vote against them in the midterm elections--to make it harder for them to vote.

You are seeing many other efforts that are ongoing right now to try to rig the midterm elections. I mentioned earlier the efforts to redistrict in Texas. We see challenges to the Voting Rights Act. We see this bill. It is a sign of desperation. It is a sign that Donald Trump knows that the American people don't like what they see coming out of this administration.

After all, this is a President who, as a candidate, said he would keep us out of wars--especially in the Middle East--and he would focus on lowering prices. That is what Candidate Trump said. What has President Trump delivered? He has gotten us involved in more conflicts than any other President in a very long time--including an illegal war of choice in Iran as we speak.

The Economy

Mr. President, prices and costs are going up, up, up. The price of groceries is going up. The price of rent and mortgages is going up. Healthcare is going up.

By the way, we could have at least reduced some people's healthcare costs if this Senate had voted to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, but Republicans in this body blocked that effort. So I have constituents in Maryland who now have to pay more because while the Republicans' so-called Big Beautiful Bill permanently extended tax cuts for billionaires, they let the one tax credit that helps middle-class families afford their healthcare--they let that lapse.

Billionaires--permanent tax cuts. American working families' tax credit for healthcare--that one they let die, go away, so healthcare costs are going up really for everybody.

Childcare costs are going up.

Instead of addressing those issues, we have a President who continues to hide portions of the Epstein files from the survivors as well as from the American people, and we have a President who is engaged in driving up costs for the American people instead of bringing them down.

I don't know exactly how many days it has been since the Supreme Court struck down his illegal tariff tax, but it has certainly been enough time for the President and his administration to say that they are going to send the money they stole from the American people back to American households. Mr. President, $1,700 per household is the estimate of what those Trump illegal tariff taxes cost on average.

Give them their money back, President Trump. Do it today.

But that is not what President Trump is doing.

Iran

Mr. President, the war in Iran has already cost us the lives of 13 servicemembers. Hundreds more have been injured. Over 2,000 civilians have been killed throughout the region, from Iran, to Lebanon, to Israel, including over 160 Iranian schoolgirls killed, apparently, by a U.S. Tomahawk missile.

That war is making us less safe, not more safe. We all know that the administration has no endgame. They took the lid off Pandora's box.

They, together with Israel, took out a number of members of the Iranian regime. It is a heinous regime, and it has been brutal to its own people. But public reporting indicates that our intelligence Agencies assess that if you got rid of the top-level Iranian leadership, very likely, they would be replaced by even more radical leaders, people who are closer to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard--in other words, people who are even more dangerous and more likely to destabilize the region. And that is what we are seeing.

We are spending a billion dollars of taxpayer money every day-- probably more--on this war that is making us less safe.

By the way, for the President who said he was going to reduce prices, oil and gas prices are going up, up, up.

Corruption

Mr. President, the American people don't like what they see. On top of this, it is mixed with a toxic amount of corruption. We have the President's son-in-law Jared Kushner going around and pretending to be the big peacemaker in the Middle East--look how that is going--and at the same time doing big, huge deals with Gulf States, with Saudi Arabia and others.

We know that this is a President who, with his so-called meme coin, has pocketed millions and millions of dollars for himself and his family, accepted a luxury jet from the Qatari royal family and a gold- plated Rolex desk clock from Swiss business leaders, and in exchange for a gold crown, gave South Korea a lower tariff rate.

Probably one of the most corrupt transactions of them all was with the UAE, because what happened with the UAE was just before Donald Trump was inaugurated as President. Someone in the UAE--one of the members of the royal family--made a huge investment in the Trump family stablecoin business--a huge investment.

It wasn't long thereafter that the President's son Eric Trump went to the UAE. And guess what happened. Sheik Tahnoon, who is a member of the royal family, invested billions of dollars in that Trump family stable coin business.

Then it was about 2 weeks later that Donald Trump goes to the UAE and says to the UAE that he is going to relax the restrictions the United States had in place on the transfer of very sophisticated technology to the UAE--semiconductor technology, AI technology.

We were especially worried about transferring that technology to a particular set of companies in the UAE because of their relationships with China. But do you know what? The UAE--a member of the royal family--had just invested a lot of money in the Trump family stablecoin business, and so, hey, Donald Trump relaxed the restrictions on the transfer of U.S. technology to the UAE and put that at risk of transfer to China.

It is massive corruption that benefited the Trump family at the expense of American national security.

So, yes, the American people don't like what they are seeing. We are seeing that in all the polling.

Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, today, I am voting in favor of the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act. Whether they are renting or buying, too many Americans struggle with the cost of housing. This bill includes crucial reforms to streamline and enhance housing programs, as well as important incentives for communities to build high quality, affordable housing for all. I am also proud that this legislation includes my bipartisan VA Home Loan Awareness Act and VALID Act to help more veterans and their families secure affordable home loans.

We have much more work to do to deliver affordable housing to the American people, but this bipartisan legislation is a step forward. We need to examine ways to increase investment in housing supply and improve financing options, as well as expand vouchers to directly assist families. There are also different perspectives on how this legislation's treatment of ``build-to-rent'' housing could affect housing supply and prices. Accordingly, we must closely monitor housing markets to ensure those provisions support housing affordability appropriately and make adjustments if circumstances warrant. I look forward to continuing to work with my colleagues to increase the production of affordable housing communities need.

Mr. President, I just want to pick up where my colleague from New Jersey left off, which is the proposal that was put forward by the Senator from Washington, Senator Murray, which is to have a vote today to make sure that we fully fund TSA, that we fully fund FEMA, and that we fully fund the Coast Guard.

I have heard a couple times just on this floor from our Republican colleagues that Democrats are blocking funding for TSA and FEMA and the Coast Guard. That simply isn't true. In fact, I am looking at a post. I heard a couple mentions of politics as part of this conversation. Just a few days ago, a Senate Republican post said, ``Democrats are forcing 100,000+ Federal employees to work without pay.''

Well, this wasn't true then because just last week, Senator Murray also proposed that we fully fund TSA and FEMA and the Coast Guard.

It wasn't true when they posted it, and it is not true today. In fact, what we are doing today is giving our Republican colleagues another chance to actually pay these Federal employees.

Now, I don't think anybody is confused about what is happening here, and that is that the American people understand that Trump's ICE operation is out of control. It is violating the constitutional due process of people throughout the country. It is violating the First Amendment rights of people throughout the country, including the right to peacefully protest.

We all recall, like it was yesterday, the fact that DHS agents shot and killed two American citizens in Minneapolis: Renee Good and Alex Pretti. And then the Secretary of Homeland Security--the former Secretary of Homeland Security turned around and called them domestic terrorists, called the victims of those shootings domestic terrorists.

And from the very start, the Trump administration has lied to the American people about the purpose of the ICE operation, and I heard it again on the floor of the Senate here today. They said they were going to go after ``the worst of the worst,'' people who were here illegally and posed a threat to public safety in our communities.

That would have been acceptable, but that is not what they are doing in the overwhelming number of these cases. In Maryland, they swept up a pastor from the Eastern Shore. They arrested and imprisoned and then deported a small business woman from Hagerstown. She had been here 20 years, Vietnamese-American woman, beloved in her community, had a nail business. And the list goes on and on and on.

And, in fact, Republicans are beginning to recognize that this is completely unpopular with the American people. Yesterday, here are two headlines, one is in the Washington Post, ``White House tells GOP to avoid mass deportation talks ahead of the midterms.''

Axios, ``White House tells House Republicans to stop talking about mass deportations.''

Well, they want Republicans to stop talking about mass deportations, but they are not actually doing anything to stop mass deportations. And what Democrats have said is: We want meaningful changes at ICE before we provide any additional funding.

I have been clear: I won't support 1 more penny for Trump's lawless ICE operation, and yet we are not getting any meaningful response from the White House with respect to the necessary reforms.

And so that is why we have said: Let's not hold hostage TSA. Let's not hold hostage FEMA. Let's not hold hostage the Coast Guard. Let's make sure they can continue to operate. Let's make sure that those Federal employees can get paid for the work that they are doing.

I mean, I am looking again at this post, the social media post that Republican Senators put out--Senate Republicans.

It has got all these headlines from around the country, ``Partial government shutdown, spring break travel leads to hours-long TSA lines at Hobby Airport.'' And they go on and on. We are saying we can end this. We can end it today. But Republicans are blocking it.

I just want to close with this point, and it has been made by the Senator from Washington Senator Murray and others, when Republicans passed what they call their Big Beautiful Bill, which was beautiful if you are a billionaire because you got big tax cuts, they cut Medicaid, they cut other health programs, they cut food programs; but as part of that bill, they increased the ICE budget by over seven times its annual amount.

And they increased the Customs and Border Patrol budget by about double its annual amount. So that is why, as we speak, ICE agents are being paid. As we speak, Customs and Border Patrol agents are being paid out of those accounts. You know who is not being paid? TSA. You know who is not being paid? FEMA. You know who is not being paid? Coast Guard.

Do you know what the Democratic proposal would do that is offered by Senator Murray? Pay all those people so they can do the work that they need to do on behalf of the American people and get paid for the good work that they do. That is what our proposal does.

It does what Senate Republicans claim on their social media posts that they want to do, that they want to pay these 100,000 Federal employees; but today, through their votes and their actions, they are actually saying the opposite. They are saying they want to continue to deny funding for those particular Agencies because we won't give ICE and its lawless operations a blank check, and we are not going to give ICE a blank check.

The American people don't want us to give a blank check to ICE. But for goodness' sake, let's not penalize folks at TSA and FEMA and the Coast Guard, and let's not penalize the American people by hampering those Agencies and preventing them from fully doing their good work on behalf of the country.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, with regards to the promotion of LTG Joshua Rudd to general, I do not oppose his promotion, but I have concerns about the administration's intent for him to serve as the Commander of U.S. Cyber Command and the Director of the National Security Agency. Both of these national security institutions are based in Maryland and they need a leader who has experience in the work they do for our Nation. While Lieutenant General Rudd has served the United States in many important roles, including his current role as deputy commander of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, he does not have a background or expertise in cyber operations or signals intelligence. Moreover, during his confirmation process, he did not assuage my concerns about his commitment to constitutional and legal guardrails on spying on Americans. For these reasons, I am opposing his nomination.

Mr. President, I rise today in support of Senator Kaine's War Powers Resolution to halt Donald Trump's unjustified, illegal, regime-change war against Iran.

We have a lawless President who is shredding our Constitution and attacking our democracy right here at home. And that same lawlessness and recklessness has pervaded our foreign and national security policy, now putting American troops in harm's way in Donald Trump's war of choice.

Let's not forget, colleagues, what Donald Trump and JD Vance promised the American people. Think back to all the times that they looked the American people in the eye and said they would not drag America into another war, especially another war in the Middle East. They said it over and over. They called themselves the ``pro-peace'' ticket.

Vice President Vance wrote a Wall Street Journal op-ed in 2023 making the case for Trump's 2024 Presidential candidacy. The headline of his op-ed: ``Trump's Best Foreign Policy? Not starting Any Wars.'' That is what JD Vance promised would come from a Trump-Vance White House.

The Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard sold ``No War with Iran'' shirts in 2020. Four years later, she declared:

A vote for Donald Trump is a vote to end wars, not start

them.

That is our current Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard.

Donald Trump even calls himself now ``the peacemaker'' and on election night in 2024, he said:

I'm not going to start wars, I'm going to stop wars.

That was Donald Trump at the end of his campaign repeating what he had said throughout his Presidential campaign. Well, they broke their promises. They lied directly to the American people.

President Trump has already ordered more military strikes against more countries than any President in the modern era, including against countries that have never been targeted by the U.S. military. And now, Trump has launched an all-out illegal regime-change war of choice against Iran.

Let's be clear: This is not a war to make us safer. What the President has done is to make the world less safe for Americans, and he has chosen to put American service men and women at risk for a war that he said he would never start; that he promised he would never start.

As of today, we have lost six brave American servicemembers to this war. I pray for them and their families. They should still be with us today. In response to their deaths, President Trump said just yesterday that ``sadly, there will likely be more. . . . That's the way it is.''

That is how Donald Trump responds to American troops killed in this war of choice that he started. He said:

That's [just] the way it is.

Really, colleagues? We should not send our sons and daughters to fight and die. We should not spend billions of dollars of taxpayer money for a war that is not in our interests and has no end in sight. No one--no one--in the Trump administration, including the President, has made a credible argument why it is in America's interest to start a war against Iran. They haven't because there isn't.

Donald Trump and his administration have spent the last 48 hours telling different reporters and news agencies a whole host of different objectives and a whole set of different timelines. One claim that has been thoroughly debunked was that Iran was going to strike America first. That is a lie. It is a proven lie.

So now, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is spinning another version of this. He said we had to strike Iran first because Israel launched an attack on Iran. And here is his twisted logic. Israel was going to strike Iran, and, of course, we knew nothing about that, but we knew that if Israel struck Iran, that Iran would strike us, so we had to strike Iran first.

The deception is deep, and it is sickening. This administration lied to the American people during the campaign before they were in office, and they are lying now.

Another objective that has been cited was to end Iran's nuclear weapons capability. But we know that Iran does not have a nuclear weapons capability. That is also a lie. And, of course, we know that President Trump told the country that American and Israeli strikes last year had completely obliterated the Iranian nuclear weapons program. Remember that? And, of course, this is the President who in his first term, ripped up the agreement between the United States and Iran to prevent Iran from attaining nuclear weapons.

We also know from the Omani intermediaries, including the Foreign Ministry of Oman, that Iran was willing to

put much tighter restraints on any future possible nuclear enrichment programs. But apparently, the Trump administration had already decided to go to war.

Another reason we heard from members of the administration--they are constantly shifting rationales--has been Iran's ballistic missile program. But Iran has zero missiles that can reach the United States. Not even close. None.

So in yet another interview, Donald Trump said the aim is ``freedom for the Iranian people.'' In other words, regime change--regime change--the regime change he promised he would never undertake if he became President.

Colleagues, we all know, every one of us, that the Iranian Government is a terrible regime, brutal to its own people, dangerous to the region. But we also learned from history that bombs don't turn dictatorships into democracies. And already, the Israeli and American strikes on Iran have produced mass civilian casualties. We have already seen reports of hospitals being bombed. In one strike alone, at least 175 civilians were killed at an elementary school, most of them schoolgirls, which has the hallmarks of a war crime.

These killings should not be a surprise, especially when Secretary Hegseth said this morning that the operation would have ``no stupid rules of engagement.'' That is what the Secretary of Defense said-- anything goes.

This is not a way to bring solidarity and support from the Iranian people. When we and the Israelis take out a country's leadership, we have no idea what will emerge next. In fact, back in 1953, the United States and the United Kingdom backed a coup against a democratically elected leader in Iran that enabled the Shah of Iran to consolidate power in the country. Some people thought that served American interests at the time. Instead, it became one of the primary drivers of the Iranian Revolution of 1979 and the creation of the Islamic Republic and its ideology.

So beware what you ask for. Indeed, according to public reports, the CIA assessed that the most likely scenario if the Supreme Leader were killed was that more radical elements of the IRGC would take power in Iran.

This does not advance America's interests in the region or the world. It will not make us safer. It will make the world less safe for America.

And is it now the policy of the United States to go to war against every regime we hate? Colleagues, that is going to cost a lot of American lives and treasure. And that is presumably why Trump and Vance had previously been opposed to regime change and wars of choice.

So beware what we ask for when we open up Pandora's box. Have we not learned the lessons of Iraq? The Iraq war cost the lives of 8,000 American soldiers and contractors. It cost trillions of dollars in taxpayer money. The war upended the region, killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi civilians, and helped spawn ISIS. It was the worst U.S. foreign policy blunder in a generation.

The big winner from the war in Iraq? Iran. Iran was the big winner.

So now Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu says this war against Iran is something he has ``yearned to do for 40 years.'' Well, he got the war he wanted from Donald Trump. But there is a reason past Presidents have not started wars against Iran, and that is because they have refused to risk American lives and open Pandora's box for a regime change war when they had no idea how it would end.

This war is rapidly turning into a conflict that we feared--a widespread, escalatory regional war with no end in sight. Iran has retaliated to U.S. and Israeli attacks by attacking U.S. assets and bases in every Arab country in the Persian Gulf, as well as targets in Israel, resulting in a further loss of lives. This includes drones and missile strikes on civilian infrastructure throughout the region. And just last night, Hezbollah joined the fray, launching missiles into Israel, prompting airstrikes from Israel into Beirut and across Lebanon.

This is not ``America First,'' and we have no idea where it is going. What we do know is that the Framers of our Constitution never envisioned this to be allowed under our system of government. It is why the Framers, in our Constitution, gave Congress the power to declare war. They didn't want to give that power to one person. They didn't want to give that power to somebody like Donald Trump, who has said publicly that the only thing constraining his power is ``my own morality, my own mind.'' That is what Donald Trump has said.

Colleagues in the Senate, you must understand that that is not what the Constitution requires. The Constitution requires Congress to act to declare war. So it is more important than ever that Congress stand up for the Constitution and that Congress insist that the President cannot continue these hostilities without approval from Congress. He shouldn't have started them without the approval of Congress.

So the resolution before us asks a simple question: Do you support the Constitution of the United States and the role it gives to the U.S. Congress--that role to declare war?

Do you believe that we, the people's elected representatives in the House and Senate, should have a voice in whether American lives--and specifically the lives of the members of our Nation's Armed Forces--are put at grave risk?

Do you believe that this regime change war of choice that Donald Trump promised he would never launch serves American interests or makes our Nation safer?

The American people do not want this war, and the Constitution entrusts the power to declare war with the U.S. Congress. Let's not surrender that responsibility.

I urge my colleagues to support the War Powers Resolution and vote yes.

I yield the floor.