Floor Statements

Mr. President, April is World Autism Month. This month is a time to recognize the millions of Americans living with autism.

Over the years, we have made progress in increasing awareness and enhancing resources for individuals living with autism. I have worked to pass the Kevin and Avonte's Law, which helps families locate missing loved ones living with autism, Alzheimer's, dementia, and other conditions that may cause them to wander.

The law is named in honor of two young boys with autism, Kevin Curtis Wills from my State of Iowa and Avonte Oquendo from New York, who tragically lost their lives after wandering from safety.

This law provides resources to train first responders and law enforcement, helping each to respond more effectively to these situations. It also provides State and local grants to support communication tools that assist families to quickly locating missing loved ones.

The purpose of this month is to increase the understanding of people living with autism. I am proud that Kevin and Avonte's Law is helping to do just that by enhancing the protection and safety of individuals living with autism.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, this month of April is National Donate Life Month. This month is the time to raise awareness about the lifesaving importance of organ donation.

There are over 103,000 Americans on the national organ transplant waiting

list. We should have confidence that our organ transplant system is efficient and fair. Sadly, my oversight dating way back to 2005 has uncovered decades of corruption and mismanagement in this donation system. It has left vulnerable patients to die on waiting lists while unused organs from generous American donors go to waste.

Speaking of waiting lists, I have been concerned about the reports of those on the waitlist being skipped over. This furthers the distrust in the organ donation system.

Through my bipartisan oversight and also the 2023 U.S. Organ Procurement and Transplantation Network law, the Federal Government is making long-overdue changes so that we take care and clean this mess up. The law improved the management and the oversight of our organ transplant system and encouraged participation from competent and transparent contractors.

To build onto those reforms, in March, the President signed a continuing resolution that provided authority for the Department of Health and Human Services to collect registration fees from organ transplant member institutions. This ensures the 2023 law can be implemented properly.

I encourage all Americans to consider being an organ donor and understand the impact that it can have on saving lives.

Of course, in addition to oversight of the new legislation, I am keeping my very close eye on how the Federal Government is implementing these new laws to give more people the chance of lifesaving transplants.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, today, I come to the floor to support National Crime Victims' Rights Week.

For many years, I have pressed the Department of Justice to do its part to shore up what is called the Crime Victims Fund. That fund supports victims and survivors of crime across the Nation.

On Monday, I, along with Senators Ernst, Crapo, and Risch, sent a letter to the Department of Justice. That letter urges the Department of Justice to ensure that criminal fines and penalties are collected and deposited into the Crime Victims Fund.

I made this request because last Congress, my oversight revealed Biden administration failures. Specifically, since the enactment of the Victims of Crime Act Fix in 2021, the Biden Justice Department failed to collect and deposit more than $1 billion in criminal fines and penalties, which belongs to this fund. Instead, the Biden administration allowed the fines to be paid to foreign governments and elsewhere.

Since my oversight shined the light on the Biden Justice Department's failures and misguided approach, the Department of Justice inspector general opened its own independent audit. And at my request, the Government Accountability Office also agreed to review the Department of Justice's administration of this Crime Victims Fund.

History has shown that sunshine is the best disinfectant. Since my Crime Victims Fund oversight began, the balance increased from $1 billion in 2023--the lowest in over a decade--to its current balance of $4-3/10 billion. Now, those figures that I just gave you came from the Department of Justice statistics.

The Department of Justice must ensure that the Crime Victims Fund has adequate resources, and if the Department of Justice doesn't, organizations across the Nation helping survivors and helping victims of crime are at serious risk of potentially closing their doors and not being able to continue this help.

The Department of Justice shouldn't allow the mistakes of the Biden administration to happen again.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, we are in the middle of what is known as March Madness. I am not talking about budget reconciliation or tax season; I am here to congratulate and say thank you to our outstanding student athletes who have competed their hearts out on the court and on the mat these last few weeks.

First, I want to pay tribute to our Iowa teams who made it into the NCAA Division I basketball tournament. That includes Iowa State University women's and men's teams, the University of Iowa women's team, and the men's team at Drake University in Des Moines.

Division I wrestlers from the Iowa Hawkeyes, Iowa State Cyclones, and my alma mater, the University of Northern Iowa, competed earlier this month in Philadelphia.

I want to congratulate two teams from my home State who won their respective collegiate championships this month. In the NCAA Division III wrestling national championship, the Knights from Wartburg College returned from Rhode Island as cochampions and with their 16th national title--the most in Division III history. The women's basketball team at Dordt University in Sioux Center returned to the NAIA national championship held last week in Sioux City, IA. The Dordt Defenders defended their title and are back-to-back champions.

Sports brings communities together from one generation to the next. As loyal UNI Panther fans and proud boosters for Dike-New Hartford athletics, Barbara and I would say that sports are like glue that sticks, a refreshing antidote in these polarizing times.

Mr. President, I have another point to make, which I think I have made once or twice before. Remember last December, we got to December and didn't pass 12 appropriations bills. We didn't pass a farm bill. We didn't debate the DOD authorization bill. We didn't solve the high prescription drug prices, and about 65 Senators backed bills doing that.

So I want to remind my colleagues that there are 14 Fridays between now and the end of this fiscal year on September 30, and we ought to think about, do we want another December 2025 without doing 12 appropriations bills, without doing a farm bill, without doing the DOD authorization bill, without a debate in the Senate, and not doing anything about high prescription drug prices?

Now is the time to start thinking about whether a 2- or 3-day working week in the U.S. Senate is enough time to do all this important stuff.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, on my annual tour of Iowa's 99 counties, I visited recently the Boys & Girls Club of Cedar Valley in Waterloo, IA. This was during our last congressional State work period. I held a Q and A with the young Iowans who participate in that afterschool program. We talked about the importance of those programs, advice on how to be a good citizen, and celebrating African-American History Month.

I was impressed by the students and appreciated the opportunity to hear directly from them. So I encourage Iowans to volunteer with this organization or any civic organization in need of such volunteers. Giving your time to others helps keep our communities strong. If there is anything you can do to benefit the next generation, you should do it.

Besides this example of the Boys & Girls Clubs, I make a practice of going to about 10 or 12 high schools a year, and there are always a couple lessons that I am asked about: how to be a good citizen and ``What advice you would give to us?''

So I try to explain to these young people that the reason I go around to meet young people at high schools is because they never come to my open town meetings. You never get anybody under 18 years of age to do that.

So I like to tell them that I consider representative government a two-way street: Those of us elected are one half of it, and our constituents are the other half of it. If you are going to have representative government, you have to know what is on the constituents' minds, and the best way to do that is to have dialogue face to face with your constituents. Obviously, it is not the only way you get opinions, but it is the best way to get that opinion.

Then they say: Do you have any advice for us?

I say: In America, you have a chance to either govern or be governed. You have a chance to rule or be ruled. And I hope, as young people, you choose the course of helping govern.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, today, Senator Shaheen of New Hampshire and I are introducing a resolution. That resolution recognizes April as Sexual Assault Awareness and Prevention Month.

Far too many Americans have suffered as a result of this terrible crime. Sexual violence doesn't discriminate. Statistics show that two in five women and one in four men will experience sexual assault sometime throughout their life, and yet those numbers can't capture the pain, the fear, and the lifelong impact that survivors endure.

We must ensure that these brave survivors know that they are not alone. That means expanding resources for survivors, holding criminals accountable, and fostering a culture where no one suffers in silence or shame.

So Senator Shaheen and I urge our colleagues to recommit to this cause, not just for this 1 month out of 12 but every day of the year. To survivors of sexual assault, we see you, we stand with you, and we will not stop fighting for you.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, probably all my colleagues are very concerned that we have learned, over the last few months or couple years, that our Department of HHS is not tracking the 300,000 children--unaccompanied children--under our immigration laws. We don't know where they are. And if you are one of these Senators that is concerned about that, I would like to say, this morning, I want to discuss a Department of Homeland Security inspector general report that everyone in the Senate or their staffs ought to be on top of.

Last week's report confirmed alarm bells that my investigative work had been ringing for a decade. The Health and Human Services Office of Refugee Resettlement is responsible for placing unaccompanied children with fully vetted U.S. sponsors. And so what we are finding out is that children are being placed in sponsorship that has not been properly vetted.

Hundreds of thousands of children were unaccounted for during the Biden administration. This inspector general report confirmed that the Biden administration's Health and Human Services failed to take necessary steps to protect and find migrant children.

Last Congress, my oversight attacked these failures on behalf of these children. The Biden administration obstructed my oversight. More than that, the Biden administration also ripped up an agreement made during President Trump's first term allowing much more sharing of sponsor information with law enforcement.

The Biden administration worried that the information would show sponsors were here illegally. This was the Biden administration's priority over the lives and health of children. To emphasize whether or not sponsors were here illegally was more important than protecting the lives of these children.

So simply put, the last administration's conduct, to include its obstruction of my oversight, is a textbook example of what not to do. So I urge my colleagues, please, read the inspector general's report.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today, 20 of my colleagues and I will introduce legislation to stop the abuse of universal injunctions that we are seeing all across the country--all of this to stop the Trump agenda.

Universal injunctions violate the words of the Constitution that we agreed that the courts can only hear ``case or controversy.'' And that is a requirement of article III of the Constitution because they apply court orders to people not even parties to the lawsuits--so the necessity for doing away with universal injunctions violating the ``case-or-controversy'' requirements.

Universal injunctions were almost unheard of for the first 175 years of our history and only became common in the last decade. In addition to being unconstitutional, they are also anti-democratic. Universal injunctions have become a favorite tool of those seeking to obstruct President Trump's agenda.

Individual district judges who don't even have authority over any of the other 92 district courts are singlehandedly vetoing policies the American people elected President Trump to implement.

Now, universal injunctions have been used against both Democrat and Republican administrations since they have sprung up so numerously in the last few years.

But in the past 2 months alone, judges have issued more universal injunctions against the Trump administration than President Biden faced throughout his entire 4-year term.

By exercising power this way, the courts are doing great damage to the judicial process that they should be working to protect, and the Supreme

Court could stop this whole process, but the Supreme Court has not taken such action.

So it is Congress's job to legislate. So what would you expect? I am introducing legislation to solve this problem.

My bill prevents judges from providing nonparty relief, make temporary restraining orders immediately appealable, and reset the separation of powers. In short, I am trying to fix a bipartisan problem that has been plaguing both Democratic and Republican administrations alike.

Mr. President, today, 20 of my colleagues and I will introduce legislation to stop the abuse of universal injunctions that we are seeing all across the country--all of this to stop the Trump agenda.

Universal injunctions violate the words of the Constitution that we agreed that the courts can only hear ``case or controversy.'' And that is a requirement of article III of the Constitution because they apply court orders to people not even parties to the lawsuits--so the necessity for doing away with universal injunctions violating the ``case-or-controversy'' requirements.

Universal injunctions were almost unheard of for the first 175 years of our history and only became common in the last decade. In addition to being unconstitutional, they are also anti-democratic. Universal injunctions have become a favorite tool of those seeking to obstruct President Trump's agenda.

Individual district judges who don't even have authority over any of the other 92 district courts are singlehandedly vetoing policies the American people elected President Trump to implement.

Now, universal injunctions have been used against both Democrat and Republican administrations since they have sprung up so numerously in the last few years.

But in the past 2 months alone, judges have issued more universal injunctions against the Trump administration than President Biden faced throughout his entire 4-year term.

By exercising power this way, the courts are doing great damage to the judicial process that they should be working to protect, and the Supreme

Court could stop this whole process, but the Supreme Court has not taken such action.

So it is Congress's job to legislate. So what would you expect? I am introducing legislation to solve this problem.

My bill prevents judges from providing nonparty relief, make temporary restraining orders immediately appealable, and reset the separation of powers. In short, I am trying to fix a bipartisan problem that has been plaguing both Democratic and Republican administrations alike.

Madam President, the Senate will soon vote to confirm my good friend and fellow Iowan Matt Whitaker to be the U.S. Ambassador to NATO.

I support his nomination and urge all my colleagues to vote for his confirmation. Matt is someone who is well known back in Iowa, and he has earned the respect of many here in Washington, too.

He has a long record of service to our country, from his time as Acting Attorney General in the first Trump administration to his work as chief of staff at the Department of Justice.

He has traveled around the world, meeting with leaders on important issues, including dealing with the fentanyl crisis and negotiating with Chinese officials.

During the George W. Bush administration, Matt served our State as U.S. attorney for the Southern District from 2004 to 2009, where he worked hard to keep our communities safe.

In Iowa, he is known not just for his work, but for his deep pride in his home State. He never lets you forget that he is a proud graduate of the University of Iowa, where he earned his undergraduate degree, MBA, and law degree.

In fact, he even played football for the Hawkeyes, including going to the Rose Bowl, which speaks to his work ethic and commitment to teamwork.

Matt carries that same commitment and drive in every role he takes on--whether it is on the football field, as a U.S. attorney, or in his leadership in national law enforcement. This dedication is exactly what he will bring to his work with NATO.

I am proud to support a true friend and fellow Iowan who has always shown the highest standards of service to our country. I ask my colleagues to support Matt Whitaker's confirmation.

He will serve with the same passion and energy that he brings to his love of Iowa football, and I have no doubt that he will represent the United States on the world stage with the same level of commitment.

Mr. President, I am going to ask my colleagues, as a reminder, that there are some tricks of the trade to get to your political enemies or for other reasons like covering up embarrassing situations or just to cover up wrongdoing.

I am going to use and compliment this administration. As one of its first acts after taking office, the Trump administration and Attorney General Bondi shut down the FBI's Foreign Influence Task Force. Despite criticism, this is a positive step, given what the task force had been twisted into by the Biden administration.

This task force was created in 2017 by then-Director Wray for very good reasons. We were told it was designed to counteract maligned foreign influence operations. However, this task force became infected with politics. In other words, this task force came to be used as a political weapon.

So let me explain how this became weaponized.

As an example, in 2020, during my and Senator Johnson's Biden family investigation, that FBI task force was used in unnecessarily briefing us two Senators, but that only happened after pressure from our Democratic colleagues for it to happen. So pure and simple, this was a setup.

The FBI wrongly did the bidding of the Democrats. The results of the setup was this: The contents of that briefing were later leaked to the media, even though the FBI promised Senator Johnson and this Senator confidentiality. Those leaks were used to falsely link our Biden family investigation to somehow advancing Russian disinformation. The FBI's conduct undermined and frustrated our congressional investigation.

My and Senator Johnson's investigation made public Obama-Biden administration records. That included Treasury information of financial transactions between and among Biden family members. We also made public authentic bank records showing deep financial connection between and among the Biden family and China. Authentic records like these, as we all know now, have nothing to do with Russian disinformation.

So I compliment President Trump and Attorney General Bondi for getting rid of this Foreign Influence Task Force and its obstructive conduct. That is how it ended up.

If the task force did any good, I only know what it did bad, and that was setting Senator Johnson and I up because there was some embarrassing information that they obviously did not want out.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, on this day in 1949, the Russian-Soviet regime occupying the Baltic countries rounded up 95,000 people, mostly women and children, and sent them to Siberia.

During Stalin's rule, more than 220,000 innocent people were deported to cold Siberia. This doesn't even include political prisoners sent to the gulag camps.

This day is observed by those Baltic countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania by lighting candles in the memory of these deportees.

The reason the Soviets did this is pretty simple: They wanted to crush civil society in newly occupied areas because they took over the Baltic countries in 1940.

The ultimate goal was to eliminate Estonian, Latvian, and Lithuanian national identity entirely, replacing it with, of course, a Soviet- Russian identity. The Soviets did not succeed in this effort.

Now, you may not remember this from history, but the United States never recognized the illegal Soviet occupation of these three Baltic States.

Now, the people of those three countries kept the flame of freedom alive by quietly telling their children the truth about how their countries were once free and independent.

Then, when the Soviet empire showed signs of weakness, their desire for freedom burst forth in what is called the Singing Revolution. It got the name because of the use of national songs banned by the Soviet, and this, by singing it, was their means of protest.

Fifty years of brutal Soviet occupation could not extinguish the flames of freedom and all Baltic countries are again free and prosperous and these three countries happen to be among the most pro- American allies.

I wonder if we can learn a lesson because we know that when Putin invaded Ukraine in 2022, he has since kidnapped about 20,000 young people from Ukraine and taken them to Russia to ``Russiafy'' them, I guess you would say.

We don't hear enough of that. We ought to be reminded of what the Soviets did after World War II, and it seems like the world has not learned a lesson or Putin wouldn't get away with his kidnapping of 20,000 children to take them to Russia from Ukraine.

We should not allow this to continue, and the United States of America ought to be very cautious in any dealings with an international war criminal as Putin has been so condemned.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Reserving the right to object, before I give my reasons for objecting, I want to comment on a couple of things in your remarks.

Before you spoke, you spoke about the times that we often agree. Just today, you and I--I won't go into the subject matter. But just today, you and I cosponsored a bill together, as an example.

The other thing I would like to say, before I go to my remarks, is that I want to associate myself with your quote from our colleague Senator Cornyn that you don't impeach judges just because of a decision, because we would be impeaching judges all the time. That is my additional comment.

The third thing is to inform you that I hope I can get, as chairman of the Judiciary Committee, something moving in this area. I happen to agree with some Democrats, in previous years, that said some judges have gone way beyond what a judge should do on national injunctions, and I hope to find a solution for that. I would hope that you and I maybe could work on that together because I know Democrats have made that same accusation about district court judges in 1 district out of 93 in the United States applying their decision nationally.

So now, I would like to go to my reason for objecting. A few weeks ago, I objected to a version of this resolution because I considered that something that both Democrats and Republicans do too much around here is nothing but a political messaging exercise. Today, I come here for the same reason.

I won't stand by and allow my colleagues to imply that ``the rule of law''--those three words--only matters when there is a Republican President.

As I explained a few weeks ago, the Biden administration engaged in 4 years of complete lawlessness. Instead of condemning it, Democrats viciously attacked the legitimacy of the courts for ruling against the Biden administration. The silence that we heard from Democrats about the rule of law during the Biden years is quite deafening.

I won't repeat my last speech, but I will expand on one of my previous objections.

This resolution demands that the President comply with all court orders, but it is completely silent about the role of the Federal courts to adhere to the law themselves. For a number of years, but particularly in the last few months, we have seen increasingly sweeping, potentially lawless orders coming from any 1 of our 600 district judges out of the 93 districts we have.

Although our Founders saw an important role for the judiciary, individual judges have empowered themselves to become nationwide policymakers, as opposed to interpreting law. I consider this very dangerous.

In the last few weeks, individual unelected judges made policy decisions for the whole country. Some examples include: ordering the President to stop deporting foreign terrorists; directing the military to enlist and retain transgender servicemembers; directing who will and will not staff the President's administration--that is really extraordinary, I think--and then, lastly, an example, ordering the immediate expenditure of billions of dollars. One judge even went so far as to order the government to pay out 2 billion taxpayer dollars and to do it within 36 hours.

Much of this would go to organizations not even involved in the case, and the government would never be able to get this money back, even if they ultimately won on appeal.

In the 2 months since President Trump has entered office, his administration has suffered more of these sweeping orders at the hands of district court judges than the Biden administration experienced in 4 years.

I want to emphasize that--more obstacles to carrying out what the President wants to do in 2 months and stopped by the court more than the entire 4 years of the Biden administration.

Has President Trump chosen to ignore this avalanche of irresponsible court orders? Flat-out no. He has appealed these outrageous decisions, just as he promised he would do when he said:

I always abide by the courts and then I'll have to appeal

it. . . . The answer is I always abide by the courts.

Appellate courts have responded by striking down many of the unlawful intrusions into Presidential authority, but the core problem remains: The President of the United States shouldn't have to ask permission from more than 600 different district court judges to manage the executive branch that he was elected to lead.

The practice of sweeping, nationwide injunctions, broad restraining orders, and judicial policymaking must end. It is unconstitutional, it is anti-democratic, and it is imprudent. If the Supreme Court won't stop it, then Congress must. And I wish the Supreme Court would get on this and do it right away.

This issue isn't a partisan issue. I want to work with Democrats, as I just said to the Senator from Illinois.

Democrats, work with us to fix this.

In the past, Democrats and Republicans have both criticized nationwide injunctions and the power of individual district judges. My Democratic colleagues have even proposed legislation to rein in some of these abuses.

You don't have to take my word for it. In 2022, Justice Elena Kagan correctly observed:

It just can't be right that one district judge can stop a

nationwide policy in its tracks and leave it stopped for the

years it takes to go through the normal process.

In 2024, President Biden's Solicitor General, Elizabeth Prelogar, argued before the Supreme Court. Now listen to this quote:

A court of equity may grant relief only to the parties

before it. The district court violated that principle by

issuing a universal injunction purporting to enjoin the Act

itself and forbidding the enforcement of the Act even against

non-parties.

So, as I told Senator Durbin, I hope to soon be holding a hearing in the Senate Judiciary Committee to address this matter and even introduce legislation to end these abuses. I hope both my Democratic and Republican colleagues join me in this effort.

For the resolution at hand, I propose an amendment so it reads ``the Constitution of the United States and established precedent require the executive branch to comply with all lawful Federal court rulings.'' This simple change of one word--``lawful''--will show that Congress expects both the executive branch and the judicial branch to respect the rule of law and constitutional constraints.

My amendment mirrors what the Chief Justice said in 2024. The Chief Justice rightly raised concerns about the intimidation and the threats leveled at the Court in the wake of the Dobbs decision. He said:

The final threat to judicial independence is defiance of

judgments lawfully entered by courts of competent

jurisdiction.

He had no problem adding the word ``lawful'' in. We shouldn't have it any other way.

So therefore I ask the Senator, my friend from Illinois, to modify his request such that the Grassley amendment to the resolution at the desk be considered and agreed to.

Are you asking about the original one?

I object.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of my amendments at the desk be printed in the Record.

I know of no further debate on the nomination.