Floor Statements

Mr. President, pursuant to section 601(b) of the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act, I move to discharge the Committee on Foreign Relations from further consideration of S.J. Res. 116, to direct the removal of the United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against the Islamic Republic of Iran that have not been authorized by Congress.

Mr. President, I know of no further debate.

I would ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I am humbled to follow my colleague from Illinois. No one is more articulate on the question of the cost of war than Senator Duckworth, and I agree with everything that she said about the importance of this moment.

Listen, maybe the most sacred clause in the Constitution is the warmaking clause. Our Founding Fathers gave a lot of thought about the danger of allowing one individual to send this country into foreign conflict, to send our young men and women overseas to face harm and potential death. Our Founding Fathers decided that that had to be a question answered by the American public, and that is why the decision to go to war was vested not in an Executive or a Monarch or a King but in the Congress--in the people's House and in the Senate.

I think this is probably the most significant military engagement of many of our lifetimes that has gone without a debate and a vote on the Senate floor. It is extraordinary not just that we have not had a vote, as is required by the Constitution, not just that the President persists in this action without an authorization by Congress, but that there hasn't even been a single public hearing in the Foreign Relations Committee or in the Armed Services Committee to require the administration to explain to the American people and to the U.S. Senate why we are in this war, what the goals are, and what the endgame will be.

I think it is extraordinary and heartbreaking and outrageous that the Senate is not doing its duty under the Constitution to require the administration to ask permission to go to war and to explain itself before Congress, but I guess I understand why. This is an attempt to hide the incompetence--the growing incompetence--of this war.

The President said, the other day, he was really surprised when Iran started bombing its neighbors. Like, the first page of the briefing book that a President would get on the consequences of a major military strike on Iran would be that missiles and drones would start to be sent to American bases, American forces, and our partner forces in the region.

Reports are that the President just kind of guessed that they wouldn't gum up the Strait of Hormuz even though the second page of that briefing book would have told you--you know what?--the first thing Iran will do if you assassinate the Shia religious leader in the middle of the holy month and bomb them relentlessly day after day and hour after hour is they will close the Strait of Hormuz.

There is no plan to protect our partners in the region. Our partners are running out of interceptors as we speak. The region is on fire. There is no plan to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. It is closed today. It will be closed tomorrow. It will be closed the day after. Prices are going to go up for everybody in this country. The billionaires--the people who show up to have dinner with Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago in the middle of the war--will be able to afford it, but regular people who live in Ohio and Connecticut and Illinois, they

won't be able to afford these high gas prices.

Every day, there is a new revelation of the incompetence. Here is one from the last 24 hours. Apparently, President Trump decommissioned a bunch of our minesweepers. There was a really competent British minesweeper in the region that left days before the invasion began. We literally gave away our capability to clear the strait of mines right before we took military action that would knowingly cause the strait to be closed and mined. You can't make this up.

The reason we are bringing this vote tonight, the reason that Senator Kaine did the same thing earlier, and the reason that we will continue to bring these votes is that we have an obligation to have a debate, to have votes on the question of war, especially on the question of this incompetent war.

I have sat in classified briefing after classified briefing, and I still have gotten no answer on how this war ends. I actually don't think any of my Republican colleagues could explain how this war ends. Apparently, a worse regime that is more provocative to the region and more adversarial to the United States' interests will remain in charge of Iran when we decide to stop bombing. Estimates are that they will be able to rebuild their missile and drone capability in months after we declare an end to the hostilities. The nuclear program will still be there because you can't bomb out of existence either knowledge or the fissile material that is buried deep under the earth.

So, at the end of this, we are going to have raised prices for everybody here. We are going to have cost a lot of American lives. We are going to have set on fire the region. By the way, a new war already having killed 1,000 people is breaking out between Israel and Lebanon, and Iran is going to be more dangerous, not less dangerous at the end.

We need to debate this in our committees and on the Senate floor, so I am glad to stand here with Senator Booker. I don't think this will be the last time that we will have this debate.

What are we doing this week?

We are talking about voter fraud that doesn't exist when there is a war happening that is illegal and when prices are going through the roof. This is what we should be debating right now. This is why the Senate exists, to stand here and debate the most important questions. And what is more important than war and peace and 13 Americans dead overseas and the cost of war being borne by poor families here at home? This is what we should be debating this week.

So we will use our opportunity under the statute and under the rules to make sure that we have the opportunity--at least for an hour, at least for an hour each day--to be able to talk about this incompetent, illegal, unconstitutional war with no plan to end it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I appreciate the remarks from my friend from Minnesota. I think she laid out an unassailable case about how this is going to greatly constrain people's abilities to cast their votes, how it is a broad assault on democracy, how it effectively makes up a problem that doesn't exist.

I think I am the last speaker tonight before everybody gets to go home. So I am going to be very brief, and I am going to try to put today's debate in some context.

Here is what President Trump told a gathering of lawmakers at his golf resort. By the way, let's just not gloss over the fact that Donald Trump doesn't spare any moment to make money off of his Presidency, including demanding that, if you want an audience with him, you have to go down and spend money at his golf resort.

Here is what he said. He said: If you pass the SAVE Act, ``[i]t will guarantee the midterms. If you don't get it, big trouble, my opinion.''

Pass the SAVE Act, and ``[i]t will guarantee the midterms. If you don't get it, big trouble.''

Donald Trump--one of the most unpopular Presidents at this point in his Presidency in history. All he cares about is power and winning elections. He can't maintain power in the Senate or the House this fall being this unpopular in running a war that is out of control and that is driving up costs for Americans, tariffs that are costing the average family thousands of dollars a year, an economy that is not growing; and manufacturing jobs that are fleeing. So he is seeking to gain power that he believes will allow him to manipulate who can vote and who can't vote.

That is why we are here. We are certainly not here because voter fraud is a systemic problem in our elections.

The Heritage Foundation--the organization behind Project 2025 and many of the ideas that form the foundation of this legislation--has been able to uncover 10,000 instances of non--wait a second--5,000 instances of noncitizen voter--no, not 5--no, 400--no. It is 100. They found 100 instances in a country of 300 million of noncitizen voters trying to vote since 2000--in 26 years, 100 cases.

Another study found that the percent of voter fraud in Arizona over the last 25 years was--and I have got to read this carefully--0.0000845 percent. I actually have no concept of what that number is. That number is so tiny as to be kind of impossible to comprehend. The rate of voter fraud over the last 25 years in Arizona is 0.0000845 percent.

When you ask Americans what the top problems are that are facing the country right now--this is a Washington University poll, so it is not a Democratic poll or a Republican poll--they are, 1, jobs are disappearing; 2, prices are going up--let's see--3, the President generally; 4, the cost of living; 5, corruption in government; 6, polarization in government; 7, crime; 8, immigration; 9, abortion; 10, healthcare. I would bet you, if you went 11 through 19, you would not find voter fraud on that list. Statistically, this isn't a systemic problem. Voters aren't asking for us to focus on it.

So why are we here? Why is this the emergency issue--the urgent issue--that Congress is debating at nearing 11 o'clock on a Wednesday night?

It is, first and foremost, because Trump is demanding it. He has said he will not sign any other legislation until this bill reaches his desk, and Republicans in the Senate are compliant. They are employees of the President. He has said: This is the bill I want. So they are attempting to deliver him this bill. He believes, I think wrongly, but he believes this bill will give him special powers with which to change the electorate in his favor.

But we are also here because Republicans do not want to talk about the issues that are actually top of mind for Americans. They do not want to talk about prices or the economy or healthcare. They do not want to talk about corruption in government or the cost of living. That is probably the primary reason we are debating this bill--because, if you asked Americans what should be in a ``save America'' law, they would not say this.

There are 4 million Americans who are losing their healthcare as we speak--4 million Americans. There are 20 million Americans who, right now, are getting ready to sit down at the kitchen table and figure out how they are going to afford a 100-percent increase in their healthcare premiums. There are millions of families right now, because of the actions of Donald Trump and Republicans in this Congress, who are deciding whether they are going to pay the tuition bill for their child next semester or whether they are going to have to come home and postpone college for a little while because they just can't afford college and healthcare.

That is a crisis in this country. That is a healthcare cataclysm that is happening in this country.

There are hospitals and birthing centers and clinics that are closing in every corner of America because of the multitrillion-dollar cut to Medicaid. There are 4 million Americans who are losing healthcare and 20 million Americans seeing an enormous healthcare increase, and there are hundreds of clinics closing. We are not talking about that tonight.

Our economy is in trouble.

The economy lost 92,000 jobs in February. The Chairman of the Federal Reserve said today that we have had zero net job growth in this country over the last 6 months. The unemployment rate is 4.4 percent, up from 4 percent when Donald Trump took office; long-term unemployment, 25.3 percent, up from 21 percent when Donald Trump took office. The unemployment rate for Black workers is 7.7, up from 6.2 percent when Donald Trump took office.

The economy grew at an anemic 0.7 percent in the second quarter of 2025. We have lost 100,000 manufacturing jobs since Donald Trump took office. We are losing jobs left and right.

This economy is in trouble, but we are not talking about that tonight.

This administration is raising prices on people all across the country. The tariffs alone, if the administration succeeds in maintaining its current level of tariff revenue, will cost the average family $2,500 this year. Who in America has $2,500 lying around? OK. You know the folks who pay the ticket prices to show up and sit next to Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago have $2,500 sitting around, but 40 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Forty percent of Americans don't even have $400 saved for an emergency medical procedure or a car repair. The majority of Americans cannot afford Trump's tariffs, which are going to charge them $2,500 in additional costs this year.

That is not a bad economy. That is not bad luck. That is the President of the United States making decisions to purposefully raise people's cost of living by $2,500 this year.

And then he makes it worse because his war in Iran is jumping gas prices. Those increased transportation costs will soon increase grocery costs.

There is an inflation and cost-of-living epidemic in this country, and we are not talking about that either.

The White House is for sale--for sale. This is the most corrupt White House in the history of the country. No. 5 on that list of what Americans care about today is corruption in government because they are scratching their heads, wondering why this Congress is not talking about the fact that the President of the United States was just gifted a $400 million plane by a foreign government as a gift. They are wondering why we aren't having hearings on the secret payments that the President has been getting from foreign governments as private, quiet, secret investors in his cryptocurrency businesses. They are scratching their heads wondering why we aren't spending our time talking about the fact that the President's family has all of a sudden shown up on the boards of corporations that are getting contracts from the Federal Government. This White House is a 24/7 grift operation, but we are not talking about that this week on the floor of the Senate.

And, oh, by the way, we are at war. We are at war again in the Middle East. A dozen Americans have died.

We have a new war breaking out as a consequence of the President's military action in Iran between Israel and Lebanon. A thousand people have already died in that conflict. The entire region is on fire.

The President can't articulate a single reasonable, realistic endgame scenario for this war. We haven't had a single hearing in the Senate on a war that is underway right now in the Middle East. We aren't talking about that on the floor of the Senate this week.

And we have a Department of Homeland Security that is out of control, that is murdering American citizens, that is terrorizing our communities, that is tear-gassing schools, that is disappearing legal residents. And we aren't talking about that on the Senate floor either this week.

Inflation, the economy, cost of living, corruption in government, polarization, crime, immigration, abortion, and healthcare--these are the issues, when you ask voters, they say Congress should be focused on. They don't list voter fraud because the rate of voter fraud in this country is 0.000845 percent.

There are serious problems in this country. There are families going through hell right now because of what Republicans have chosen to do to raise people's costs and to hurt our economy. There are Americans dying overseas right now in an illegal, unauthorized war that this Congress refuses to do oversight on.

We could be spending our time saving Americans by reducing their costs, creating more jobs, or actually doing our congressional duty to make sure that we don't waste lives and treasure overseas on forever wars with no end.

But, instead, we are debating a bill that is going to withdraw people's right to vote because Donald Trump has ordered congressional Republicans to give him a tool that he thinks will help him steal this election.

I ran for the Senate to work on real problems, not fake problems and conspiracy theories, and there are a whole lot of real problems--real problems--that this country is facing right now that this Senate should be focused on.

I yield the floor.

I object.

Mr. President, there is not a pending motion on the floor currently?

Seeking recognition on my own right.

Mr. President, yesterday and today, Democrats have been on the floor asking for something very simple: Let's open up TSA. Let's open up CISA, which protects this country from cyber attack. Let's open up the Coast Guard. Let's open up FEMA.

Republicans have said ``no'' repeatedly. Yesterday, we said: Let's open all four Agencies up together. Republicans denied us that motion. Today, we are trying to see if we can open up one at a time.

What Republicans are saying is that: We want to hold TSA, our airports, the protection of our coastline, the defense of this Nation from cyber attacks, and our response to emergencies hostage to their determination to continue to fund a law enforcement operation at ICE that is out of control.

So Republicans are saying: We are going to keep TSA shut. We are going to keep the Coast Guard shut. We are going to keep FEMA shut until you allow the President to continue to terrorize our communities with a lawless, out-of-control ICE.

This isn't just what you see on the news. The scenes out of Minneapolis were horrific, unconscionable, American citizens being gunned down on the streets. One Federal judge found that ICE is in violation of 96 different court orders right now all across the country. Courts have ruled in 4,000 cases that ICE has jailed people illegally.

ICE is behaving in a brazenly lawless and unconstitutional manner, and none of us--Republican or Democrat--should be interested in funding a part of the Federal Government that is operating outside of the bounds of law.

We swore an oath to the Constitution. And so we have a serious discussion that is happening as we speak between Republicans and Democrats about how we can come together to fund ICE. But while that discussion happens, why are we keeping shut down the Coast Guard, TSA, FEMA? It is not necessary.

If Republicans just stopped coming to the floor to object, we could open up TSA right now. We could get those salaries paid.

I am going to offer a motion to open up funding for the Coast Guard. We could get the people who protect our shorelines paid.

And, yes, this is a mess. This is a mess. I admit it. This is a mess. But we didn't have shutdowns when Democrats were in charge of the Senate.

We are at a logjam because the Republicans refuse to listen to the very reasonable concerns that Democrats and the American people have about the way that ICE is behaving.

And by the way, we aren't representing some fringe political constituency. In the last national poll, 60 percent of Americans said that Congress should not fund ICE until they clean up their act. The vast majority of Americans believe that that Agency is out of control.

But if you went out there and asked those same Americans whether they think that TSA and the Coast Guard and FEMA should be shut down while we resolve those differences, they would say: Hell no. Open up the airports. Protect our shorelines.

So we are going to continue to come to the floor and attempt to convince Republicans to release these hostages.

I know that you are committed to supporting the President's lawlessness. I don't understand why you won't stand up and say it is wrong that there are 96 different court orders that ICE has violated, it is wrong that American citizens are being killed on the streets, that it is wrong that schools are being tear gassed.

But while we are having this difference of opinion on ICE that is sort of hard to understand, don't hold the rest of the Department of Homeland Security hostage to your insistence that the President get to act outside the bounds of law when it comes to the enforcement of our immigration laws.

I am going to offer a motion. And, again, yesterday, we offered a motion to open up all of the rest of the Department of Homeland Security. I am going to offer a more targeted motion.

On the average day, the Coast Guard saves 12 lives, interdicts 1,250 pounds of cocaine, screens 300 vessels. It would be really important to get our Coast Guard opened up.

I know my colleague from Delaware thinks the same thing. Right before I offer the motion, I yield to her for a quick question.

I thank the Senator for the question.

I do.

Especially at a time when the United States is at war, we cannot afford to have our coastlines undefended. The motions that Republicans have been making today have offered to pay the Coast Guard for 2 weeks. That is not good enough.

Right now, this motion that I will make will allow the Coast Guard to be paid for the rest of the year. If the Senator does not object to my motion, then minutes from now, the Coast Guard--the 52,000 people who work for the Coast Guard--will know that we honor their service and that we are going to pay them for the rest of the year, and so here is my motion.

I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of my bill at the desk that would fund the Coast Guard; that the bill be considered read three times and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

My friend, you have lost the argument with the public. You just have. The public thinks that ICE is out of control. The public does not want ICE to continue operating in the way that they are operating. They have seen the scenes out of Minneapolis. They are watching what is happening in Vermont today. And they don't agree with you. The majority of Americans, by a large margin, say that what is happening today is out of control.

And, yes, you did offer motions to keep the Coast Guard open for 2 weeks. That doesn't help the peace of mind of the 52,000 people who work for the Coast Guard and wonder whether they are going to have more than one paycheck.

You are objecting to a motion to keep them open for the rest of the year. And so tomorrow, when TSA is still not open and the Coast Guard is still not open, and FEMA is still not operating, there is only one reason.

Today you are offering motions to keep them open for 2 weeks, and you are objecting to motions to keep those Agencies open for the whole year. People are going to see the difference.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, first, I am grateful to be on the floor to hear those moving words about Senator Lee's father--an exceptional man. I thank him for sharing those stories with his colleagues.

Iran

Mr. President, I am on the floor today to talk about the growing, alarming incoherence of the President's war in Iran--an illegal war, a war that he has not sought consent for, a war with an ever-changing rationale and war plan, a war that is costing taxpayers billions of dollars but also costing them at home in their communities, as energy prices continue to soar.

Let me start with the bombing of this girls' elementary school in Iran. I start here because it shows, in this one horrible incident, the insanity and the destined failure of the President's strategy in Iran and the extraordinary ways in which President Trump is lying to the American people about this war.

Trump has, apparently, learned nothing from our nightmares in Iraq and Afghanistan. You cannot bomb a nation into submission. You cannot impose regime change from the air.

What will happen now that an entire nation is looking at images of America murdering little girls at an elementary school? Yes, this was a mistake--no doubt about it. Mistakes happen in war. But these inevitable mistakes are the reason these bombing campaigns almost never, ever achieve their objectives. All these bombing campaigns do-- with the thousands of civilians who, in the end, they kill--is to harden the nation that you are bombing and invading, causing them to take a harder line, to choose harder line leaders--more militant leadership--in order to protect the nation against the enemy invaders who bomb elementary schools.

What makes this incident even more unforgivable is that the President is lying to us. Earlier today, when asked about growing evidence that it was, in fact, a U.S. Tomahawk missile that hit this school, he said:

I don't know about that.

Earlier in the week, when he was asked about the bombing of the girls' school, he said:

Well, I haven't seen it.

He went on to say that the Tomahawk, which is one of the most powerful weapons around--you know, it is sold and used by other countries, whether it is Iran that has some Tomahawks and wishes they had more or--whether it is Iran or somebody else, the Tomahawk is very generic. The President of the United States knows that Iran doesn't have Tomahawks. The President of the United States should know that we are the only nation using Tomahawks. The idea that he is pretending to not know about the bombing of this school--the idea that he is trying to pretend that the Iranians somehow stole a Tomahawk missile from the United States, figured out how to launch it, and aimed it at a school-- is absurd and offensive.

Further, this administration refuses to be straight with us about the reasons that we are at war. What he has said is that he wants unconditional surrender and that he wants to be involved in the appointment of the next Supreme Leader. That is regime change-- unconditional surrender and the President of the United States choosing the next leader of Iran. But as we have learned in closed-door briefings, that is not actually the Department of Defense's plan. That is not a

goal of the war. We are, in fact, apparently, very satisfied to leave in charge of Iran hardline leadership. The new Supreme Leader is, by most estimates, more radical and likely going to be more provocative and more anti-American than the Supreme Leader whom we killed.

The President told the Iranian people to rush out onto the street. ``Take over your government.'' But he is prepared--his war plan is prepared--to leave in charge of Iran hardline leadership.

Let's be clear. The President is not prepared to come to the defense of the Iranian people if they rise up in the streets. There is nothing in the war plan that suggests we will do that.

The President has also said, over and over and over again, that a goal of the war is to permanently deny Iran the ability to have nuclear weapons. You have heard the President say this. That was in a Department of War press release just days ago.

In our closed-door briefings, we learned that that is, in fact, not a goal of our war plan--that it is not a goal of the war to destroy their nuclear program--which is, of course, not surprising because you cannot destroy Iran's nuclear program from the air. You cannot, A, destroy knowledge. You cannot hunt down with missiles every single Iranian scientist who knows how to build a nuclear reactor. And the materiel is buried so far under the ground to be immune from an air campaign.

So, yes, it stands to reason that one of the goals of this war is not to destroy the nuclear program. But then, why are the President and the Department of Defense telling us that the point of the war is to destroy their nuclear program?

They are not telling the truth about this girls' school that was hit on the first day, and they are not telling the truth about the aims of the war. As we learn more in our closed-door briefings, we learn how unbelievably unprepared they were for the fallout. It is bad enough that they are not telling the truth about why we are at war, but it is incomprehensible that they did not do the basic planning to manage the fallout.

They have no plan to open up the Strait of Hormuz--a totally foreseeable result of a military action against Iran, a completely foreseeable result of murdering the Shia's top religious leader in the middle of the holy month. The strait has now been closed for, effectively, 10 days. There is no plan to reopen it. It is getting worse, not better.

As news broke today that Iran is now, for the first time, mining the strait--and we can't get into this conversation on the floor of the Senate--we all know that, once that mining begins, it is very hard, if not impossible in the short run, to counteract. If the strait is closed for weeks more or months more, that is a global economic catastrophe. Already, my constituents are paying through the nose for this war. It gets infinitely worse if that strait doesn't open up, and the administration has no plan to open it up.

The incompetence and the lying should infuriate every Member of the Senate and every citizen of this country. This war is costing us at least $2 billion a day. There are no achievable war aims. The goals shift from day to day. There is no plan to manage the consequences and the fallout for American citizens or citizens of the Gulf.

You saw stories today of additional new missiles raining down on our Gulf allies. You probably know that they--much faster than we--are running out of the interceptors that stop those missiles. There will be increased deaths in the region very soon because we did not have the adequate supplies ready for our allies in the region to protect themselves against an onslaught of Iranian aerial attacks. It is just incompetence--incompetence--made worse by mistruths and made worse by the President's lying to the American people about what is happening and what the goals are of the war.

At the very least, we need to have Secretary Rubio and Secretary Hegseth in front of the Senate. I can't believe that my Republican colleagues don't feel like it is a giant middle finger from the administration that there hasn't been a single hearing on the most significant military action that this country has undertaken in a generation.

What is the point of being a U.S. Senator? Why are we here? Why have we worked so hard to get this job if we are not prepared to ask the administration to come and present to us why they are putting our constituents' lives at risk and why they are driving up the costs at home for our constituents as this war continues to exacerbate rising prices?

We are abdicating our responsibility as Senators. No, let me put it more specifically. Republican leadership and Senators are abdicating their responsibility as Senators--because they run the place--by refusing to demand that the administration come and testify in public.

All we have had are closed-door briefings. There is a limited amount of what we learn behind those doors that we can talk about. Increasingly, it is pretty obvious why the administration will not talk publicly about the Iran war, why they will not come and answer questions before the U.S. Congress--because they have no plan that is achievable. They have a rationale for this war that is shifting by the hour, and they have no plan--no way--to protect the American people from the consequences of their incoherence.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the difference between Democrats and Republicans is that Republicans have learned nothing from decades of American hubris in the Middle East, believing that U.S. troops, U.S. planes, U.S. guns, and U.S. bombs could fundamentally change realities in a far-off land.

Democrats have learned our lesson. We watched as thousands of American soldiers died in Iraq and in Afghanistan.

We listened to Donald Rumsfeld say that the Iraq war would be over in 5 days, 5 weeks, maybe 5 months. It created an insurgency inside the Middle East that we are still dealing with today--20 years in Afghanistan, a mismanaged war from the start. The Taliban is back in charge.

We ran planes over Libya to release the people from captivity imposed upon them by Qadhafi, only to unleash a new civil war that killed thousands upon thousands.

It is amazing to me that my Republican colleagues refuse to learn lessons. It is amazing to me that my Republican colleagues refuse to listen to the American people, who do not want American soldiers and American lives and their taxpayer dollars wasted on endeavors in the Middle East that are going to make things worse, not better.

I heard my friend Senator Graham in his analysis of the Ayatollah. I agree with him. But not everything is World War II. Not every effort at regime change works. In fact, regrettably,

World War II and our operations against Hitler are the exception, not the norm. Whether it be in Vietnam or Iraq or Afghanistan or Syria or Libya, over and over again, trillions of dollars in American taxpayer money has been spent to try to create regime change, and we have been frustrated and denied in those efforts, and we have lost lives in that process.

When are we going to learn?

And that is the message that we are sending the Iranian people. I was in the briefing with my Republican colleagues. I don't think any of us left that briefing believing that the American military was going to ride to the rescue of the Iranian people when they arrive in the streets to protest for freedom.

You can't support a people's revolution from the air. Only ground forces could support and protect the Iranian people when they show up in the squares of that nation, protesting for democracy.

But I am telling you that it looks like the plan is to leave the Iranian people hanging out to dry, because if all we are doing is dropping bombs on targeted sites inside Iran, if we are not actually involved in a regime change--and, by the way, we have been told, over and over again, by this administration that we are not going to quibble over who runs Iran next, even if it ends up being a hard-line government. Then we are goading the Iranian people out onto the streets, with the implicit promise that we will be there with them but the decision made behind closed doors that we will not.

Six Americans have already died for an illegal war that no one in this country wants. And 900 to 1,000 people in the region have died. U.S. Embassies all over the region are under attack. Thousands of Shia Muslims in Pakistan right now are protesting--a Shia insurgency targeting the United States in the works. Iranian missile and drone attacks have hit targets as far away as Cyprus.

Oil prices are up by 9 percent. Gasoline prices had their largest 1- day increase in 20 years. Natural gas prices are up 45 percent. The region is in chaos.

American consumers are paying the price, and for what? We still don't even know the reason for this war. Half the administration is out there saying: Well, Israel pulled us in.

I hear my friend Senator Graham saying that this was a war of choice, but half the administration is saying it wasn't, saying that Iran was going to attack and the only reason that we got involved was because Israel was going to attack, and the only reason we got involved was because we feared the blowback from Iran. We were dragged into the war by Bibi Netanyahu.

Others, like Senator Graham and sometimes President Trump, say: No, America decided on our own to enter this war.

But then for what? Are we engaged in regime change or not? If you aren't engaged in regime change, why did you take out the Ayatollah and all of those who were surrounding him? That clearly is a signal that you want regime change.

Are we going after their nuclear program or not? We all know that airpower alone cannot eliminate their nuclear capacity.

And if the goal is not regime change and we accept that new hard-line leadership is going to take over in Iran, then that is a recipe for perpetual war, because the only way that you will be able to destroy their capacity to make missiles and drones is to be permanently running jets overhead and constantly bombing the new sites that the hard-line regime sets up.

That is endless war. That is trillions of dollars. And for what? If, at the end of this engagement, there is harder line leadership in charge of Iran than at the beginning, then why do we do it? If at the end of this process, because we won't go in with ground forces, the nuclear program still exists, why did we do it? If we are going to hang the Iranian people out to dry and we aren't going to get their back when they stand up against the regime, why did we do it?

The first several days of this conflict have been criminally incompetent, shifting rationales for the war; no plan to get American assets protected, to get Americans out of the region; shifting explanations for what the purpose of the war is and very mixed messages to the Iranian people.

History tells us that an air campaign alone will never be successful in toppling a despotic regime. In fact, without--let me caveat that: without the serious threat of a ground invasion. History, in fact, tells us that what is most likely to happen is that it hardens the resolve of the existing regime; that it ends up in even worse, more provocative, more dangerous leadership taking hold.

President Trump seemed to think out loud in comments he made yesterday. He was asked what the worst case scenario was, and, as if it had just occurred to him for the first time, he said: Yes, I think the worst case scenario would be that we do all this bombing, we spend a trillion dollars, a whole bunch of lives get lost, and it ends up with the Iranians choosing even harder line leadership that are more provocative and dangerous and deadly in the region.

That is not the worst case scenario. That is the most likely scenario. And the idea that it is just occurring to him that this thing may go off the rails, as almost every other engagement in the region has over the last several decades, should be stunning to all of you.

The alternative then is a ground invasion, which no one in this country wants. No one in this country wants that. That would kill tens of thousands of Americans. Yes, it might end up with you being able to prop up a democratic regime. You might actually be able to get the nuclear program with a ground invasion, but that is tens of thousands of Americans dead in the process.

Air campaign: proven to be ineffective to carry out the goals that are being articulated by the administration. Ground invasion: deadly, impossible to rally the American people around. This is a no-win strategy. It is a no-win strategy, and the cost to the American people is substantial: higher prices, Americans dead, and, frankly, just a President distracted--a President who seems to care more about running Venezuela and dropping bombs on Iran than he does care about the American people.

So I know many of my Republican colleagues, including the last speaker, have been, historically, incredibly optimistic about the difference the American military can make in the Middle East, with zero evidence of that to be the case.

President Trump was elected, in part, because he promised he wasn't going to get the United States involved in another Middle Eastern war. People took him seriously, and now he has gotten us involved in the most significant new conflict in the region in decades.

Let me say one final thing. I am supportive of Senator Kaine's resolution, but it is not an authorization of military force. Our most sacred obligation as a Congress is to authorize war, and a President is prohibited by the Constitution and by the statutes of the United States from entering into war without that authorization.

I am glad we are having this debate, but it is not a substitute for an authorization of military force. Even if it fails, that does not give the President legal permission to carry out this endeavor.

Senator Graham held up a poster in which he showed that there were 130 different occasions in which various Presidents of the United States have engaged in military actions overseas without the consent of Congress. That is true. But that doesn't mean that it is legal or constitutional.

If your neighbor breaks into your house 130 times in a row, that doesn't mean that it is suddenly permissible by law.

In fact, the outrage gets more acute and more serious as the brazen lawlessness and unconstitutional actions of an administration get more regular.

We need to authorize this war. I, frankly, believe that we shouldn't proceed with other business until we get a commitment to have a debate on an authorization of military force. I don't think it would pass. I think it is easier for some of our colleagues to come up with some procedural justification to vote against the War Powers Resolution than it is to put their name on a proactive declaration of war.

So I want that debate. I think the Senate has to demand that debate. I think our legacy will be soured as a body if we let this, the most significant

military action in the Middle East since the Iraq war, persist without using whatever leverage we have to have a debate on this war.

It is really hard--I will wrap up. I know I have colleagues on the floor who want to speak.

It is really hard to encapsulate in one speech how dangerous, how inane, how illegal, how ill-planned this war with Iran is, especially just after the first few days. We are likely going to end up with a worse Iranian regime at the end. We are telling the Iranian people to rise up on the streets, but we have no plan to support them if they do.

We cannot, with an air campaign alone, take out their nuclear program if it is buried underground. We cannot, with an air campaign, take out their missile and drone program, unless we are basically ready to bomb Iran permanently. That is a trillion-dollar war that lasts years.

We aren't prepared to do the thing that would end the regime and take out the nuclear program--a ground invasion--because, of course, the cost of that would be thousands of American lives.

So worse people take over in the end than the Ayatollah. We don't end their nuclear program. We don't end their weapons program. We leave the Iranian people out to dry.

And at what cost? Oil and gas prices are spiking. Grocery and household items won't be far behind. A half dozen families are about to bury their dead children. The military tells us there is going to be a lot more casualties to come. This war is going to cost trillions of dollars. That means no money to lower your healthcare premiums, no money to fix your kids' schools, because all the money is going to go to billion-dollar defense companies that profit off of endless war.

This is a disaster, and it is made more of a disaster because we are not going to actually debate an authorization of military force. This is not a substitute for that debate, and I think all of my Democratic colleagues agree.

We should not sugarcoat this. This is already a disaster of epic proportions, and I am just going to tell you it is likely to get worse.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, we all swore an oath to uphold the Constitution, and that means that we have an obligation to fund the government--but only a government that is complying with the Constitution, that is obeying and being restrained by the Bill of Rights, that is upholding the laws of the land.

Right now, the Department of Homeland Security is out of control. They are not upholding the Constitution. They are not complying with the law. They are not respecting Americans' rights.

They are tear-gassing schools. They are murdering American citizens. They are disappearing legal immigrants to this country.

Right now, we are not funding the Department of Homeland Security because Democrats have made it clear that we would be violating our oath of office if we funded a Department that is using taxpayer dollars to violate the Constitution and the law.

I wanted to come down to the floor this evening to remind my colleagues about what is happening all over the country, because now that we are trading legislative texts, now that we are deep in the weeds of immigration policy, the real life experience of people in this country, of communities that are being terrorized by an out-of-control ICE, risks getting lost in the discussion.

So I want to spend just a few minutes reminding my colleagues on both sides of the aisle what the stakes are here, what the real world looks like out there if you are on the receiving end of a Department of Homeland Security that doesn't care about your rights as an American citizen or as a resident of this country.

And so I want to go through some of the most egregious, out-of- control, illegal, unconstitutional practices that ICE has been utilizing all across the country over the course of the last year. I want to get specific with you so that you know why we believe this moment is so serious, why American citizens believe this moment is so serious, because this isn't just an opinion held by Democrats, who are simply saying: If we are going to fund ICE, it has got to be an ICE that is obeying the law.

This is what the American people think, who have watched images like this and others that I will show you and have said from both sides of the aisle--Republicans, Democrats, Independents--that we don't want this ICE; we don't want this Department of Homeland Security. We want the immigration laws of this country to be upheld but not through the abuse of people's rights, not through violence.

This is a screenshot of a video that went viral all across the country about a month ago. The man in this video's name is Ramon Menera. He was stopped by a Border Patrol agent outside his home in a Minneapolis suburb.

First of all, you may ask: Why is a Border Patrol agent outside a Minneapolis suburb? That is not on the border.

Well, that is the first thing that has gone wrong here. CBP, HSI, and all sorts of Agencies that we fund in order to do very specific jobs are now doing an entirely different job--interior immigration enforcement. That is violative of the appropriations law. We don't fund CBP to be wandering suburbs in Minneapolis, looking for people who they want to detain.

This should be a prerogative that matters to both Republicans and Democrats. Our spending power and the spending power in the Constitution is vested in the legislative branch. Our spending power is mute, is pointless--we are powerless--if we tell the administration we are giving you this amount of money to spend on protecting the border, and they just say: Screw it. We are not going to use that money to protect the border. We are going to take those people, and we are going to put them on a different job that they are not trained for.

Well, when you have CBP agents who are not trained to wander apartment complexes, searching for people they want to detain, things like this happen every single day.

Ramon Menera was stopped and cuffed because of his accent. This is actually what the agent tells him in this video. If you go online and watch this video, you will hear the agent tell Ramon Menera that he is being detained because he has an accent.

Ramon Menera is a U.S. citizen. Guess what. There are a lot of U.S. citizens who have accents. Frankly, most of us have forefathers that, when they came to the United States, had an accent. That is not a justification for you to be detained.

He was even carrying his ID on him. All the agent had to do was check his ID to confirm that he was a U.S. citizen. But the agent did not check his ID. Instead, that agent arrested him, put his wrists in zip ties, and took him away from his property. He was forcibly detained by Border Patrol even though he was a U.S. citizen.

This didn't happen just once. This has happened thousands of times all across the country. It is still happening today--that individuals who are legally in this country are being detained, zip-tied, and arrested because they have an accent, because they look like they might be from Mexico or from Central or South America.

It gets worse, though. Ramon's 5-year-old daughter was inside and watched this entire incident through the window--5 years old. To this day, she has refused to go outside since because she fears for the masked men that arrested, zip-tied, and detained her U.S. citizen father.

The reason that we are demanding that these indiscriminate roving patrols--these ``show your papers,'' ``arrest you if you have an accent'' patrols--end is because they are fundamentally un-American, and they are illegal. And yet they continue. So unless we restrain them in law, unless we stop ICE and CBP and HSI from wandering through suburban neighborhoods, listening for people who may have accents and zip-tying them until they can prove that they are an American citizen, then they will continue.

This should upset Republicans just as much as it upsets Democrats-- the idea that this man, a U.S. citizen, was zip-tied, detained, and arrested while his 5-year-old daughter watched, even though he had ID on him proving he was an American citizen. This has to end, and we shouldn't fund ICE until it does end.

In another quiet Minnesota suburb--this one called St. Peter--a woman sat alone in her car, observing and recording ICE officers as they patrolled her community. This should go without saying, but it clearly needs to be said anyway: What this woman was doing is fully protected by the Constitution. Observing and recording Federal agents and local law enforcement is a First Amendment right. You get that right by being born in the United States of America, being a resident of the United States of America. It is not suspicious. It is not a crime. But ICE doesn't like that people are watching them, tracking their illegality.

So what happened next should alarm every American citizen. Three unmarked ICE vehicles began chasing this woman down a rural road. When she didn't pull over, they boxed her in. As soon as she stopped, these three masked agents jumped out of their vehicles immediately with guns drawn, screaming at her to get out of her car.

Again, she has committed no crime, no traffic violation. She refused. She calmly asserted her rights. The agents then forced her door open, dragged this woman onto the road and handcuffed her. This is an unarmed woman who had committed no crime. She is alone on a country road, and an unmarked car boxes her in, and out jump masked men with guns and drag her out of her car.

That is not the United States of America. That is Stalinist Russia. That is Maduro's Venezuela. We don't allow, in this country, masked men to pull over law-abiding citizens, in unmarked cars, and drag them out onto the road.

They put her in her vehicle. They began driving her in this car to Minneapolis. About 20 minutes later, the agents received a call from their supervisor. The woman's husband had contacted the St. Peter Police Department and reached the police chief, and the chief called the ICE officers and told them they were violating the law and to let this woman out.

The only reason we know this story is because, when her husband arrived,

he started recording it and we have these frightening images.

For every incident that we see like this, there are hundreds of others that we don't, and it won't end until we decide as a body to require that ICE officers stop wearing masks, identify themselves, and record what they are doing.

This should alarm anybody who believes in the rule of law. This photo was taken--I want to get this one right. It is outside of Roosevelt High School, and on a Wednesday afternoon in Minneapolis while students and faculty were gathered outside of the high school for early dismissal, armed, masked Border Patrol officers, some from the elite special forces team, crossed over onto school property and began tackling people.

They handcuffed two members of the faculty. They released chemical irritants into the crowd of students and teachers, and in videos taken by witnesses, you can see the agents firing tear gas. This is at a school. Just when the kids are all congregated after school outside the school, they are firing tear gas into these students.

Chaos erupts. Dozens of kids run. They take shelter at a nearby library. Let me say that again. Children are running from Federal agents who are tear-gassing them to find shelter in a nearby library. One school official told a reporter that the agents ``didn't care. They're just animals. I've never seen people behave like this.''

The school was forced to close for the rest of the week. Under both Republican and Democratic administrations, before the Trump administration, there was a policy that ICE did not operate in sensitive locations, in schools, in hospitals, in churches, and daycares, places where there were lots of little kids, sacred places.

These aren't supposed to be battlegrounds. These are places where children and other vulnerable populations are known to be. But this continues. Schools are under assault.

And so what are we saying? Not another dime for DHS if they are going to use taxpayer dollars to turn schools into scenes of terror. The use of Federal funds to conduct immigration enforcement at sensitive locations should be prohibited, full stop.

You probably recognize this car. That is the blood of Renee Good. This photo was taken after an ICE agent shot and killed her, an unarmed American citizen, a mother of three. But here is the story I want to tell--not the story of the incident, the story of what happened after the incident.

After the incident, career Federal prosecutors did exactly what they were supposed to do, they moved quickly to preserve evidence. They began coordinating with State authorities to investigate a potential use of excessive force. The Minnesota Bureau of Criminal Apprehension-- these are the experts when it comes to police shootings--were prepared to work alongside the FBI to determine the facts.

But they never got to determine the facts. The career Federal prosecutors never got to do their job because the Trump administration intervened.

Senior officials at the Department of Justice shut down the investigation. The Trump administration shut down the investigation of the murder of Renee Good.

Why? Because they worried that the investigation would actually come to a factual conclusion because the Trump administration had decided within hours that Renee Good was a terrorist and they were only interested in an investigation that confirmed their political judgment.

The career prosecutors refused to go along, and instead, they resigned. When political pressure overrides independent investigation, justice fails, and democracy dies. This is exactly why we are demanding that if we are going to send our taxpayer dollars to fund ICE, we have to be able to protect the authority of States and localities to investigate potential crimes, including excessive force by Federal officers.

Evidence has got to be preserved and shared, and investigations have to be impartial. That is not a wild demand. Just investigate murders. Investigate the killing of American citizens, like we have always done. Under no circumstances should we be funding a Department of Homeland Security that believes, as the Vice President said, that they have complete immunity for killing American citizens.

Independent investigations, a pretty reasonable demand.

Finally, this is a letter. You are not going to be able to read this 14-year-old's actually pretty legible handwriting, but her name is Ariana. And Ariana and her mom Stephanie were in the country legally. They were immigrants in this country, but they were playing by the rules. Her mom had gotten a work permit. They were doing their regular check-ins with ICE, and then everything changed.

One day, they walked in to do their regular check-in, again, complying with the law, applying for asylum, had gone and gotten a work permit, not working under the table. They went to do their check-in, and they were swept away and detained.

You have this image that the Trump administration tries to proffer that they are going after violent criminals or maybe they are going after only the people who snuck into the country.

No, no. Ariana and her mom Stephanie came to the United States legally, applied for asylum legally, got a work permit legally, were showing up to their check-ins, and they were sucked into the detention system--14 years old.

The law says you are supposed to keep kids in detention for only 25 days. Ariana was there for 45 days. Again, ICE violated the law. She was sent to a detention center called Dilley. I went down to Dilley, tried to do an inspection of Dilley. I am the ranking Democrat on the Homeland Security Subcommittee on Appropriations. I was denied entry to Dilley.

I met, later that night, two younger boys, younger than Ariana, who had been in Dilley for over a month, month and a half through Christmas.

I sat and looked at these boys. I sat across the table from them for about an hour. They were alive on the outside, but they were dead on the inside. They were dead on the inside.

They spent Christmas in a detention center. They call it the baby jail in Texas because there are literally hundreds of kids, most of them under 5 years old, who are being detained in prison cells.

Ariana wrote this letter to try to tell the world what the conditions were like inside: Since I got to this center, all you feel is sadness and depression. People have their courts, but they only last 15 minutes. Our rights are not being provided. We don't have schools, doctors. All they have here are nurses. If you need medical attention, the longest you have to wait is 3 hours, but to get any medicine, pill or anything, it takes a while. There are viruses here all the time getting people sick. Serious situations happen, and the officers can't take them serious enough. There are no consequences. They don't care.

Limited or no access to medical care, no access to legal representation, apathetic guards, traumatized kids, that is the reality of what is happening inside of these detention centers.

In a center down the road from Dilley called Pearsall, there is--I don't know--1,500, 2,000 people in that facility. That facility is just for adults. Do you know how many rooms there are for legal consultations? Four. It is all rigged. It is all rigged. They sweep up legal immigrants like Stephanie and Ariana. They throw them into detention. They don't let them see their lawyers, and they disappear them back to their home country.

This isn't America. The Bill of Rights still matters here. The Constitution still matters here. In this country, we don't have unidentified masked men ripping American citizens out of their cars. We don't allow Federal law enforcement officers to shoot and kill American citizens with impunity.

We allow people to apply for legal status. We don't choose to intentionally traumatize children. We don't let officials wander around communities listening for accents and zip-tying people who don't speak the way that they think Americans should speak.

We are demanding that ICE follow the law. We are asking our Republican colleagues to join us in strengthening the law to make sure that these roving patrols, these murders with impunity, this traumatizing of children, the tear-gassing of schools ends.

We would still enforce American immigration laws, but we would do it in a humane, legal way. So I appreciate the time of my colleagues today.

I wanted to walk you through what is happening. This is all still happening. Just because all the TV cameras aren't in Minneapolis any longer doesn't mean that these practices aren't still real. And until ICE decides to act in a legal manner, we shouldn't give them one more dime.

That is our constitutional--that is our constitutional-- responsibility.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I think our caucus was confused and frustrated by how long it took for our Republican colleagues to come to the table and start discussions.

The minute that we passed a 2-week continuing resolution for the Department of Homeland Security, we knew we were going to have to enter into some hard discussions about how we can rein in ICE's lawlessness, which is what the American people demand. And yet during the first week of that 2-week continuing resolution, there was no clarity over whom we were supposed to be negotiating with. Was it Senate Republicans? Was it the White House?

And, in fact, it wasn't until last night, literally on the verge of the shutdown, that we got our first offer of text from the White House--far too late to be able to engage in any compromise before the deadline.

So I wish we weren't here. I wish our Republican colleagues and the White House had shown more seriousness from the start.

But Senate Democrats have been clear that we have all taken an oath-- an oath to uphold the law of the country--and this Department of Homeland Security, this ICE, is out of control. They are tear-gassing our children's schools. They are killing American citizens. They are disappearing legal migrants.

I went down to Texas, a couple of weeks ago, and sat across a table from two elementary school students who had been detained illegally for 6 weeks over Christmas, while their mother wasn't home. It was a choice ICE made to traumatize and terrorize these children. Those children were alive on the outside but dead on the inside.

So, yes, we believe we have a constitutional obligation to only fund a Department of Homeland Security that is obeying the law, and this Department of Homeland Security is not obeying the law.

So I am hopeful that these discussions will continue. But, frankly, we

had plenty of time to get a deal in the last 2 weeks, and the lack of seriousness from the White House and from Republicans, not getting language until last night, has put us in the position we are in today.

We want to fund the Department of Homeland Security, but only a Department that is obeying the law, and for that reason, I would object.

Mr. President, I just want to reiterate that we got the language last night. We have been in a 2-week continuing resolution, and last night, we got the first offer of legislation from the White House.

We are not in charge. The Senate Democrats aren't in charge. We don't run the House. We don't run the White House.

We waited for a week for there to be some process to be convened. We got no signal as to what that negotiation would look like. So we finally put our proposals--our text--on the table and didn't get an offer back until last night.

My wish is for my Republican colleagues to be just as upset as they are about what is going to happen next week at TSA or at FEMA as for the children that are being traumatized right now in this country, who are being thrown into what is called the ``Baby Jail,'' outside of San Antonio; for the lives that are fundamentally changed by an immigration policy that is out of control; to have concern for the American citizens who have been killed simply exercising their First Amendment rights; to care about the 4 million Americans who are losing their insurance, as we speak, because this administration has chosen to put money into a lawless immigration enforcement operation instead of protecting people's healthcare.

That is what is happening in America today. Four million people are losing their healthcare insurance. Twenty million people are having their rates go through the roof because the priority is flooding Minneapolis with ICE agents; chasing down kids at schoolbus stops, as they were doing just 2 days ago in Minneapolis, instead of protecting people's healthcare.

People are losing healthcare in this country so as to fund this runaway Department of Homeland Security.

And so we all have outrage about what is happening in this country today, and I don't know why it took the White House until last night to send any semblance of specifics on what they were willing to work for.

We have an obligation, as Members of Congress, to fund a government that obeys the law. This Department of Homeland Security is not obeying the law. They are not. And I would argue that every Member of this body, whether you were a Republican or a Democrat, in order to uphold your oath of office, should not be funding an Agency that isn't complying with the Constitution and the statutes of the United States.

So I do regret that we are at a moment in which we are not going to be able to fund the Department of Homeland Security, but there is a simple solution. If the Agency starts behaving lawfully, if they start obeying the Constitution, then we can get back on the same page.

This is an exceptional moment in this country's history, and my hope is that these negotiations move fast, expeditiously, and that perhaps, as soon as we return--or if the majority leader would like to call us back into session next week--we can get the Department back up and operating. But that is only going to happen with reforms.

That is only going to happen with more serious engagement from the White House than has happened thus far.

Mr. President, the tendency here in the Senate often, when Democrats are lodging a complaint about Donald Trump, is for our Republican colleagues to issue an argumentative equivalency: Well, Donald Trump did this, but so did Joe Biden. Donald Trump did that, but Joe Biden did this.

We are at a moment today, though, in which there is no argument of equivalency. And, in fact, over and over again in the past year, we have seen threats to our democracy that have no historical precedent.

We must be able to agree that never before in the history of the Senate has a President of the United States sought to jail Members of this body based upon their political opposition to the President of the United States.

All that our colleagues did was record a video in which they simply repeated the law of the land, the existing military code. They said things into a camera that the current Secretary of Defense has said himself, almost verbatim.

But because he was reciting, because she was reciting a portion of the military code that the President objects to, because it was inherently a criticism of the President, they are now facing down possible indictment.

It doesn't really matter that the grand jury refused to indict because, if they continue to come back over and over again for an indictment, they will likely find, at some point, some compliant grand jury, and we will find our colleagues headed to jail simply for exercising their free speech.

Never before in the history of our country has something like this happened. And I understand that for all of us who have grown up in a relatively safe and secure American democracy, contested by foreign adversaries but never under any real threat that we were going to lose the democracy from within, we have come to believe some sense of inevitability about the survivability of American democracy.

But every civilization, every form of government, has an expiration date. Every attempt at republicanism or democracy, over the course of this globe's history, has ended, and ours will end at some point. Our job as Senators, whether you have an ``R'' after your name or a ``D'' after your name is to make sure that that end doesn't happen on our watch.

And at some point, you have to look at the series of exceptional, unprecedented events that have happened in the last year and see them as part of an unprecedented, ahistorical pattern.

I agree with my colleagues. Long ago, in my mind, we crossed the redline. But think about it, if the shoe were on the other foot. I want my Republican colleagues to think about what you would say if a Democratic President opened up a criminal investigation into the Chairman of the Federal Reserve simply over a dispute over interest rate policy.

What would my Republican colleagues say if a Democratic President deployed the National Guard against a Republican State like Texas or Louisiana? Would our Republican colleagues think it was a redline if Sean Hannity was taken down, off the air, by a Democratic President's FCC? What would Republicans say?

Would it be a confrontation with American democracy if journalists were removed from a Democratic President's Pentagon because of their critical stories about the Democratic administration's policy?

Would Republicans think there was a problem if universities were denied funding because they weren't hiring enough liberal, leftwing professors? How about if a Democratic President confiscated ballots in one of your States so as to prove that Donald Trump didn't really win the election--that it was fraudulent?

Or what if he indicted or attempted to indict two of your Members, two Republicans, simply because they had raised their voices in objection to a Democratic President's policies?

We all know the answer to every single one of those questions. If a Democratic President had done any of those things, you would be shutting down the U.S. Senate. You would be labeling each and every one of them as a potentially existential threat to our democracy, and you would use every lever available to you to try to confront that abuse of power.

There is no equivalency argument. President Biden didn't do any of the things that I just listed. And, yes, I know my Republican colleagues have objections about the way that he used the Department of Justice, objections about the things he said about Republicans, but never, never were Republican Senators facing a grand jury, the threat of indictment hanging over their heads simply because they spoke truth that a Democratic President objected to.

At some point, this democracy will die, and our purpose here is to improve the quality of life for our constituents but to protect the democracy at all costs. There has to be a bipartisan response to the broad abuses of power but, specifically, right now, to the fact that two of our colleagues are on the verge of being arrested by this President simply based on their political opposition to the President.

This is a moment where we could decide to agree. Not everything has to be skins and shirts. Not everything that we think has to automatically be wrong. We could very easily decide this week that it is not acceptable for the President of the United States to attempt to throw into jail his political opponents in the Senate and in the House.

And maybe that could provide a springboard for us to decide that there are other abuses of Presidential authority that may, in the long run, harm both Republican and Democratic interests but fundamentally harm the health of our democracy, and that we could join together in league against as well.

This is a moment of test for the Senate. I agree with my colleague Senator Schatz. This is a moment that could break this institution permanently if it is only Democrats standing up here and defending our colleagues.

It should matter first that they are Senators, that they were elected by the people of their State to represent Republicans and Democrats in their State. It should matter second the party that is listed after their name.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, over the course of the last year, President Trump has been engaged in just a stunning array of acts to enrich himself and his family using government policy, the power of the White House to essentially trade away U.S. policy, U.S. national security secrets in exchange for investments in Trump himself, making himself rich off of being President of the United States.

I am coming to the floor today because over the weekend, through good old-fashioned investigative journalism, we discovered what might be the most corrupt act in this administration amidst a dizzying array of daily corruption.

The Wall Street Journal reported over the weekend that 4 days before Donald Trump's inauguration, an investment firm closely tied to the United Arab Emirates secretly signed a deal with the Trump family to purchase a 49-percent stake in a company called World Liberty Financial. That is the Trump family's fledgling cryptocurrency venture. They run that business in coordination with the Witkoff family--the Witkoff family, of course, headed by Steve Witkoff, who is, not coincidentally, the President's chief Middle East adviser.

The company that made the investment that took this 49 percent stake is backed by an individual named Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan. That is UAE's National Security Advisor. But he is also deeply embedded in a number of very important companies that dole out investments from the United Arab Emirates.

One of the companies he is involved in--Tahnoon is involved in--is an AI firm called G42. This is all important to understand the scope of what we just discovered over the weekend.

On behalf of his company, G42, Tahnoon has been arguing that the United States should sell G42, a UAE company, our most sensitive AI chips. We have not sold this hardware to UAE in the past. Both Republican and Democratic administrations, both Republican and Democratic Members of the Senate, both Republican and Democratic Members of the House have said we cannot sell this advanced AI hardware to UAE because of the well-known integration of UAE's national security service, including this individual, with China.

So we have never sold these chips to UAE because we were pretty sure--and, again, this was a bipartisan consensus. We were pretty sure that these chips would just flow straight to China, and China cannot-- cannot--get control of this advanced AI hardware.

It was shocking to most national security experts, shocking to Republicans and Democrats in Congress, when, shortly after the President's inauguration, he decided, against the advice of his national security advisors, to sell these chips to the UAE and, in particular, to this company owned by Sheikh Tahnoon.

Let me just accentuate the bipartisan nature of the opposition to this decision to transfer the technology to the UAE. In 2024, the Republican chair of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, Michael McCaul, raised the concern and asked for a probe of Microsoft's $1.5 billion investment into G42. Again, this is Republican Chairman McCaul says to the Biden administration: I need you to do an investigation into--not the U.S. Government transfer, but Microsoft's investment into G42--citing integration between the UAE and China.

As I noted, it has been reported that this decision to sell these chips, valued at $1 billion, was done over the objection of the senior national security officials, including the Senior Director for Technology at the NSC who argued for restricting access to these advanced chips.

But Trump goes through with the sale, leaving everybody scratching their heads. This is really bad for American national security. Everybody knows if you give these chips to the UAE, they are going to likely find their way into Chinese hands, but he green-lights the sale of $1 billion of these advanced chips.

And this weekend we found out the likely reason: Secretly, days before the administration, this UAE company, helmed by the individual who stands to benefit by the sale of the chips, makes an investment of $500 million secretly in Donald Trump's company World Liberty Financial.

Now, just so you have no illusions, there is no separation between Donald Trump, Steve Witkoff, and World Liberty Financial. World Liberty Financial is affiliated with a company called DT Marks DEFI LLC, and President Trump reportedly owns 70 percent of that company. The rest of the 30 percent is believed to be split amongst Trump's sons.

DT Marks, by the way, is not held by the Trump Organization or any of its companies; it is a company owned directly by Donald Trump.

Steve Witkoff said that he was divesting his stake in this company, World Liberty Financial, but in a disclosure that he filed as late as September of last year just months ago, he still had a stake, a financial interest in that company.

So Steve Witkoff, the Middle East adviser, Donald Trump, the President of the United States, direct owner stakes in World Liberty Financial, days before the inauguration, a $500 million payment, a deal to pay World Liberty Financial $500 million for a 49-percent stake is done in secret.

Now, we don't know the full extent of that sale, but at the very least, $187 million is going directly from this UAE company into the Trump family's pockets, at least $31 million is going directly from this UAE company into the pocket of the Witkoff family.

It is not a coincidence that a secret deal is done in which a foreign government puts money directly into the hands of the President of the United States, secretly, and then very soon

thereafter we find out that the President is throwing out years of national security policy. He is discarding the advice of his advisers, and he is going to hand that country that just gave him $187 million national security secrets.

Now, of course, this isn't the first time that President Trump has done business with this particular individual, because Sheikh Tahnoon also runs a company called MGX. MGX put $2 billion worth of investment towards the President's business empire earlier in the year.

Now, this was done in public, so we saw it all for ourselves. But it was no less corrupt just because it wasn't discovered by journalists. In that deal, this UAE company decided to finance an investment in a company called Binance with Donald Trump's cryptocoin. At the time, Trump's cryptocoin was a fledgling product in the market. It did not have any big backers.

Guess who comes to the rescue? Sheikh Tahnoon with another one of his companies. He finances a $2 billion investment in Binance with Trump's cryptocoin, almost overnight making that cryptocoin one of the most successful--one of the most highly traded in the industry.

Now, in that case, the investment wasn't directly by UAE into Donald Trump's company. It was financing a venture in Binance with Trump's cryptocoin. But just because the corruption was a little bit more oblique, doesn't mean that it wasn't corruption.

In this case--in this case--it is a direct investment by a foreign government, a half a billion dollars directly into a company controlled and run by the President of the United States.

There is no record in the history of the United States of a foreign government making a direct investment in a company owned by the President of the United States. No wonder they did this in secret. No wonder they tried to get away with it without anybody knowing.

The UAE doesn't give this money away for nothing. They were asking for these national security secrets. They were asking for this advanced chip technology.

And it is just not a coincidence. You don't have to be born yesterday to understand that there is a connection between the payment to Donald Trump, the investment in his business, and the transfer of the national security secrets.

I just don't want this to become normal. I just don't want us to paper over multimillion-dollar corruption--the President of the United States, every single day, profiting off of his position. I don't understand why our Republican colleagues excuse this. The White House has become a nonstop corruption machine.

Never, ever before in the history of the country has the President of the United States so openly, so brazenly, so consistently worked to use the immense power of the Presidency to enrich himself. Never before in the history of the Nation has something like this happened in secret: The President of the United States taking payments from foreign governments, put in his own pockets, and then handing them national security favors that the United States had never been willing to do in the past.

You know, back during the Biden administration, there were endless hearings. There were nonstop speeches on this floor about the Biden crime family. You guys went wild over this, despite not a single allegation ever being made of an exchange by President Biden giving favorable government treatment in exchange for a personal benefit to the President.

The closest Republicans ever came was that the President's son Hunter Biden had been named to the board of an energy company in Ukraine when his father worked on Ukraine policy.

You know how many boards the Trump kids have been named to in the last 12 months? You know how many contracts, government contracts, have been given to those companies that the Trump kids just got put on the boards of magically when their father became President?

Listen, what Hunter Biden did was wrong. I said it at the time. He shouldn't have been on that board. But there was never a single allegation that President Biden did anything for that company that his son was on the board of or got a single dollar in exchange for his son's service on that board--investigations, speeches, hundreds of hours on FOX New--not a single allegation.

Trump enriches himself every single day off his office--every single day. Foreign governments buy him things--luxury planes, investments in his companies, sweetheart deals, licenses to build hotels--all in exchange for favorable treatment from the U.S. Government. It is all out there in the open for people to see.

This was a case in which they knew it was so egregious--it was so wrong--that they did it in private. What we are talking about here is stunning: a secret payment of at least $187 million to Trump's family; a payment of at least $31 million to the family of Trump's top Middle East adviser; and then, soon after, a gift of national security secrets to the UAE that, up until those two secret payments, every American President had refused to give. That is corruption. Those are the elements of a bribe. This is potentially criminal conduct.

The rule of law may be suspended today. Republicans may not be willing to do anything about this corruption simply because the President is of your party. For now, Trump and his friends may get away with these crimes and with this corruption, but the rule of law is coming back. And when it does, everyone who has greased their palms off government service--trading government favors for cash and violating the laws of this Nation--are going to jail.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I appreciate the remarks of my friend from New Jersey. Mine will sound very familiar.

Listen, ICE is out of control right now. They are killing American citizens. They are endangering the safety of our cities--in particular, Minneapolis. They are just lawless.

This Nation was horrified when they saw the video of Alex Pretti, exercising his First Amendment rights, gunned down in cold blood, but I will be honest: They were just as terrified by the response from the administration. Almost within minutes, before any investigation took place, this young man, an ICU nurse who cared for veterans, was being called an assassin, was being named as a domestic terrorist.

It is chilling to the American public that the people in charge of our Federal Government would lie this willingly, this casually. It is chilling that anyone who opposes this President or participates in organized protests is immediately labeled a ``terrorist.'' That is what happens in despotic, totalitarian countries--anyone that opposes the regime is labeled a ``terrorist.'' That is not what is supposed to happen in the United States of America.

So the focus of this country right now is squarely on Minneapolis.

By the way, there has been a lot of ink spilled over the last 24 hours about the administration's deescalation in Minneapolis, substituting one leader for another. Tom Homan is not an avatar of reasonableness, listening and parsing the President's words as he tries to distance himself a little bit from the most outrageous things that people like Stephen Miller have said. But if you talk to our colleagues from Minnesota, they will tell you that nothing has changed. Today is just like yesterday.

In a nursery school today, there is blinds down, recess canceled, signs on the door: All of our staff have been vetted by ICE. We have no one illegal here.

Kids don't know what is going on as they are ushered in by escorts to their nursery school classroom. They are made to feel like prisoners inside. Why? Because there are masked, armed men hunting them--and not hunting people who snuck into the country; hunting people who are here legally--who are here legally.

I want you to understand that as much as we are watching Minneapolis, as much as we are feeling for those children locked in their nursery school classrooms today, fearing the bad men outside that are trying to take them away and send them to prison, it is not just Minneapolis.

Last week, I went down to Texas to inspect two facilities, one of which is entitled ``the baby prison,'' ``the baby jail.'' It is where they put the 2-year-old kids. I didn't show up unannounced. I am the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations subcommittee that funds Homeland Security. We all have a constitutional right to do oversight, but I have the title, I have the responsibility. I gave them a day-and-a-half notice, and I was still denied entry. Why? Because they are hiding something. Thirty people have died in ICE custody and detention in the last year.

So, instead, I went to a courtroom in San Antonio, an immigration courtroom, and I sat in on proceedings for half a day. What I saw was just absolutely outrageous. It is not on cameras--the country is not watching it like they are watching Minneapolis--but it is just as inhumane, and it is just as illegal.

The people that show up to this courtroom in San Antonio are immigrants who are complying with the law. These are people who came to the United States, immediately applied for asylum--many of them made an appointment through an official government website to show up and apply for asylum--and they have been showing up for all of their hearings and court appointments since.

So I would watch as these individuals or families walked in, went through their legal court proceedings, knowing that outside that door were half a dozen civilian, plainclothes ICE officers waiting to disappear them.

That is what happens in San Antonio. The individual who is here legally shows up as part of their court process. They walk out the door, and they are grabbed by ICE, put on a bus that is waiting outside, and they are never to be seen again. They go to one of these detention facilities. They are basically not allowed to see a lawyer. Sometimes, their family doesn't even know where they are. They are very quickly sent out of the country, either to the nation that they came from, where they rightfully fear potential violence, or to third countries. Families are split up.

While I was there, I was asked to accompany two young parents and their 2-year-old daughter out of the courtroom to see if maybe, because they were talking to a U.S. Senator, ICE wouldn't take them--a 2-year- old. The lawyer said: If you weren't here, one of two things was going to happen--that 2-year-old was going to end up in jail with their parents or they were going to separate the parents from the child-- separate at least the father from the child.

That is inhumane. That is wrong. And that is why people all across this country are demanding that if we are going to fund the Department of Homeland Security, we only fund a Department that is acting lawfully and morally.

What we are asking is reasonable and impactful. What we are saying is that these roving patrols in Minneapolis, the profiling of people just based upon their skin color or their accent, the show-me-your-papers enforcement, has to end.

ICE and CBP are fundamentally not trained to do that kind of work-- just roaming the streets, trying to find people who they believe to be in the country illegally. We need warrants, and, in fact, that has been the practice until this administration. The practice up until now had been that you had to get a warrant in order to try to lock up somebody who you believed to be here illegally.

And the roving patrols and the profiling.

Second, no more secret police. This is the United States of America. This is the United States of America. We don't allow in this country masked, unidentified men to be wandering up to you on the street and ripping you into a car. We need masks off. We need body cameras on.

Lastly, we need accountability. Man, it looks like there was a crime committed. It looks like that was murder. But the only way you will know is if you have an impartial investigation and, potentially, prosecution. That always happens at the State level. It can't be some whitewashed, secret process inside the Department of Homeland Security. No. Our justice in the United States of America happens in public; it does not happen in private. We aren't Russia. We aren't Saudi Arabia. Justice is administered in a court of law through a process that the people can see, and that should apply to you whether you are an ICE officer or whether you are just a citizen of Minneapolis.

So think about what we are talking about here--really reasonable things that, frankly, should unite Republicans and Democrats.

I have a much longer list of reforms that I want. The illegality is just off the charts at the Department of Homeland Security, but I understand that we are not going to be able to get common ground on that long list. So what we endeavor to do is put on the table three things that we can find common ground on, that we must find common ground on because to defend this--for Republicans' position over the rest of this week into next week to be no reforms, no changes on how ICE operates--it is unsustainable. It is not close to where the center of this country is.

So what we are talking about are three reasonable projects: Stop the roving patrols of our cities, no more secret police, and accountability. I believe we can find a way to get that done.

I know there is an instinct here--and we suffer from it too--if Democrats are for it, then Republicans just have to be against it, and if Republicans are for it, Democrats just have to be against it. I fall prey to that instinct. But this seems to be a moment where the country has just decided that what is happening in Minneapolis is wrong. The country would like us to come together on a series of reforms that will make it less likely that there will be another murder in cold blood of an American citizen.

Right now, we are on a pace for it to happen again. ICE is still there. There are more ICE officers in Minneapolis than there are police officers. The police aren't even doing their job any longer because all they do is respond to the problems that are being created by untrained, unqualified ICE officers.

I think we can find a way to come together on a set of reforms that the American people are demanding.

I guess I draw my inspiration from that trip I took to Texas.

Late one evening, I met with a group of families that had recently been detained, and they all had little kids--little kids that were in what they call baby jail. I met with two boys--elementary school-age boys about 8 years old and 10 years old--that had been locked up for 6 weeks. Six weeks these little kids had been locked up for nothing. They were complying with the law. They and their father were going through the legal process of applying for asylum. They were told to show up for court. Their mom dropped them off. Their backpacks for school were still in the back seat. The two young boys and their father went into the courtroom for their appointment that they were told to show up for, and they never came back to the car. Their mom had no idea where they went.

It ended up that they were in detention, that the little kids had been put in prison. They called their mom every day as Christmas approached and said: Mom, maybe tomorrow they will let us out. Maybe the next day. Christmas is coming up, Mom. I don't want to be here for Christmas.

Well, they stayed right through Christmas, and they didn't get out until just a week ago. These children were alive on the outside, but you could tell they were dead on the inside. One of the two little boys--the older of them--sat during our time together, and he just stared straight ahead. He didn't make eye contact with anybody. His brain, you could tell, had been poisoned by the inhumanity that had been visited upon him by a policy that makes no sense other than for the purpose of torturing these kids.

This is the United States of America. We shouldn't stand for that. You can enforce the laws of this Nation without putting kids through that kind of hell, without the kids of Minneapolis today languishing in nursery schools with the doors locked, with no recess and the shades down.

We were sitting around a round table, and on the other side from the two dead-eyed children who had just left 6 weeks' detention was another child. He looked about 10 to me.

The two boys who were in detention told their mother in all those phone calls that maybe their greatest worry was that their friends were going to forget about them.

Mom, I have been here for a week.

Mom, I have been here 2 weeks.

Mom, I have been here for 6 weeks. What if I go back to school and none of my friends remember who I am?

This is what goes through the brain of an 8-year-old who has been in jail for nothing--for nothing--for 6 weeks.

Do you know what happened? Their friends didn't forget about them.

That other little boy sitting on the other side of the round table-- 10 years old--was one of their friends, and he noticed that his two friends were missing day after day after day, and he remembered that they were in immigration proceedings. So this 10-year-old boy went to his teacher and his mom and said: I think something is wrong. I think my friends might have been taken.

The teacher and the mother reached out to a local legal aid agency, and that legal aid agency tracked down the boy and the father, and eventually, the two boys and the father were let out.

That 10-year-old boy, their friend, had compassion. He believed in right versus wrong. But he also believed that he wasn't powerless. He believed that he could do something to help find his missing friends. For him, that was alerting adults, because he knew that maybe they would help.

And I am sure he was nervous about speaking up, about going to talk to his teacher, because doing the right thing often comes with risks. But to him, doing the right thing was worth the risk. To him, he knew he wasn't powerless in the face of the immorality that he feared had happened to his friends.

And I just tell you that story because it is a lesson for us. It is a lesson for us to not feel powerless, for Democrats to stand up for what we believe in, to not settle for less than a Department of Homeland Security that complies with the law; and a lesson for Republicans, who I know fear retribution by this President when they stand up for what they believe is right, rather than what Donald Trump says is right.

We aren't powerless on the Democratic side, and you aren't powerless on

the Republican side. We can find a way to come together and protect our citizens from an Agency that is operating outside the bounds of the law and outside the bounds of morality.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank Senator Kelly for bringing us down to the floor today.

It is hard to believe it has been 16 years since our politics were upended, since the floodgates were opened to corporate money in an unlimited way, in an anonymous way, coming into our elections.

Senator Durbin, of course, has been a hero, as he mentioned spending much of his career trying to introduce legislation and pass legislation that would put citizens in charge of our elections rather than Big Money.

So let's just for a few minutes here, because I know there are others who want to speak--I just want to make maybe three points.

The first is to just give you the scope, if we haven't put this information on the record already, as to how things have changed. Senator Durbin was doing some of this already in referencing how little elections used to cost compared to how much they cost today, but let's just talk about the full amount of money that is in politics today as compared to let's say 1976--a few years before Senator Durbin was first running for Congress.

In 1976, total Federal election spending by candidates and committees was $160 million. In the last election, in 2024, candidates and committees together spent $15.9 billion. OK. Now, it is a long time between 1976 and 2024, so let's adjust that for inflation. Adjusted for inflation, it is still 100 times more money. That is stunning. That is stunning in and of itself, but here is what makes it corrupt. What makes it corrupt is that prior to the Citizens United decision, outside groups, noncandidate groups, were spending about $144 million in elections annually. In 2024, outside groups spent $4.2 billion.

When Senator Durbin was first running, he was raising money from individuals, folks who were spending $25, $100, maybe a couple hundred dollars on campaign contributions. Individuals today make up just 16 percent of total spending in elections--16 percent. Eighty-four percent of all the spending in elections today is not done by citizens; 84 percent of spending is by corporations and organizations. Most of that money--maybe not most. Much of that money is anonymous; you have no idea where it comes from.

So let me tell you what the impact of that is. The impact of that is corruption. Let's just call it what it is. When a handful of billionaires and corporations have that much influence on our

elections, an unaccountable influence--you have no idea who is spending all of that money, who is throwing these ads on TV that are being produced by PACs with innocuous sounding names like Save Our Future, Build Our Future, This Is Our Future--the impact of that is just--it is corrupt. It is corrupt.

There is a group that is being formed right now called Leading the Future--another one of these innocuous sounding PACs. It is promising to spend $100 million in the election this fall, and it is being funded by a group of AI companies--companies that are trying to get the Congress to pass legislation to essentially give these AI companies a free ride--no protection from deepfakes, no protection from the poison they are feeding our children. They want free rein, so they are putting up $100 million in this next election.

I just did the math, sitting at my desk, quickly. The average individual contribution today is about $25. That is a lot of money for some people, to give $25 to an election. If every single resident of my State--every single resident--gave $25, that wouldn't equal the $100 million commitment that one super PAC has made to this next election. That is stunning. That shows you how much power a handful of these companies have.

The only way that this group Leading Our Future can put $100 million into this next election to try to stop Congress from regulating artificial intelligence is because of the Citizens United decision, because that decision allows those companies that are swimming in money right now to be able to write an unlimited check into this next election.

So you can understand why people feel powerless today, why people feel like this whole system is rigged because even if they give $25, it just doesn't make a difference when a handful of companies can, with the snap of their fingers, muster $100 million to try to change the impact of an election on public policy.

The last point I want to make is this: This fight that we are having now in which only Democrats care about changing our campaign finance laws, in which Republicans almost to a person have no interest in trying to decrease the influence of corporations and billionaires in our elections, it is ahistorical. In fact, this has not historically been a particularly partisan issue except for the last 25 years.

There is a giant, cult-like poster of Donald Trump on the Department of Labor that I drive by every day in and out of the Capitol. It is super creepy, the idea that we have Mao- and Stalin-like banners of the President of the United States surrounding the U.S. Capitol. But next to the banner of Donald Trump on the Department of Labor building is a banner depicting the image of Teddy Roosevelt. I guess it is an attempt by the President to draw an equivalency between himself and Teddy Roosevelt. That is a pretty--that is a stretch.

But Teddy Roosevelt was a Republican, a Republican who in the wake of a pretty minor scandal, in 1904, when a couple of companies sent secret checks to his campaign and to other Republican campaigns, came to Congress and said: We have got to ban corporate money from elections.

He had trouble getting Republicans to do it at first. So he reached out across the aisle and worked with a particularly vile Democrat, a guy by the name of Benjamin ``Pitchfork'' Tillman--just a bad, bad guy. Actually, our rule XIX, which we use against each other occasionally to try to settle the tone of debate, it is in our rules because of Benjamin ``Pitchfork'' Tillman.

Anyway, Roosevelt--a Republican--and Tillman--a Democrat--got together and said: Let's ban corporations from being able to influence our elections. That is the Tillman Act that was the law of the land in practice until the Citizens United decision. For 100 years until that decision, Republicans and Democrats actually worked together pretty well to say: You know what, the people should be in charge, not corporations. That wasn't a partisan idea. It is now, unfortunately.

I am grateful to Senator Kelly for bringing us down to the floor to talk about the way our citizens feel like they don't have power, the way that the Citizens United decision has left our voters feeling like the game is rigged. But it is kind of sad that it is only Democrats down here talking about the impact that that decision has had on the influence of corporations and billionaires in our politics. For a long time, Republicans cared about trying to make sure that our democracy was fair. That is not the case any longer.

I thank Senator Kelly for allowing us to come down and have this discussion.

Mr. President, I come down to the floor in support of the resolution, but I am hoping to use my few minutes to step back from the dizzying torrent of news that we have been delivered, often contradicting sources of news from the President and his advisers, and just ask some basic questions about the wisdom of this extraordinary military endeavor and the administration's future plans in Venezuela.

I think the basic question that people are asking in my State--and, I imagine, the same is true all over the country--is, Why did we invade Venezuela? Why is our entire national conversation today seized by this question of Venezuela? Why does Senator Kaine have to come to the floor and offer a very simple resolution to clarify that the President doesn't have the authority, unilaterally, to take military action overseas without the consent of the people? Because for people in Connecticut, they haven't been spending a lot of time, over the last 12 months, thinking or talking about Venezuela. Venezuela isn't terribly relevant for the people I represent, who are worried about an economy that seems to be stagnant; healthcare premiums that are doubling, tripling for many people in my State; prices that are going up on all the stuff that you need to afford to live. And, all of a sudden, the President is talking only about Venezuela.

So why did we invade Venezuela? Why are we still talking about Venezuela?

Well, let's rule out the reasons we know don't hold water. It is not because Venezuela presents a security threat to the United States.

There was a reason we went into Afghanistan. However badly that occupation ended, there was a reason we went into Afghanistan. They were harboring a terrorist group that had attacked the United States.

Venezuela is not harboring any nonstate actors that have plans to attack the United States. The Venezuelan Government is not a security threat to the United States of America. So you can cross off that reason. It is not because Venezuela is a security threat to the United States, and everybody basically understands and knows that.

Now, the administration spent a lot of time talking about drugs. Their initial forays with respect to military intervention in and around Venezuela were targeting these boats that they

claimed were carrying drugs. And, you know, that makes a little bit more sense to the American people because there are thousands of Americans that are dying every year due to overdose.

But those overdoses, as people know, are mainly from a drug called fentanyl. Well, Venezuela doesn't produce any fentanyl. What Venezuela produces and ships is cocaine.

Now, cocaine can kill you. But that cocaine isn't even coming to the United States. Reports are that 90 percent of that cocaine is going to Europe.

So to the extent we were targeting drug boats off the coast of Venezuela, to the extent that any of the rationale for the action against Maduro had to do with the drug trade, that drug trade doesn't really have anything to do with the American epidemic of overdoses. That will continue unabated, no matter what we are doing in Venezuela.

And, then, it doesn't have anything to do, apparently, with the restoration of democracy in Venezuela or the best interests of the people of Venezuela, because immediately after the action was taken against Maduro, the Trump administration lined up behind Maduro's second in command, who is, as we speak, ramping up the repression of political speech and political activities in Venezuela. All the bad actors in the Maduro regime, with the exception of Maduro and his wife, are still there, running a kleptocracy, stealing from the Venezuelan people, shipping drugs out of the country, while continuing to destroy the Venezuelan people's ability to protest.

So this doesn't have to do with a security threat to the United States. It doesn't have to do with the flow of drugs to the United States. It doesn't have to do with restoring democracy inside Venezuela.

And so, in those moments and days after the invasion of Venezuela, we were left to wonder: What is it all about?

And Donald Trump basically told you. I mean, he did tell you. He said it was about oil. He said that he wants access to Venezuela's oil. He wants the companies that are close to him to have access to Venezuelan oil.

Remember, there was this meeting in Florida in which the oil companies came down to see him during the 2024 campaign, and they told him--this is a report. This is not an allegation. This is a mainstream media report. The oil companies said they would give him a billion dollars for his campaign in exchange for favorable treatment when he became President.

Now, he has already given them a lot of favorable treatment, but, boy, this would be a coup--the oil industry having full access to the world's largest petroleum reserves.

But, today, this morning, in our briefing, we did learn that there is another objective.

Yes, Trump wants control of the oil for his friends. But today in our briefing--and also in public remarks so there is no issue with me sharing this with you--the administration made clear that there is another purpose for seizing the oil, and that is nation building.

This is the business we thought we were getting out of. Donald Trump promised the country that he wasn't going to repeat the mistakes that we made in the past in which we tried to impose our will on a foreign country through military intervention or the threat of military intervention. But what they are proposing to do is exactly that.

It comes in a slightly different form than what we did in Afghanistan and Iraq, but it is from the same playbook. Here is their plan: They are going to seize control of Venezuelan oil under the threat of gunpoint, and then they are going to use that oil as leverage to micromanage the Government and economy of Venezuela. Let me say it again: We are going to seize Venezuelan oil by gunpoint. We are going to use control of that oil to micromanage the country.

That is nation building. That is nation building.

And as much as it should worry you that there is not a good national security justification and the only justification for this invasion is to get control of their oil, it should worry you more that now the plan is not just to seize the oil for the purposes of enriching Wall Street and the oil industry, the purpose is to seize the oil so the United States can manage and run the country of Venezuela.

Why should regular Americans care about that?

Well, first, it is this perpetuation of the same Bush-Cheney fantasy that America can impose its will on a foreign nation through the power of American military force.

Now, for now, this looks and feels different than Iraq or Afghanistan because there aren't hundreds of thousands of troops inside Venezuela, but let's make it clear. This is just a different kind of military force because the only way that we get the oil is through a military blockade--that is absolutely an act of war--and the threat of another invasion if the leader--whomever it turns out to be; today it is Delcy Rodriguez, who knows who it will be tomorrow--doesn't comply with our wishes. So we are essentially encircling Venezuela with the American military and telling them that if they don't to do what we want, we are going to stop and board their ships. We are going to attack their country again.

And, again, this is not speculation. Donald Trump has said this is the plan; that if they don't do what we want, we will be right back inside Venezuela.

This doesn't work. It has never worked in the past. It is the essence of the quagmire that we got ourselves in, in Iraq and Afghanistan; the belief, this myopic belief that neocons, that hawks have, that warmongers have, that the United States can use its military to impose our will on a foreign country.

And let me tell you, every country is unique and difficult to micromanage from afar, but Venezuela is a complicated country. We are talking about 30 million people. We are talking about active, armed insurgency groups. What happens when you try this Iraq-Afghanistan strategy is that, in the short term, it breeds resentment and extremism. That is what we saw with the growth of ISIS and the regrowth and reconstitution of the Taliban.

And in the long run, the country essentially just decides to wait you out. They knew in Afghanistan we were going to tire at some point and leave. So will the kleptocrats in Venezuela. They will play ball with us, but at some point the warships are going to leave. At some point, America can't devote one-third of its Navy to the waters around Venezuela. And as soon as we leave, the kleptocrats and the corrupt leaders will be right back in charge. If they don't want to change their country from within, if there isn't a viable mechanism to do that domestically, it is almost impossible to impose that from the outside.

The second reason that Americans should care is that it is illegal, and that is the subject of the resolution. It is illegal. An embargo is an act of war. Repeated military strikes followed on by invasion is an act of war.

And this engagement is not just a hostile act against Venezuela, it will inevitably draw increased frictions with Russia and China. Now, we shouldn't be afraid of friction with Russia and China as a principle. They are our adversaries.

But the reason that the Constitution says the people should be in charge of the decision as to whether to enter into military activity in a far-off nation--no matter whether it is a big nation or a small nation--is because there are often spillover impacts and affects. And if we are going to run a long-term naval blockade of Venezuela, if we are going to be running the economy of Venezuela from the White House, the American people have to have a say in that. The Founders, in fact, required that.

And lastly, the reason that the American people should care about this new plan, the nation building of Venezuela through the threat of military force, is because it is an enormous distraction from what actually matters to the people of this country, and so I will just end where I began. Nobody in the State of Connecticut was asking me for an invasion of Venezuela prior to the Christmas break. Everybody in my State knows that this has nothing to do with their interests.

Lives are going to be lost in this country when millions of people lose their insurance in the coming weeks. There are kids who are going hungry, who are being fed lunch and dinner but not breakfast or just dinner and not

lunch and breakfast because of the nutrition cuts that have been imposed by Republicans.

The problems that Americans are facing require a White House that is intent on running the United States of America. But this White House, under the plan that they have revealed today, is going to be running the country of Venezuela. And it is just true that when we were involved in the quagmires in Iraq and Afghanistan, it occupied an enormous amount of time at that White House. The amount of time that the President and his team spent worrying about Baghdad and worrying about Kabul--it was a distraction from the job of running the United States. And so maybe more than any of the other reasons that people should care about this plan to nation-build in Venezuela is that it is just even more reason to doubt that this President is sincere at all about doing what he said he was going to do, which is lower costs for people.

Costs are going up. Healthcare insurance is disappearing. And the President is telling you that, for the foreseeable future, he is going to be spending just as much time thinking about running Venezuela as he is about running the United States.

Finally, I will just say, if the Energy Department bill does make it to the floor of the Senate--it is being debated this week in the House--I will offer an amendment to that bill to prohibit the requisition of Venezuelan oil for the purposes of nation building.

That will, of course, be an endeavor that the Energy Department will be involved in. They will likely have to spend millions of dollars, enormous amounts of resources, to take control of that oil to sell it on the open market. That is a disastrous plan, as I have outlined, for America and the world. And so I will just tell you that we will have a chance to debate this plan if that appropriations measure reaches the Senate, and I would commend my colleagues to take a look at it and support it.

Mr. President, reserving the right to object, my understanding is this is a resolution that has been fairly recently introduced, so I just got a chance to look at it just really minutes ago.

But it is a concerning resolution. I just want to talk about why I am going to object. First of all, my friend from Tennessee is right, Tennessee has a crime problem. Tennessee has the sixth highest rate of gun crime in the Nation. If you look at the list of the top 10 States with the highest rates of gun crime, it is Wyoming, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, Montana, Oklahoma, all States represented by Republican Senators, all States with Republican legislatures, all States with Republican Governors.

These aren't States that skimp on law enforcement, but they are States that have wildly irresponsible gun laws. They are States that don't invest in interrupting cycles of violence, so it is true that there is a pretty significant violent crime problem in Wyoming and in Mississippi and Alabama and Louisiana, Arkansas, Montana, Oklahoma, and in Tennessee.

But I just came across this article from the Tennessee Lookout which quotes data compiled by the University of Memphis, and it says that the increase in arrests in Memphis has been for nonviolent offenses. In fact, a quote from General Sessions Court Clerk Tami Sawyer says:

This is supposed to be a ``Make Memphis Safe Task Force,''

and really what it is, is a ``Make Memphis Drive the Speed

Limit Task Force.''

In fact, the University of Memphis discovered that there hasn't been any influx of new cases involving violent crimes. It seems as if the statistics that the Senator just referenced aren't really different than any other month. What is happening is that there are just a lot more traffic arrests and a lot more nonviolent drug arrests.

I came across another article entitled `` `I Don't Feel Safe': Black Memphis Residents Report Harassment by Trump's Police Task Force.''

This is a long article detailing several instances of pretty horrific treatment of Memphis's Black residents, including racial profiling and other civil rights offenses.

I came across another article--this is just in like the last 5 minutes because I didn't have a lot of time to prepare for this--which details a disturbing pattern under President Trump of law enforcement resources being diverted from combating child abuse, sex trafficking, and terrorism because of this apparent obsession with safe driving in Memphis or this obsession with harassing and locking up peaceful immigrants.

So it just doesn't feel like the words in this resolution match up with the reality right now. It seems as if this task force is locking up people and arresting people for nonviolent offenses. It seems as if we are diverting resources from really serious crimes, like terrorism and child abuse. It feels like there are some potential civil rights abuses happening in Memphis.

But it also is just written in a way that is probably much more appropriate for a campaign flyer. The resolve clause is ``recognizing the monumental success of Donald Trump's decisive leadership.'' It calls Donald Trump the most pro-law enforcement President in history. I think this is probably better in a flyer for Donald Trump's reelection campaign in 2028 that he wants to run rather than on the Senate floor.

By the way, in closing, talk to the Capitol Police here about whether Donald Trump is the most pro-law enforcement President in the history of the country. Talk to the police officer who was beat over the head by a flagpole by a rioter in this building who was pardoned by Donald Trump. Ask the police officer who was tased in the neck by one of Donald Trump's supporters and then pardoned whether Donald Trump is the most pro-law enforcement President in history.

This President pardoned every single violent rioter. All you guys said: Oh, well, you know, there were some nonviolent rioters here, and they should be let off the hook, but, no, we shouldn't let off the violent rioters. Donald Trump pardoned every single violent rioter-- rioters who viciously beat Capitol Police officers. All of my Republican friends just looked the other way and said: Well, if Donald Trump thinks that is OK, then so be it.

So, yeah, it seems like the story in Memphis is a lot more complicated than my friend from Tennessee would have us believe, which is why today we shouldn't pass this resolution. We should probably get to the bottom of what is happening.

But it is just offensive to call this President the most pro-law enforcement President in the history of the country when he is endorsing--endorsing and excusing violence being perpetuated on the people that serve us and

protect us here in the U.S. Capitol, and for that reason, I will object.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Connecticut for convening us here.

This is a pretty normal thing that we do on a regular basis. We come down here and talk about something we care about. But it is kind of worth noting that this is a very unusual moment.

Most of the discussions I have had in the last hour are about trying to figure out whether we are paying food stamp benefits or we are not paying food stamp benefits. I don't know if the Presiding Officer or any Republicans who may wander onto the floor of the Senate could help us, but there are millions of really hungry families out there who have no idea whether they are getting nutrition benefits or not.

The law says they have to get benefits because Republicans and Democrats have put into the law a requirement that the President, during a shutdown, use a contingency fund, which is flush with money-- $5 billion--to pay those benefits.

The President has, alternatively, over the past 72 hours, said he is paying them; he is not paying them; he is going to comply with the court order; he is not going to comply with the court order.

This is madness. The President of the United States is playing with people's lives right now. He may think it is funny. He may think he is scoring political points, but this is ultimately leading to ruin for people. And it is yet another example of the enthusiasm that this President and many of his enablers here in the U.S. Senate have for ruining people's lives so as to be able to pad the pockets of the very rich, the very wealthy, and the very powerful in this country.

Why are we shut down right now? We are shut down primarily because Republicans have refused to negotiate with Democrats on whether or not we should write a budget that intentionally destroys the American healthcare system.

Republicans passed this Big Beautiful Bill at the beginning of the year, which intentionally sets our healthcare system on a death spiral. You can't pull $2 trillion out of the American healthcare system without parts of it collapsing: massive cuts to Medicaid, massive cuts to the Affordable Care Act, cuts to funding that goes to nursing homes, 17 million people losing their healthcare, a couple million immediately because of these Affordable Care Act subsidy cuts but, over time, 17 million people. That is a cataclysm. That is a cataclysm.

The reason we are shut down is because Republicans are refusing to negotiate with Democrats over our ``unreasonable demand'' that we just make the pain of the Big Beautiful Bill a little bit less acute this fall when premiums are scheduled to go up on American families by thousands of dollars.

These people are worth fighting for. This principle that the government shouldn't exist to transfer money from the poor and the middle class to the wealthy and the powerful is a principle that is worth fighting for.

Yesterday, Senator Warren, Senator Smith, and I took a trip down to South Florida. Why did we go to South Florida? Because in South Florida is the highest concentration of people in this country who rely on the Affordable Care Act for their healthcare coverage. In fact, in many parts of South Florida, one out of every four families gets their healthcare from the Affordable Care Act. They also need these subsidies to be able to make their healthcare affordable.

The decision that we are making now--are we going to continue the subsidies or are we not--it is a matter of life and death for everybody who relies on those subsidies in America but, in particular, in South Florida.

I guess I just want to share what we are talking about here. We met a gentleman by the name of Seth Grossman. He is a small business owner. He is a husband. He is a father. He has a wife with a diagnosis of cancer, and the ACA is what pays their medical bills.

He just went onto the exchange to see what his increase will be for the year. One thousand dollars would have been hard to handle. They run on a pretty tight budget. Five thousand dollars, well, that is a head- scratcher how the Grossmans are going to figure that out. Ten thousand dollars, wow, that would be pretty bad. An $18,000 increase for the Grossmans for their healthcare, an $18,000 increase in their premiums because of what Republicans did, intentionally, so that they could muster up enough money to give a massive tax cut to corporations and the wealthy. My Republican colleagues decided to increase premiums on the Grossmans by $18,000--they have got a cancer diagnosis that they are trying to pay for--just so they can help out their wealthy and powerful friends. But it gets worse.

Kara Farley told us her story. She had a hard time telling us her story. We had a hard time listening to her story.

Kara is a mother of four living in South Florida. She is already a cancer survivor, having survived ovarian cancer, but she just got a new diagnosis: a malignant melanoma. Her husband has a complicated form of diabetes, in which he often has seizures if it goes untreated. For 20 years, it went untreated. He was in and out of the hospital. Why? Because they were uninsured. They could not afford insurance. But the ACA and the subsidies saved them.

But now Kara has this new diagnosis. She has visits planned out over the next several months to address, to try to treat this malignant melanoma. Her premiums are not going up by 10 percent, not by 20 percent, not by 50 percent but by 100 percent. Her premiums are doubling.

They cannot afford that. Do you know what conversation Kara and her husband are having? Which one of us is going to survive? We can't afford healthcare for both of us, so for our kids, which one of us should get treated and which one of us shouldn't?

Why are you putting people through that just so that you can give a new $270,000 tax cut to the very wealthy in this country?

This is a choice. This is a choice that our Republican colleagues have made, to put families in this country through a kind of inhumane misery, deciding which parent will live, just to enrich people who are already making millions of dollars.

This is a principle worth fighting for. These people are worth fighting for.

We are shut down today because Republicans refuse to even talk to Democrats about a path forward to make sure that Kara and her husband don't have to choose which of them live. It is an abomination that we are even in that conversation, and I am glad to be here on this floor with my colleagues to explain in very real terms what this is about.

This isn't about politics. This isn't about point-scoring. This isn't about elections. This is about human beings that Republicans have intentionally decided to leave in a ruinous condition.

I am proud of my Democratic colleagues for standing up and fighting for a very simple premise; that if we are going to pass a budget, it better be a moral budget. If we are going to pass a budget, it better be a budget that doesn't send the healthcare system of South Florida and the healthcare system of many other parts of this country into a death spiral.

As we left those families yesterday, they were begging us to keep up this fight, begging us not to give in, begging us not to cave. It is a fight worth having.

I yield the floor.