Floor Statements

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.

Mr. President, today, I am cosponsoring the American Homeownership Act. When Wall Street buys up homes in communities across the country, we have all too often seen families get squeezed by higher costs and abusive landlords. This bill is an important step toward making a home more affordable and accessible. It would limit tax breaks for private equity firms and big corporations that acquire housing, expand investments in affordable housing programs, and crack down on companies that take control of the housing supply in a community.

As we work to tackle Wall Street's role in our housing market, it is critical that we support efforts to rehabilitate existing housing stock and revitalize neighborhoods with new investment. I appreciate Senator Warren's thoughtful consideration of these issues, and I will work with my colleagues to ensure they are effectively addressed in this legislation.

Mr. President, today, I am cosponsoring the American Homeownership Act. When Wall Street buys up homes in communities across the country, we have all too often seen families get squeezed by higher costs and abusive landlords. This bill is an important step toward making a home more affordable and accessible. It would limit tax breaks for private equity firms and big corporations that acquire housing, expand investments in affordable housing programs, and crack down on companies that take control of the housing supply in a community.

As we work to tackle Wall Street's role in our housing market, it is critical that we support efforts to rehabilitate existing housing stock and revitalize neighborhoods with new investment. I appreciate Senator Warren's thoughtful consideration of these issues, and I will work with my colleagues to ensure they are effectively addressed in this legislation.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak 10 minutes beyond my original time.

Mr. President, so this is a really embarrassing moment for the U.S. Senate. It is a gross, gratuitous assault on the people of the District of Columbia, the people who live in our Nation's Capital.

And also, as I listen to the rhetoric around this, it is actually one of the most dishonest arguments I have heard in the U.S. Senate for a long time. That is saying a lot.

I also want to make clear from the outset that at a time when Americans in every State in the Union are feeling squeezed by costs and rising prices, this doesn't do a thing for any of the constituents of any Senator in this U.S. Senate--not a thing.

And it doesn't do a damn thing for the Federal budget. What it does is pretend to say that you are protecting the people of the District of Columbia because you are assuring that they will get the benefit of the President Trump so-called Big Beautiful Bill.

So with everything happening in this country, what we are doing here or what is being attempted here is to micromanage the government of the District of Columbia. This has nothing to do with Federal taxes-- nothing.

The people of the District of Columbia are going to get the same Federal income tax form as people in every part of the country. I have the form right here that the people of the District of Columbia will fill out. It is a 1040. It has also got the additional deductions.

It has all the deductions that are in the so-called Big Beautiful Bill. They have got no tax on tips, no tax on overtime. The list goes on--qualified passenger vehicle loan interest deduction. So people who live in the District of Columbia will get this Federal tax form for their Federal taxes.

We can't change the Federal Tax Code for the people of the District of Columbia. They are going to do exactly what everybody else in the United States is doing.

And yet there are some who are pretending that somehow this is an effort to ensure that the people of the District of Columbia get the benefits of the changes to the Federal Tax Code. They are going to get whatever benefits people think are available under the Federal Tax Code.

The author of this resolution, who is on the Senate floor, has said:

. . . the D.C. Council's recent move that prevents federal

tax laws under President Trump's Working Families Tax Cuts

from going into effect for district residents.

That is not true. District residents are going to get the same Federal tax form as the constituents of every Senator in this body. Congressman Gill, one of the supporters of this resolution in the House says:

The DC Council's actions would block DC residents . . .

from receiving these Federal tax credits . . . and from

keeping their hard-earned money in their wallets.

Not true. Not true. They pay the same Federal income taxes and have the same Federal tax deductions as every other person in the country.

House Speaker Johnson said:

If this act were to become local law, D.C. residents would

be prevented from claiming no tax on tips, no tax on

overtime, the increased standard deduction, and so much more.

Not true. They are going to fill out the same Federal tax form as everybody else in the United States of America. So this is an example of complete false and deceptive advertising. What it is attempting to do, in reality, is not deny the District of Columbia benefits under the Federal Tax Code as they fill out their Federal tax forms, it is to prevent the people from the District of Columbia, when it comes to their local tax code, from having the autonomy that all of our jurisdictions have.

That is what it does. And the people of the District of Columbia, through their elected representatives, chose, with respect to their local tax law, to make some different decisions than under the Federal Tax Code. So, for example, they restored the District of Columbia's local child tax credit, and they increased the District of Columbia's existing earned income tax credit. In fact, they adopted 84 of the provisions that were passed through from the Federal cut. Just 13 of the 84 provisions were changed as a matter of local DC law.

So, for example, they decided that they could not afford to immediately

implement the ability of companies to fully expense their R&D costs. They concluded, they did an analysis that if you adopted that Federal provision and you put that also in your DC tax code, that the people of the District of Columbia--the District of Columbia would lose $170 million.

As I said, they did choose to enhance their child tax credit, and so if you actually vote for this resolution on the floor of the Senate, you are going to increase taxes on 78,000 children. Families that represent 78,000 children in the District of Columbia are going to see their taxes go up if you pass this Republican resolution.

And, in fact, by increasing the child tax credit and taking measures on the earned income tax credit as a matter of local DC tax law, they are reducing poverty in the United States by 20 percent. So if you actually vote to overturn that, you are going to increase poverty in our Nation's Capital by 20 percent. It is insane what they are proposing.

So like many States, and I am going to point out some of the other States that decouple from the Federal Tax Code when it comes to their State or local taxes--like many States what the District of Columbia wanted to do was to at least temporarily decouple so that they could examine what impact the Federal tax law changes would have if they incorporated them directly into their local tax system. And they are not alone in doing that.

In fact, at least 13 States, represented by U.S. Senators in this body, have decoupled from some of the Republicans' reconciliation bill, tax bill. Those include the States of Alabama, Michigan, Illinois, and Virginia. And additionally, there are about 20 States, including Kentucky, Ohio, and Wisconsin, that do not automatically adopt changes to the Federal Tax Code as part of their State tax code. My State of Maryland doesn't automatically do it. Indiana doesn't do it.

In fact, if you look through the various States, you will find that many do not do it. Let's look at Alabama. It is under Republican control right now. They voted to actively decouple their State tax provisions from the Federal tax provisions. I don't see any Senator here on the floor trying to undo the State of Alabama's tax code.

Let's look at Kentucky law, and I am reading directly out of their statute.

FEDERAL TAX LAW CHANGES--Recent federal income tax changes

were enacted after Kentucky's conformity date set forth in

Mr. President, we are considering an appropriations package on the floor this week, and there has rightfully been a lot of focus on the section of the bill that funds the Department of Homeland Security, a section that I and my Democratic colleagues continue to insist should be considered separately, as it was in the House, to secure essential reforms to end the Department's abuses, stop the killings, protect people's rights, and ensure real accountability. Any additional funding for this unconstrained, lawless operation at DHS is unacceptable as we witness executions of civilians in our streets, unaccountable and warrantless raids, and in my home State of Maryland, inhumane conditions at the Baltimore Holding Center even as ICE moves to set up a warehouse with the capacity to process and detain 1,500 persons. I said I would not support one more dime for Trump's lawless ICE operation, and I meant it--not even for 1 more day.

But I also want to take a moment to speak to the rest of that funding package, which includes the work of five other Appropriations subcommittees: Defense, State and Foreign Operations, Transportation and Housing, Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education, and Financial Services and General Government.

I appreciate the work of the Democratic ranking members of these subcommittees and Vice Chair Murray, who secured some important provisions in the bill to reassert the congressional power of the purse with specific spending directives in legislative text. For example, the Labor, Health and Human Services, and Education bill rejects the administration's effort to eliminate the Department of Education and cut Pell grants.

It also rejects the Trump proposal to cut NIH nearly in half and instead increases funding; and it successfully overrides the OMB directive that NIH fund more lump sum multi-year grants, which would otherwise result in fewer overall grants and less research activity. NIH, which is located in my home State of Maryland, is one of our greatest American success stories, where some of our brightest minds pursue treatments and cures to diseases that impact virtually every American family. This administration has spent the last year attacking the critical work of NIH, canceling grants and clinical trials and short-circuiting lifesaving research. I am glad this bill roundly rejects that and requires the administration to change course. At the same time, I am very disappointed that the bill does not reverse the rescission cut to public broadcasting, which provides critical services to Americans across the country, particularly in rural communities.

Indeed, while these bills make important investments and include some critical safeguards, I have serious concerns that they do not go far enough to protect the power of the purse and the Federal employees who carry out the programs we fund, particularly as the administration continues its efforts to strip away the protections that safeguard our nonpartisan civil service and hollow out Agencies. Without enhanced guardrails in this package, the administration will continue to wreak havoc on the ability of our dedicated, merit-based civil servants to provide critical services to the American people.

I also have deep concerns about the State foreign operations bill, now called the national security package. I know and appreciate the work of Vice Chair Murray and Ranking Member Schatz to preserve the legacy of U.S. foreign assistance in this bill after Elon Musk, Russell Vought, and their DOGE cronies took a chainsaw to USAID and the State Department.

The bill includes some new guardrails to prevent deeper cuts going forward, but it still reflects a $9 billion cut from FY25 levels. The largest share of those cuts comes from humanitarian assistance and development assistance.

Foreign aid is not a giveaway; it is an investment in the world we all live in. When your neighbor's house is on fire, it is foolish to wait until the flames reach your own home. Conflicts, pandemics, and humanitarian collapse do not respect borders. Preventing wars from starting and stopping new diseases before they reach American shores costs far less than fighting those threats once they arrive here.

For less than 1 percent of the Federal budget, we can help save the lives of the world's most vulnerable children.

Cutting that support is not fiscally responsible; it is morally indefensible. A Lancet study estimated that Trump's foreign aid cuts will cost 14 million lives by 2030, including over 4.5 million kids. Thousands of children are already dying.

The bill also codifies an $850 million ``America First Opportunity Fund'' for an administration that has proven itself to be a reckless and unlawful custodian of Federal funding. This risks becoming a political slush fund, untethered from evidence-based programs and longstanding safeguards that ensure taxpayer dollars are used to advance genuine U.S. interests, not pet projects and foreign ventures that serve the interests of the Trump family, Trump campaign contributors, and his billionaire buddies at the expense of America's national security interests.

The bill imposes a new cap on how much foreign assistance can be transferred to the Department of Homeland Security--an important check--but it still allows hundreds of millions of dollars to be transferred to an already bloated DHS for immigration enforcement. That is unacceptable.

I also object to the bill's $3.3 billion in foreign military financing to the Government of Israel with no conditions or guardrails. The Netanyahu government has spent years openly flouting international law and disregarding U.S. interests, advice, and warnings, including concerns ranging from blocking humanitarian assistance and ethnic cleansing in Gaza to continued settler violence and mushrooming illegal settlements in the West Bank.

I made clear on October 7, 2023, the day the heinous Hamas attack brutally killed over 1,200 people and seized over 200 hostages, that Israel had a right--indeed a duty--to go after Hamas. But the Netanyahu government's response went way beyond targeting Hamas to imposing collective punishment on all the people of Gaza.

In Gaza, entire neighborhoods have been systematically destroyed. Throughout the war, more than 1.9 million Palestinians have been forcibly displaced, many of them multiple times, through military orders, bombardment, and the deliberate rendering of civilian areas unlivable. All of this has occurred with U.S.-funded weapons and equipment.

In the West Bank, 240 Palestinians, including 55 children, were killed by Israeli forces or settlers in 2025, according to OCHA. Even the IDF found that Israeli settler violence in the West Bank rose by about 25 percent in 2025. This violence happened with virtual impunity and in many cases with the complicity of Israeli forces in the area. Along with settler violence, Israeli settlement expansion continues to rise, with a record number of 9,629 settlement housing units being approved by the Israeli Government in 2025, more than the previous 6 years combined. This includes approval for construction in the area known as E1, east of Jerusalem. Construction in E1 would effectively bisect the West Bank, preventing the development of a contiguous Palestinian state and sounding the death knell of the already diminishing prospects for a two-state solution. The Netanyahu government also retroactively legalized eight illegal outposts, half of which are located deep within the West Bank.

We should be using every tool at our disposal to ensure that the Netanyahu government complies with President Trump's stated objective of a ``credible pathway to Palestinian self-determination and statehood'' and end its slow-motion annexation of the West Bank, destruction of neighborhoods in Gaza, and displacement of the Palestinian people.

Conditions on foreign military financing and other types of assistance are not unusual; in fact, they are the norm. Other U.S. partners--including longstanding recipients like Egypt, Lebanon, Pakistan, El Salvador, Colombia, and Mexico--have had their assistance routinely tied to human rights, accountability, or other statutory benchmarks. Yet this bill provides the Netanyahu government with a blank check and no meaningful guardrails. That double standard weakens U.S. credibility and undermines our commitment to our core values.

I appreciate that the Defense title in this bill funds a pay raise for our servicemembers and makes investments to support military families and critical work at Maryland's military bases. But I am deeply disturbed by the way Trump has misused and wrongfully deployed our military, from our Active-Duty forces to our National Guard.

The Trump administration's abduction of dictator Nicolas Maduro wasn't a ``law enforcement operation'' or an effort to stop drug trafficking. It was about oil, seizing and controlling Venezuela's oil for the benefit of Trump's billionaire buddies. It is simply wrong to risk the lives of brave American soldiers to profit the Trump campaign's political contributors.

And Trump has deployed the National Guard to DC, Los Angeles, Memphis, and Chicago, manufacturing claims of emergency and chaos to use the Guard in domestic law enforcement and his mass deportation agenda rather than using Justice Department resources to work with local partners and keep communities safe. And as State and local leaders and courts have stood in the way of these deployments, Trump has threatened to invoke the Insurrection Act to bypass them and the restrictions of the Posse Comitatus Act.

Taken together, these abuses of power show an authoritarian administration using the military for its own ends, not for U.S. national security. These concerns only reinforce my existing reservations about the continued uncontrolled growth in defense spending, especially when the Pentagon continues to fail independent audits for 8 consecutive years.

Finally, I want to underscore a point regarding the financial services and general government portion of this bill, which funds the General Services Administration. GSA, together with the FBI, is responsible for the FBI headquarters project. This bill provides no additional funding for that project, but GSA has funding available from prior year appropriations. There are still significant outstanding questions about this project and a security assessment and construction plan is underway and must be delivered to Congress as directed in the CJS Appropriations bill. From the start of this project, Congress has expected that the building would meet Level 5 ISC security requirements to safeguard the FBI mission, and GSA has shared its expectation that this project will meet that standard, though the security assessment is not yet complete. In order to ensure adequate congressional oversight and use taxpayer resources responsibly, GSA should also pause activities until the plan is finished and Congress has reviewed it.

As a member of the Appropriations Committee, I recognize the challenges in negotiating these bills given the radical demands of the administration and the complicity of too many of my Republican colleagues in the House and Senate. I appreciate the hard-won investments and safeguards in these bills and the rejection of dozens of partisan House policy riders. That said, for the reasons I have outlined and because I believe more can be done to rein in this administration's authoritarian impulses, I oppose this package.

Mr. President, on Saturday, the Nation learned the name of Alex Pretti. Alex was an ICU nurse at the Veterans' Administration, fulfilling our Nation's sacred promise to care for our wounded warriors. Many have probably seen the video of him paying final respects and honors to one of our fallen veterans.

Alex was also a neighbor who cared deeply about his community, and because of those values, Alex was an observer, recording and bearing witness to the actions of ICE and Customs and Border Patrol as they descended upon his hometown, stopping and detaining individuals without judicial warrants.

We all saw video of Alex's final moments, when he stopped to help a fellow observer, a woman who had been pushed by Federal agents, before those agents sprayed him with chemicals, disarmed him of the gun he legally carried, and shot him in the back, firing 10 shots in less than 5 seconds. We all saw this on video--in fact, multiple videos from multiple angles from other civilians on the street that day bearing witness.

But this administration--the Trump administration--immediately lied to us. And when I say ``us,'' I mean the American people. They called Alex a ``domestic terrorist.'' They called him a ``would-be assassin.''

This administration must think the American people are really stupid, telling them not to believe their own eyes. This was the killing of an American citizen exercising his constitutional rights, and you would think that that by itself would spur a reckoning with the actions of the Department of Homeland Security.

But this isn't one isolated event. This isn't even the only killing committed by DHS agents in Minnesota this year. On January 7, a Minneapolis mom, Renee Good, was shot and killed as she attempted to drive away from immigration agents who aggressively approached her, contrary to DHS's use-of-force policy, and, ultimately, killed her, and then prevented her from receiving immediate medical assistance.

They lied about her case, as well, accusing her also of ``domestic terrorism,'' despite the evidence that people across this land could see with their own eyes.

This is not a case of just a few untrained bad apples. It is the result of an out-of-control Federal Agency that has directed its agents to act with impunity, to detain and deport scores of people who pose no risk to our communities in so many cases and have no criminal records, including small business owners, pastors, parents taking their kids to school, neighbors walking their dogs, children.

This is an intentional policy coming out of the White House--from Donald Trump to Stephen Miller, to the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem. JD Vance, the Vice President, said the agent who shot Renee Good was ``protected by absolute immunity.'' That is what the Vice President of the United States said. He should know better.

And they have deliberately cut funding for offices at DHS that monitor the conduct of immigration officers to protect civil rights and civil liberties. They are giving agents a license to kill with impunity.

Secretary Noem should be fired immediately--if not fired, impeached.

Stephen Miller has now tried to point the finger at others, when he has been the ringleader in the White House.

He should be fired.

DHS operates at the direction of the White House and the President with orders to meet arbitrary quotas, to detain and deport not just the worst of the worst but anybody. They conduct masked raids in unmarked vehicles and refuse to show identification. They arrest people without warrants, use force to enter homes, and lock people up without due process. They sweep up citizens, legal immigrants, and immigrants without deportation orders.

And when they are confronted with their abuses, they lie. They tell us not to believe what we see with our own eyes.

I want to salute the people in Minneapolis and across the country, including in Maryland, who are taking videos and working to hold these Federal forces accountable. Think about what would have happened if there was no video in these cases. These videos have complicated the Trump administration's effort at a coverup, even as the Trump administration refuses to work with State and local law enforcement to investigate these killings.

In my State of Maryland, DHS lied about the circumstances surrounding a nonfatal shooting, and they were exposed in their lies because of a local county investigation that showed that DHS was plain wrong.

DHS has restricted access to detention centers, preventing congressional oversight into inhuman conditions, where we know at least 30 people have died in custody, including one death in Texas that has been ruled a homicide.

And as they view the actions of peaceful protestors and observers as a personal offense, they have reacted with violence and labeled them domestic terrorists for practicing their constitutional freedoms and rights.

In Minnesota, these Federal agents hurled chemical irritants at peaceful crowds who are simply exercising their First Amendment rights to freedom of assembly and peaceful protest. They view whistles as weapons. In Portland, they claimed to be threatened by people wearing frog costumes.

My colleagues, Republicans in Congress, have fueled this surge in illegal activity by exploding the DHS budget with $165 billion as part of what Donald Trump called the Big Beautiful Bill. Remember, that is the bill where the richest people in the country were given permanent tax cuts. That is the bill that made deep cuts in healthcare for tens of millions of Americans. And in that bill was also this huge slush fund for DHS.

ICE, by itself, is now the Nation's highest funded law enforcement Agency and has more funding than the militaries of most countries in the world--including Italy, Israel, and Brazil. ICE, by itself, has more funds than the armies of those countries, and now they are spending those funds to hire more agents and are putting more of them out on the streets with limited training.

They are preparing to turn warehouses into so-called processing sites and detention centers, including one in my home State of Maryland, doing it against the will of the community. We see DHS spitting in the face of local communities across the country.

In Maryland, we had a rally with hundreds of people on a very cold day, sending a message to ICE and to the Trump administration that the people in that community did not want a warehouse for detainees right there. Within days of that demonstration, the Trump administration-- ICE--signed a deal for $100 million of our taxpayer money to purchase a warehouse where they say they can keep up to 1,500 detainees.

I can tell you Maryland taxpayers don't want their money going to that purpose, and I will bet you the great majority of taxpayers around this country don't want to see their tax dollars used in that way as well.

And now, despite the fact that they are already clearly misusing these taxpayer dollars, as American citizens are killed on the streets, our fellow Republicans, our Republicans in the Senate, want to give them even more in the bill that would be up on this floor this week--in fact, another $10 billion more for ICE and over $18 billion more for Customs and Border Patrol, while refusing to rein in these abuses-- another blank check for lawless activity, another blank check that results in the killing of Americans, another blank check with no accountability.

That would be madness. We cannot green-light the actions of an Agency that is already terrorizing our communities and executing our neighbors with billions of dollars in new funds without any regard to their constitutional rights.

Again, President Trump said he was going to go after ``the worst of the worst.'' That has not been their focus, and we can see it with our own eyes.

And we cannot accept the administration's claim that these agents have some kind of absolute immunity and are free from the consequences of their actions. That is why an independent investigation into the killings of Renee

Good and Alex Pretti have to happen, and I appreciate my colleagues from the other side of the aisle who have called for one. But that should be a standard situation. That should be the standard operating procedure in a situation like this. State and local law enforcement should, of course, be partners in that effort. The Feds should not be trying to hide evidence from those local and State law enforcement officers.

We must do that, but it is not enough to take the word of the Trump administration that they will do that. We can't simply trust an administration that has repeatedly lied to the American people, as if, this time, they will try to do better.

And, again, we wouldn't be here, probably, but for that video. The administration would have thought that it got away with its lies.

So let's not be naive. We are not going to give away our responsibility as legislators to put real reforms right into the DHS bill to prevent this lawlessness, to prevent these killings, to protect our freedoms, and to assure real accountability.

Our most important job is protecting the life and liberty of the American people. It is sadly too late to protect Alex Pretti and too late to protect Renee Good, as they should have been protected, but it is not too late to act on behalf of the rest of the American people.

So, this week, we have before us a package of appropriation bills that includes the work of six appropriations subcommittees--including Defense; Transportations and Housing; Labor, Health and Human Services; Foreign Operations; and Financial Services. These are not perfect bills, and I have serious concerns with some of them that I would like to see addressed. But it is also clear that there is enough support in this body to pass them. We could pass them today if they were separated out.

In fact, when those bills went through the House of Representatives, they considered the Department of Homeland Security bill on its own merits. They didn't bundle it in with everything else and say: You know, you have got to vote for this whole package at one time.

So the House, after they passed it individually, they pulled all those bills together and sent them in a bundle over here to the U.S. Senate. But, my goodness, that doesn't mean the U.S. Senate has to take it that way from the House. This is supposed to be an independent branch of the Congress. I don't know why we would surrender our responsibilities to the House of Representatives. And they should get right back into Washington if we change this bill and pass it to prevent a shutdown of those Agencies. That is their responsibility.

The House needs to perform its duties, and we need to perform ours. And ours involve making sure that we separate out those five appropriation bills that I mentioned from the Homeland Security appropriations bill. In fact, I would argue that we should also take-- as part of the package of five bills, we should take FEMA and TSA and the Coast Guard, which are part of the DHS bill, and we could send all of those back to the House for immediate passage to go on to the President.

But, instead, Republican colleagues here are wasting time. We could take up that package today, if there was the will to do it among my Republican colleagues. But, right now, instead, we are holding all of those other Agencies--the Defense Department, Health and Human Services--hostage to holding onto the Department of Homeland Security bill that needs to be changed dramatically.

I don't think that a single person in this body would argue against deporting those who have committed serious crimes--``the worst of the worst''--but that is not what this administration has been focused on. Nothing about this has been targeted. And Trump's ICE has not focused, as they promised, on ``the worst of the worst.'' They are stopping and arresting people who are citizens, who are legal residents, who have legal pending asylum claims, just because of how they look or their accent. And they are wreaking havoc on communities across the country, including on peaceful protestors, two of whom have now given their lives to protect our freedoms.

And do you know what? They are not just using their own agents as part of this indiscriminate dragnet. They are bringing in other Agencies as well, distracting them and redirecting them from critical missions. Senator Warner released data that showed nearly half of the FBI agents in its largest field offices have been redirected to immigration, away from fighting drug trafficking, terrorism, and violent crime.

It is time for us in the Senate to do our job. This isn't going to go away with the couple hours of extra training, personnel reassignments, or administration statements. Let's make this a moment for real change and not give DHS another huge blank check.

I, for one, will not vote for one more dime for this lawless DHS operation that we are witnessing at this time.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise today to honor Vice Admiral Nancy Hann on the occasion of her retirement. VADM Hann is retiring after more than 30 years of extraordinary service with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, NOAA.

After graduating from the University of California San Diego in 1996 with a bachelor's degree in marine science and biology, VADM Hann started her career with NOAA as a fisheries observer. Over time, she expanded her expertise and was later commissioned as an officer in the NOAA Officer Corps, where she served in a variety of capacities. VADM Hann's versatility and dedication to her profession have made her an incomparable asset to NOAA and to the Nation. She later went on to earn a master's in space studies and remote sensing at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and a master of public administration at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Most notably, VADM Hann has served in many operational and top management assignments including her positions as NOAA's Acting Administrator, deputy director of the NOAA Corps and the Office of Marine and Aviation Operations, OMAO, commanding officer of the NOAA Aircraft Operations Center, and NOAA liaison to the U.S. Pacific Command. Most recently, VADM Hann completed a tour as the director of the NOAA Commissioned Officer Corps and is currently the highest- ranking officer in the NOAA Corps.

VADM Hann is a trailblazer in her field. She was she one of the first female officers to qualify as an aircraft commander and the first woman to achieve the rank of vice admiral in the NOAA Corps, as well as one of NOAA's first uncrewed systems operators. She has consistently led by example through her experience, her achievements, and her demonstrated commitment to equitable workspaces. VADM Hann's leadership has left an enduring legacy of professionalism, mentorship, and innovation that will inspire generations to come.

Upon retiring, VADM Hann is closing out an illustrious, awe-inspiring career, one spent in service to research, coastal and marine stewardship, and our Nation. She has dedicated the entirety of her career to principled leadership and environmental conservation, and I thank her for her commitment. I invite my colleagues to join me in thanking VADM Hann for her lifetime of service and to congratulate her on her well-deserved retirement.

Mr. President, today we consider S. 3627.

This legislation would limit the information students receive about their healthcare and family planning options. No one disagrees that pregnant and parenting students should have access to care and necessary accommodations.

But this legislation explicitly and intentionally excludes information on the entire range of healthcare available to students, including contraception and abortion care. Students should have access to information regarding all comprehensive healthcare choices, including pregnancy and postpartum care, contraception, and abortion care, so they can make their own decisions.

This bill does not create any new rights or supports that students do not already have; it simply limits what information would be available to them. Instead of focusing on limiting healthcare options for the American people, Republicans should focus on providing real supports for families, like comprehensive maternity and postpartum care and access to affordable childcare.

Mr. President, I rise as the ranking member of the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee--known around here as CJS--to discuss the funding for critical national programs provided to those Agencies for fiscal year 2026.

This is one of the appropriations bills that is before the Senate right now.

I want to thank Senator Moran, the chairman and my partner on the CJS Subcommittee, and his staff Brian Daner, Kevin Wheeler, and Rachel Taylor, for working closely with me and my team to produce this important final bill for consideration of the Senate. I want to thank House CJS chairman Hal Rogers and ranking member Grace Meng and their staffs as well.

This bill is the result of many long days and nights of tough negotiations over the holidays, including a very productive call among the four of us on New Year's Eve to broker a final deal on the bill's remaining and outstanding items.

This bill has already overwhelmingly passed the House of Representatives. The CJS appropriations agreement meets the allocation that was given to our subcommittee of $78 billion in discretionary spending. It rejects the very deep and reckless cuts proposed in the President's budget. At the same time, it is not much higher than the 2025 continuing resolution--so basically flat funding even as needs have grown in these important programs.

We had to make tough decisions when it came to what programs to cut and what to protect. Senator Moran and I were able to work together with our House colleagues in a bipartisan way to do our best to make those decisions.

I must say this is not the bill I would have written if I were doing it on my own, but it is the result of negotiations. Republicans currently control every branch of government--majorities in the House and Senate and, of course, control of the White House. But this bill, while not what I would have written alone, will ensure that Congress-- and not Donald Trump or Russ Vought--decides how taxpayer dollars get spent for the Agencies covered in this bill.

So I am happy to report to my colleagues that the CJS conference bill before us is a strong bipartisan one that rejects the very devastating, misguided funding cuts and program eliminations that had been advanced and suggested by President Trump, and it rejects dozens and dozens of extreme poison pill riders that had been proposed by our House Republican colleagues.

It makes smart and targeted investments in a wide range of critical initiatives that affect the lives of all of our fellow Americans. It prioritizes keeping our communities safe. It advances American leadership in science and innovation. It boosts economic opportunities around the country, including through the Manufacturing Extension Partnership Program. It funds vital initiatives at Federal Agencies in my home State of Maryland, from scientific research at NASA Goddard, to operations at NOAA and NIST, to preparations for the next census.

Through the Department of Commerce, we maintain the current generation of NOAA weather and climate satellites, and we invest in next-generation satellites that will track severe weather. We also promote American businesses and exports through Department of Commerce efforts. We also help Agencies like NIST that are creating cybersecurity and AI standards for the future. Through NOAA, we are also enabling sustainable management of ocean resources that are so vital to our fisheries and to commerce throughout our country.

To promote American innovation and scientific discovery, the bill provides $8.75 billion for the National Science Foundation, sparing it from the 57-percent cut sought by President Trump.

Colleagues, we cannot expect to maintain our cutting edge in science and discovery and stay ahead of our competitors if we are not making the vital investments in research through the National Science Foundation.

The bill funds NASA at $24.4 billion to explore the solar system, to advance our understanding of climate change, to promote innovation and sustainability in aeronautics, and to protect our planet. This is another area where we rejected very deep cuts proposed by the Trump administration, including the 47-percent cut they had proposed to NASA's Science budget.

Colleagues, we won't have a space program if we don't understand what is happening in space and get to the fundamentals of science in space. You cannot have one without the other. So we reject those cuts.

The President's budget would have wrecked the exciting work being done right now at Maryland's Goddard Space Flight Center, where they are completing what is known as the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. It is on time--in fact, ahead of schedule--and, right now, under budget, and is expected to launch later this year to investigate dark energy and the formation of galaxies and stars--all things that will add to the body of human knowledge and help the United States remain a leader when it comes to space discovery exploration.

The next step will be the development of the Habitable Worlds Observatory that can answer the fundamental question of whether we are alone in the universe.

That is another exciting project where America will take the lead, but only if we provide the resources to get it done, and that is another important program led by NASA Goddard.

I also included language directing NASA to preserve all the technical and scientific world-class capabilities at Goddard during any consolidation of the campus and calling for a National Academy of Sciences study to make sure that NASA Goddard is set up for long-term success. It is a national treasure, and we need to preserve it.

Reform, yes, but let's make sure we reform it in a way that can allow it to continue to be a leader when it comes to space science, Earth science, and the American enterprise.

Funding in this bill will also help better protect American communities. It invests in lifesaving grant programs from State, local, and Tribal law enforcement, to advancing criminal justice initiatives, to providing the highest level of funding ever for the Office on Violence Against Women.

In addition to these funding priorities, the bill also includes language I worked on to address the Trump administration's ongoing efforts to set aside and ignore the decades-long site selection process for a new FBI headquarters. The language in this bill requires that prior to spending any reprogrammed construction funds on a new headquarters, the FBI must submit the contracted and completed architectural and engineering plan for any new building, including the security plan, for review by the Appropriations Committee.

I think we would all agree that it is essential that the men and women who work at the FBI have a headquarters that meets the security requirements that have been set out for it over the last 15 years to two decades, which is Level 5 Security. It is the highest level of security and needed given the very sensitive work that the FBI does on behalf of our country.

This language is important to reasserting Congress' oversight role in a large and expensive project and ensuring that the new headquarters meets the mission and security needs of the men and women of the FBI. And I want to thank Senator Moran for working with me on this provision.

As I said earlier, this bill is not perfect. It does, however, include guardrails to safeguard the Congress' powers when it comes to spending the taxpayer dollars, at least within the domain of the Agencies in this particular appropriations bill. And that is one of the very important features of this legislation compared to what we would otherwise see in a straight continuing resolution. In this bill, we make sure that congressional prerogatives are protected, not just in report language, but in the statute itself.

As I said, the bill is not perfect. There are many things that I would have chosen to do differently if I was doing this on my own. I will say one problem with the bill before us is that a provision that had been unanimously adopted in the Senate Appropriations Committee regarding the Epstein files was taken out of this bill. That provision would have required the Department of Justice to retain those records.

It also required them to submit not just the files, but a report that provided information and analysis on various aspects of the Epstein files, from financial questions to links regarding foreign intelligence, anything that the documents reflected. And I will say, at a time when we have seen just a small percentage of those files actually released to the public and to the Congress, we need to do much better, which is why I have filed an amendment to this conference bill to restore the identical language that the Senate Appropriations Committee unanimously adopted.

Despite those shortcomings, I do think if you look at its full scope, that this bill is something that is worthy of bipartisan support. I think it will advance very important national interests, both when it comes to science and discovery, when it comes to law enforcement, and when it comes to other major national priorities.

The funding in this bill and the resources it has provided will, in my view, strengthen our country, especially at a time when we are facing so many challenges around the world from competitors and adversaries, including China and others. We need to make sure that the United States invests in the future of our people and the future of our country. This bill is a positive step in that direction, and I urge my colleagues to adopt it.

If I could, I did want to thank some of the folks on my team. And I want to thank them for all of the work that they did, including Jessica Berry, who is the lead Democratic clerk on the committee, as well as other members of our committee, Lindsay Erickson, TJ Lowdermilk, and Blaise Sheridan. I thanked the Republican staff members, Senator Moran's staff, who worked with us, and I want to thank my own team as well.

And in closing, I also do want to thank the chair and vice chair of the Appropriations Committee--Senator Susan Collins and Senator Patty Murray--for their work in getting us to this point, and, again, I urge adoption of this legislation.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I think the real danger is that over time, this Congress has conceded and delivered its constitutional responsibilities to the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue and President Trump and other executives. It is time for Congress to take seriously its responsibilities, including the constitutional responsibility to decide when to declare war.

Here at home, our fellow Americans are facing higher costs for virtually everything: for groceries, for electricity, childcare, healthcare. The list goes on and on. Folks all over the country are working nonstop just to make ends meet.

So you would think that President Trump would be focused on keeping his campaign promise to bring down prices. He said he was going to do that on day one of his administration, but that is not what he is doing. He is doing the opposite.

He and Republicans right here in the Senate and in Congress are actually driving up costs, including healthcare costs across the country. Members of Congress on the Republican side voted against extending tax credits to help middle-class Americans afford their healthcare. In fact, those tax credits expired at midnight on December 31, and 20 million Americans are seeing their healthcare costs spike.

President Trump is also breaking another promise. He is breaking his promise to keep America from being dragged into costly foreign conflicts. He is not focused on nation building here at home. He is focused on nation building overseas--exactly what he said he did not want to do.

First of all, he bailed out Argentina, and now, he says he is running Venezuela. He says he is in charge of Venezuela. In fact, just this morning, President Trump's Secretary of Energy Chris Wright said the United States would be overseeing the sale of Venezuela's oil production ``indefinitely.''

Here is a Washington Post story: ``U.S. vows to control Venezuela oil sales `indefinitely'''--Energy Secretary says.

That is what this has been about from the beginning, grabbing and controlling Venezuela's oil for the benefit of Trump's billionaire buddies. That is why Wall Street appears to be drooling at the prospect of making more money in Venezuela.

So I think we should start by pointing out the fact that the Trump administration has been engaged in a long campaign of deception and lies to the American people about the reasons for this adventure in Venezuela.

They lied to the American people when they said this was all about stopping the flow of drugs into the United States. We all support that goal. But that is not what this has been about. If this was about stopping the flow of drugs into our country, the Trump administration would not have proposed big budget cuts to the Drug Enforcement Administration. They would not have shuttered the Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force. They shut it down.

President Trump talks about deaths caused by fentanyl in the United States. He is absolutely right about that. What he does not tell the American people is that the fentanyl killing Americans is not originating or even transiting through Venezuela.

And, of course, if President Trump was serious about fighting drugs, he would not, just as he did weeks ago, have pardoned the former Honduran President and notorious drug kingpin Juan Orlando Hernandez.

I should say, even closer to home in December, we learned President Trump also pardoned a Baltimore City drug kingpin whom the DEA called ``one of the largest cocaine and heroin dealers to be arrested by the DEA in recent history.''

That sends a signal to everybody that Donald Trump is willing to pardon people who have been engaged in poisoning our people.

So this has not been about stopping drugs for Donald Trump. And it certainly wasn't about removing an illegitimate leader--and Maduro is an illegitimate leader--but Donald Trump cozies up to dictators all over the world.

Of course, yesterday was the fifth anniversary of Donald Trump's efforts to overturn a free and fair election right here in the United States.

The President himself has made clear that this is all about the oil. When he announced the fact that the United States had seized Maduro, he said: ``We're going to get back our oil'' and ``We need total access . . . access to the oil and to other things in their country,'' meaning other natural resources in Venezuela. He uttered the word ``oil'' 19 times when he announced the seizure of Maduro.

Indeed, while President Trump did not consult or notify Congress about his plans, as is required, he revealed that ``the oil companies were absolutely aware that we were thinking about doing something.''

So colleagues, Donald Trump wants to grab the oil, and he wants to do it to help his billionaire buddies. Case in point is Paul Singer. He is the billionaire head of Elliott Investment Management and a Trump megadonor. He recently acquired Citgo, the U.S.-based subsidiary of Venezuela's state-run oil company in November 2025, just a few months ago. He acquired it for approximately half the company's estimated value.

Now, according to the Wall Street Journal in an article on January 5:

Now Elliott appears poised to reap the rewards of owning

Venezuela's most valuable foreign oil asset. The regime

change could lead to an increase in Venezuelan oil

production, which would likely provide cheap feedstock to

Citgo's Gulf Coast refineries and increase the company's

value, analysts and refining experts said.

So a huge win for one of President Trump's biggest donors.

Now, I think we all need to acknowledge and salute our troops who took part in this operation. They performed magnificently, flawlessly, bravely. I want to thank them on behalf of my fellow Marylanders.

But it is also outrageous that President Trump would put the lives of American service men and women at risk to grab Venezuela's oil to enrich his friends on Wall Street. At least six of our American service men and women were wounded, approximately 80 Venezuelans were killed in this operation, including civilians, not to mention the over 100 people who were on those boats over the last couple of months who had been killed.

And while the Trump administration and congressional Republicans attempt to bask in the euphoria of Maduro's removal, the hangover of running Venezuela is still to come. In fact, it has started.

In recent remarks on Venezuela's future after Maduro's capture, President Trump said:

You know, rebuilding there and regime change, anything you

want to call it, is better than what you have right now.

Can't get any worse.

Well, actually, colleagues, it can, and we have seen it before; two decades in

Afghanistan, years in Iraq stand as a warning: The United States spilled blood and treasure on state-building fantasies that failed, undermined American interests, and left a more fractured and unstable region in their wake.

The United States has no mandate to decide Venezuela's future. That is up to the Venezuelan people, not to be imposed through U.S. military regime change efforts that are really motivated by oil company interests and not to be dictated by threats of occupation.

This time, President Trump has co-opted the U.S. military in service of those goals, benefiting oil companies and his billionaire buddies. And in doing so, he has charted a dangerous playbook that they say they may employ elsewhere.

As we all know, since seizing Maduro, President Trump has threatened further action against Cuba, Colombia, and Greenland. After being asked about an operation in Greenland, which he has threatened several times with invasion since beginning his term, he said--President Trump said:

We need Greenland.

Just yesterday, the White House confirmed in a statement that they are discussing ``a range of options'' to acquire Greenland, not excluding military force.

When asked about a U.S. operation against Colombia, President Trump said:

It sounds good to me.

Look, what we have seen is President Trump resurrecting a policy from a bygone era, one which would be better left in the dustbin of history, the Monroe Doctrine.

That was encapsulated in his recent press conference as well when he said that ``American dominance in the Western Hemisphere will never be questioned again.''

What he means by that is that he will deploy U.S. forces wherever he wants for whatever purpose he wants--and, again, trying to leave Congress out of the equation. You know, you listen to our Republican colleagues here who apparently just want to give the Executive a blank check.

If you look at the National Security Strategy that the Trump administration unveiled a few weeks back, you will see how serious a change their proposal is because it essentially throws overboard the idea that the United States will employ a foreign policy based on values and principles, that we will support a rules-based order, human rights, freedom, and democracy.

However imperfectly we have done that--and we have been far from perfect--that has been one of the guiding lights for U.S. foreign policy. And when you throw that overboard in favor of this new policy, which says we will essentially reassert a dominance in the Western Hemisphere, it is clearly a signal to others around the world--or at least this is the way they will hear it--that they get free rein in their neighborhoods, which explains why President Trump has been so weak when it comes to negotiating with Vladimir Putin over Ukraine.

We can explain it when we understand that when Donald Trump says ``Ukraine is your neighborhood,'' you, Vladimir Putin, get to do what you want in Ukraine. So he invites Vladimir Putin to a summit in Alaska, thinks he is going to sweet talk Putin. As soon as the summit is over, Russia and Putin escalate their attacks against Ukraine.

Maybe in Donald Trump's mind it is like: Well, you know, Ukraine is in your neighborhood, none of my business. That is a very dangerous signal to send.

Of course, President Xi--I mean he is looking at Taiwan 90 miles away and saying: Well, that is in my neighborhood.

So Donald Trump has unleashed this idea that we are going to focus only on the Western Hemisphere--or mostly on the Western Hemisphere-- and that we are essentially going to live by the rule that might is right. When you unleash that idea around the world, other significant powers will listen and it will make the world a lot more dangerous and it will undermine American interests.

So I do want to close where I started, which is instead of engaging in these costly foreign adventures that cost billions of dollars and put American lives at risk, we should be doing what Candidate Trump said he was going to do, which is focus on making sure we improve the lives of American people right here at home.

That is not what the President is doing. That is what we should be doing, and we should start by saying no to this foreign, illegal adventure by supporting Senator Kaine's resolution.

And then we should get about making sure that we work to bring costs down here in the United States, including, after the House passes later this week, legislation to restore those tax credits that help people afford their healthcare. We should take that up in the Senate and get it passed.

Let's focus on helping the American people here at home rather than putting Americans and their lives at risk in costly foreign adventures to get our hands on Venezuela's oil for the benefit of Donald Trump's donors and billionaire buddies.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, every year, Congress considers the National Defense Authorization Act which has critical investments in our national defense, including in Maryland. In my State, tens of thousands of military personnel and civilians work at military installations and in the defense sector, driving innovation and research to advance our defense. The NDAA governs this work and provides essential support to our servicemembers and veterans.

But at this moment, we are at an inflection point in the United States. We are witnessing increasingly authoritarian actions by President Trump and his administration. The President is using tools of government to pressure and silence dissenting voices, terrorize communities, lead our Nation into conflict without congressional authority, and undermine institutions critical to our democracy.

As I noted during Senate consideration of the NDAA a few months ago, the President has played politics with our Nation's military and tried to use them to advance his authoritarian agenda, be it here at home or abroad. He has deployed the National Guard to the District of Columbia, Los Angeles, Memphis, and Chicago and has attempted to deploy the National Guard to Portland. These deployments are a flagrant violation of U.S. law, including the Posse Comitatus Act, as noted in recent court decisions. Not only have these deployments created chaos in American cities and communities, they have also pulled the military away from its mission and expended funds meant to defend our Nation. Senator Warren and I, along with several other colleagues, put out a report that outlines how the Pentagon has diverted at least $2 billion from its core missions to support the President's mass deportation agenda.

The President's decision in DC and others cities to activate the National Guard without the recipient State Governor's or mayor's consent is why I offered an amendment to the Senate version of the NDAA to block the President from deploying the National Guard to a State, or the District of Columbia, if that State's Governor, or the DC Mayor, objects. Unfortunately, the effort failed, and this bill does not prevent the President's efforts to militarize American streets.

And abroad, Trump has resurrected a policy of a bygone era: the Trump version of the Monroe Doctrine, carrying out an illegal airstrike campaign against boats in international waters, which have been flagrant violations of both U.S. and international law, and can only be seen as extrajudicial killings amounting to state-sanctioned murder. Trump has pursued these actions not to stop ``narco-terrorists,'' as the administration claims, but as a pretext to start a regime change war in Venezuela. There is simply no evidence that these vessels posed an imminent threat, nor is there an active armed conflict between the United States and Venezuela. The Constitution gives Congress the power to declare war, making the President's acts flat out illegal. Trump's warmongering with Venezuela, including the recent declaration of a blockade on oil tankers from Venezuela is not about stopping drug traffickers. The real goal is regime change and to grab Venezuelan oil and gas reserves for the President's billionaire friends.

These escalating abuses demonstrate an administration increasingly willing to sidestep the law using military force. They also underscore my broader concern about unchecked increases in defense spending, despite the Pentagon's repeated audit failures, including in November 2024. From FY 2021 to FY 2025, defense authorizations rose from $740 billion to $895 billion, a 21 percent increase, and this bill would raise that to $900.6 billion, approximately $8 billion more than the President's budget request. That excludes the July 2025 reconciliation bill, which added over $150 billion in mandatory spending. We need to more carefully examine how our defense spending increases year after year, seemingly without fail, and demand the same accountability from the Department of Defense as from every other Agency.

In addition to these concerns, embedded within this legislation is a provision that walks back a key National Transportation Safety Board recommendation implemented in the wake of the deadly air collision between a commercial airplane and a U.S. Army helicopter near Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, DCA, specifically that military aircraft in the area broadcast their location to other aircraft using the most effective collision avoidance technology available. It also allows the military to waive their own requirements for usage of any collision avoidance technology in the DCA area. The inclusion of these provisions is unconscionable when families are still grieving, and the airspace congestion has not improved.

I also remain concerned by the Trump administration's actions to weaken the merit-based civil service across the Federal Government, including at the Department of Defense. One such action was a recently issued executive order that misuses national security exemptions, expanding them to cover two-thirds of the Federal workforce, including many civilian employees at DOD who have long been protected by collective bargaining. For decades, collective bargaining agreements at DOD have enhanced transparency and allowed employees to perform their work free from political interference. The Trump administration's move to limit these protections undermines employee trust and could harm the DOD's ability to maintain a skilled workforce. The bill before us strips out a House-passed bipartisan amendment to restore collective bargaining rights of DOD employees.

I appreciate that the NDAA process each year gives us the opportunity to conduct oversight, update our defense policy, and assert congressional prerogatives. This bill does include important provisions, including an increase in pay for servicemembers, investments in research, and reauthorization of the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative. It includes a provision I worked on to ensure continued public access to Greenbury Point near the Naval Academy and my efforts with Senator Kennedy to protect investors from foreign insider trading. And there are provisions that will assist in future oversight by requiring the Department of Defense to share more information with Congress.

But these are not ordinary times. We must go farther to stand up to an administration that is currently diverting the military to conduct local law enforcement operations. That is conducting unlawful military operations in service of regime change and threatening further actions, including troops on the ground.

Our military is meant to protect and defend our homeland and our citizens, not carry out actions against them. It must be governed by the rule of law, not undermine it. I am opposing the NDAA because we must do more to rein in these abuses.