Floor Statements

Mr. President, I rise as chairman of the Select Committee on Ethics and on behalf of the members of the committee and its staff to pay tribute to Danny Remington, the committee's director of IT and operations, as he retires after 30 years of Senate service and almost 29 of those years with the committee. Danny joined the staff in October of 1996, hired by then-committee Chairman McConnell. In total, Danny served with 10 committee chairmen, five staff directors, and dozens of Senate colleagues who will remember his steady demeanor and willingness to assist with any task. Danny's tenure spans decades of technological advancement and process improvement. Joining the committee in a world of floppy disks and years before the office had an internet connection, Danny transitioned the committee into 21st century, or at least 20th century, technology while maintaining an enduring commitment to the core principle of confidentiality that guides all the committee's work. Beyond the technical achievements, Danny represented the committee well throughout the Senate community by establishing connections with his fellow staff members, whether they worked for the Architect of the Capitol, the Sergeant at Arms, Secretary of the Senate, another committee, or a Member office.

As Danny retires, he looks forward to spending more time with his family, his wife Theresa, and their grown sons

Ryan and Reece coaching volleyball and enjoying some well-deserved time on the beach in Ocean City, MD. On behalf of the members and staff of the Select Committee on Ethics, I thank Danny for his decades of service and commitment to the U.S. Senate. I offer my sincere best wishes and gratitude to Danny and his family as he begins his retirement. Thank you, Danny.

Mr. President, I flew back to Washington, DC, from the glorious State of Oklahoma on Monday. It was a normal flight for me to be able to fly in on a Monday morning.

As I landed at DCA airport and squeezed out of my coach seat, where I had been for the last 4 hours, and walked off the plane and into the terminal, there was a line of police officers on both sides of the gate. They were honor guards from all over the country. As I walked off the plane, I realized there was a family member of the fallen on my same plane, and I didn't know it.

Many Americans may not know that this is Police Week. It is a week when the Nation stops to be able to pause to thank all those police officers who served around the country and who literally put their lives on the line every single week for our country--every week.

My colleague Ashley Moody is helping to cohost this time as we have a conversation about Police Week and what it means to be in law enforcement in America now. She is not only a great Senator from Florida, but she is also the wife of the deputy police chief of the Plant City Police Department in Florida. She knows what it means to be able to hug a loved one, look them in the eye, and say: Stay safe out there. She knows exactly what that means.

As I stepped off the plane on Monday and walked through the middle of that honor guard, as they were looking for a family member to step off somewhere on that plane, what they were looking for this week was the family of a fallen police officer to step off that same plane, whom they were going to escort into Washington, DC, because, this week, their loved one's name is being added to the list of law enforcement who have died in the line of duty.

It is a painful reminder of the reality of what it means to be in law enforcement. You get up every day, and you take care of your neighbors. Some days, you are pulling over a reckless driver and trying to be able to protect the rest of the community from someone who has had too much alcohol, smoked too much marijuana. By the way, I think any is too much, but that is a different conversation for a different day. For that person, they are going to try to protect the rest of society from their dangerous acts.

It is that moment when we are in traffic, we are driving down the road, and a car whips around us at 90 miles an hour. We are used to traffic, and we think: I wish there was a police officer here to take care of that.

They are out there. Some of them are going to get up this morning very early and do a warrant service on someone who has violated the law, whom they are going to be able to actually get to their house maybe at 3 in the morning and to try to be able to arrest them before there is an incident.

There are some of them who, actually, when there is a shot being fired in an apartment complex somewhere, and as everybody else scatters, they turn on their lights and drive toward the sound.

They are law enforcement. That is what they do. They get up every day, and they put on a vest to be able to protect the center of their body because they know, at any point during the course of the day, they could be facing danger coming right at them. They serve their community.

It is always interesting to me when I often ask people their thoughts and beliefs about law enforcement. I say: The real test of what you think about police is when you are driving down the highway, you look in your rearview mirror, and you see an officer right behind you. That is always the test of what you actually think about police. It is that first emotion. Is that first emotion, ``Oh, no''? Or is that first emotion, ``I feel safer; there is a police officer right behind me''?

You see, those law enforcement officers literally spend every day protecting total strangers who live in their community. They work very long hours, a lot of times in isolation. They go into dangerous places--often, first by themselves--because they care about their community.

In the past decade, there seems to have been a shift in attitudes about law enforcement. For some reason, it has become trendy to be able to attack law enforcement, to belittle them, to demand we defund police departments entirely, to be able to criticize them for every sort of thing.

I will tell you, every police officer I talk to will say: Hey, we are all humans too. We make mistakes, as well, just like everyone else.

But for some reason, law enforcement doesn't seem to get the same grace everybody else gets.

When somebody gets pulled over and gets a warning, they are grateful for the grace. But when the news hits of a police officer doing something, it seems the community doesn't want to give them a warning. It wants them to always get consequences.

What I hear from most law enforcement whom I know is: Hey, we are just one of everybody else, but the difference is we have dedicated our lives to protecting people who will cuss us out and will literally lie to us all day long. But we are still committed to protect them.

That is what they do. They literally get into a dangerous situation, as has happened recently in Oklahoma. There could have been shots coming at them or an attack coming at them, but, instead, that person turned the weapon on themselves. And law enforcement immediately moved from trying to protect the community and protecting themselves to jumping in immediately and trying to save the life of the person who just started attacking them.

How many people would do that? Law enforcement does it every day-- every day.

There is an old adage in tax policy: If you tax something more, you get less of it. Raise the taxes on it enough, and people just stop buying it.

You know, it works exactly the same with criticism. If you criticize something more and more and more, you get less and less and less of it.

I remember a day, when I was growing up, that everybody wanted to be a police officer because everyone had respect for police officers. Now there is a generation growing up that all they have heard is criticism of law enforcement. And do you know what? It is hurting recruiting.

Why don't we look people in the eye and see them for who they are? They are folks who get up every day, defend their neighbors, do what they can to bring calm to a crazy, chaotic situation, and serve total strangers.

I have had the benefit of my dad being a smalltown cop for decades. I know what it is like to be in a family and to be able to think about: How is your family member doing today?

So when I talk about law enforcement, maybe, it is a little different for me. But I think it should be a little different for our whole community, actually, and I think it should be different for our Nation.

So on this Police Week, I have two things to say: Thank you to those who are serving all over the country right now, some right here in this Capitol. Thank you to those folks who are serving our Nation today. We are exceptionally grateful for you.

And for those of you who, this year, have lost a loved one in the line of duty, I want you to know that our Nation is grateful. We see their sacrifice, and we are of the tribe to be able to say: We want this to be different.

In 2020, Sergeant Johnson--Craig Johnson--I am going to say his whole name. Sergeant Craig Johnson in 2020 was shot during a traffic stop in Tulsa. He was 45 years old. He had a wife, Kristi, and two sons, Connor and Clinton.

When Sergeant Johnson's killer was sentenced in 2022, his wife Kristi just had one clear thing to say. She said:

My request at this time is that the silent majority that I

have seen and heard from starts speaking up and changing the

anti-police culture being created.

Kristi, we still hear you, 3 years later, and we are still grateful for the sacrifice you and your family have made and for other families like yours. We are not silent. We are grateful.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the scheduled rollcall vote begin now.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I spent last weekend along our southern border, again, as I have done many weekends, to be able to get down to the border in different areas. Last weekend, I went down to the San Diego-Tijuana border area.

In that area, there are 1.3 million people living in San Diego. That city bumps right up against our border with Tijuana. Tijuana, Mexico, has over 2 million people living in that town.

There is a 30-foot fence that actually separates the two there. That is a double-section fence. It is incredibly important to be able to manage that border, not only for the crossing of traffic illegally but also for the crossing of legal traffic. One of the largest ports and traffic movement of people and cargo in the world is right there, and it is an incredibly important location for us.

I went there to be able to see the implementation of the new authorities and the things that the President is actually implementing there that have so precipitously dropped the movement of illegal immigration and have dramatically increased the number of interdiction of drugs that are moving through that area. That literally benefits the entire country.

What I found when I visited with the folks from CBP was that morale was up and the chaos is down. I found folks who are there that are law enforcement professionals actually doing law enforcement. When I visited with some of those same folks before, during the Biden administration, they were being treated like hotel check-in staff that were being asked to actually just move people into the country as fast as possible. Now, they are actually able to do their jobs, to actually enforce the law, and to do what they signed up to do. And they are eager to be able to protect the Nation and know full well the threats that we are facing.

In that area in San Diego, we have had more of what are called special-interest aliens move through that area of our border than any other area of our entire 2,000-mile-long border with Mexico. People from Russia, China, from Central Africa, from Uzbekistan, and from multiple other places fly into Tijuana and then literally drive up to the gap in the fence and walk across, right into the United States.

At least, that is how it used to be. That is not what is happening anymore.

So I wanted to be able to talk through with this body a few of the things that I saw there and the work that is still undone.

One, that section of the gap in the fence is right there at Tijuana, on the eastern side of San Diego. That gap is still there, but something has changed. Construction is beginning to be able to close that gap, and it is incredibly important. It is one of the first places that CBP and Border Patrol took me to and pointed out to say: We need this gap closed. It is very important that we actually get this gap secured because it is in a very remote area, difficult to traverse, and it is dangerous for our Border Patrol folks to have to be able to chase someone through that area.

In fact, while I was in that area, around that gap, I literally watched one of the Lakota helicopters come in and to be able to identify someone who was literally cutting through that area and smuggling right through that zone. The good news is things are different now, and that person was caught because we have the manpower in place to be able to catch them.

And that person will be deported immediately. That is also a big change that has actually occurred.

So things are different in what is actually happening there, and I am grateful to be able to see the chaos going down and the morale and the enforcement going significantly up. That gap in the fence will be closed in the days ahead. And as one of many requests the Border Patrol has: just help us have a deterrent in this area so that we can better patrol and be able to chase folks down that are violating American law.

They need additional personnel as well. I will talk a little bit about that in a moment. They need additional resources to be able to do their tasks, and they need additional authorities to be able to make sure they can fully execute the law that is put in front of them.

Something that was interesting--the multiple times I have been to the border the last several years--often the Border Patrol would tell me they can't put checkpoints up anymore. They used to have checkpoints on the major highways as they were headed north away from the border, and they would check vehicles for people being smuggled and drugs being smuggled into the country and other contraband. They weren't able to do that because they were asked to actually go to the border to facilitate people coming in, and so they could no longer do those checkpoints.

Guess what. Those checkpoints are back up again. They are actually stopping people on the highways now to be able to check and see if there are drugs there that have found their way across the border and are moving north, and they are interdicting narcotics again there.

They are able to actually process a lot faster turning people around, to have the people at the checkpoints, and to be able to do the enforcement because the numbers are so precipitously lower than what they used to be.

What does that mean side by side? A year ago, we had some days we had 12,000 people a day illegally crossing our southern border--12,000 people a day.

Last week, most days were around 200. In fact, for the first time that I can remember in a very long time, when I checked in at the Border Patrol station and was talking with them about where things were going and how things were going and what has changed, as we walked past the area they would typically check in unaccompanied minors, that room was empty. I can't remember the last time I walked past, and there were zero unaccompanied minors that were there.

The border is being enforced. It is bringing some sanity to our southern border. It is an enormous help and change. But there are a couple areas for cartels that are obviously moneymaking organizations-- they are very focused on what they are going to do next.

Literally, right there at the port of entry, they discovered a tunnel being dug directly under the port of entry to be able to smuggle drugs and people in.

Now, our teams were able to find it, identify it, and they are going to shut it down, but the cartels continue to be able to move and to be able to find other ways. We should make no mistake, just across the border from San Diego, there are three active criminal cartels that are ruthlessly killing each other. They are ruthlessly killing anyone that would try to cross the border without paying their fee, and they are determined to bring violence to Northern Mexico and chaos to the Southern United States and push as much drugs as they possibly can into our country. We should make no mistake about that.

They are determined to be able to do that, and we should do whatever we can to be able to stop that violence and that chaos.

The other thing that came up over and over again was now that the southern border--the land border--is being shut down, the cartels are not only drilling tunnels now, but they are also putting folks on jet skis and in Panga boats, taking them out into the Pacific and trying to be able to come around the maritime barrier and be able to drop off somewhere around the California coast.

Just this week, we had a smuggler that was smuggling folks in a Panga boat just on that exact route that capsized in the Pacific, and multiple people died. Our Coast Guard went and responded and rescued multiple people as well. Those folks will be processed, and they will be returned right back to Mexico again.

But that is the kind of danger these folks face to be able to come across. The cartels don't care about the people that they are moving. They just care about the dollars. They don't care about America. They just care about pushing drugs on us so that they can make more and more money.

I had the opportunity to be able to do a ride-along with some of the Coast Guard and be able to see firsthand some of the things that they are doing. They need additional resources. This body should pay more attention to the Coast Guard. They are not only important for our national security or foreign threats coming at us but for our port security and rescues that are off coast, but they are also being pushed really hard right now by the cartels trying to be able to smuggle drugs and people into the United States. The Coast Guard needs this body to be able to stand alongside of them so they can do their job.

They are remarkable people that are literally out there every single day, working to be able to help our country, and I was exceptionally grateful to get time with them to be able to see what their day looks like, how things are going, and the important work that they are doing.

As the Border Patrol is seeing fewer coming across the land border, the Coast Guard is seeing more. So we have got to pay attention to all areas of our border.

I did note a couple things that I have read. That was interesting for me to actually go down and to be able to see because I have seen all these media reports, all these different pieces of fake news that are coming up or all these different challenges about what the Trump administration is doing at our border.

I could highlight a bunch of them, but let me highlight a couple of them that came up. I have heard over and over again that the Trump administration is not honoring due process. They are not honoring due process. They are ignoring the Constitution to be able to do that.

Interestingly enough, just last week, President Trump's DHS released an extensive release that they called 100 days of fighting fake news.

One of the items that they listed as the fake news that they are fighting is that aliens don't go through a process. Their statement: They do, according to the Constitution.

Secretary Rubio also made that same statement on ``Meet the Press'' as well, saying everybody goes through due process--everyone has a process.

Illegal aliens do not have rights like American citizens. No one is denying that. That is a fact. But there is a process they are being taken through. The law is being followed. I watched it personally.

When people come across our border illegally, here is what is actually happening along our border. They are arrested. They are being instructed by law enforcement that they violated American law, that they are not legally present, and they are being immediately turned around and sent back to their country. That is the legal process.

For individuals that were coming in from China--and I saw several that were actually being processed through that--they are being detained. Then they are being put on the next plane out.

Special interest aliens aren't being released into the country anymore like they were under the Biden administration by the thousands. They are now being sent back to their countries, as they exactly should be, following the exact legal process that should be done.

And I saw for the first time in a very long time a legal process being done that if you cross our southern border and you have been deported before--which is why we don't just grab them at the border and turn them around. We actually get fingerprints, get information from people in the processing. If you are coming a second or a third time, I watched the prosecution by U.S. attorneys actually prosecuting individuals there through that process, getting them a felony and then putting them on a bus back to Mexico again.

They are following the law. They are going through exactly what the process is doing. They are doing the legal process.

I also heard over and over again this fake news about our military going down and our military taking over our border. I actually got a chance to be able to meet some of our military down there. They are doing pretty remarkable work along our border.

We have got engineering groups that are there that are helping beef up that border wall, finding areas where folks are finding ways to be able to scale a 30-foot wall, finding ways to be able to strengthen that wall to make sure that never happens again.

That is some of our military engineering groups doing that.

I watched that Lakota helicopter that I mentioned before. That Lakota helicopter is actually a military helicopter. Their job is not to arrest. That is Federal law enforcement on the ground who is doing it, but they are able to be an extra set of eyes in the air to be able to identify folks that are getting around those gaps in the wall, smuggling in people and smuggling in drugs so our Border Patrol can focus in on those areas.

I watched members of our military sitting at a workstation with the Coast Guard at the port area, helping monitor the different cameras that are in our port area, looking for those jet skis and those Panga boats that are smuggling in people and drugs.

They are doing a great job. I am grateful those folks are there. But this body needs to have a further conversation about how do we move more Coast Guard folks there so that they can take on that job, allowing our military to go back to doing their first job. How we can actually reinforce some of the resources that are needed so that our military can do their first task, and our DHS folks can do their first task?

So, yes, it is more fake news that our military is there actually being law enforcement. They are not being law enforcement, but they are helping our law enforcement to make our law enforcement even more effective.

I am grateful to be able see the numbers drop so much, allowing our law enforcement to go back.

If I can just make this one last statement: I won't ever forget standing at that port, which is incredibly busy--lots of trucks coming through, lots of Customs screenings and everything, all the things that are happening--and I asked the Customs folks there: What has changed?

They said: We are able to catch a lot more drugs now than we were able to catch because we have got more time to focus in on catching those drugs.

This is going to make a huge difference in America for us to be able to focus on illegal activity coming across our border. When those numbers drop, we are able to go more after what is the worst of the worst coming into our country.

I am grateful to see the work that is happening on our southern border. We all should go see it.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I have six requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Mr. President, I join my colleague in expressing some frustration that we can't vote on the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It is the kind of stuff that drives people crazy back home for an individual that is the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. Most people back in my State of Oklahoma think this has already been done. But to not be able to move on this, to literally have my Democratic colleagues block it and say we are not going to allow the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff for our military to be able to be there, it is just another one of those moments of Washington, DC, gridlock and frustration, especially when this person moved out of committee with a vote of 24 to 4.

That is overwhelming bipartisan support. There is just not controversy about this nominee. But now suddenly to be able to have a game, to be able to say we want to be able to stall this out and maybe block this person until after Easter, so we don't have a Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff is frustrating for people to say: Come on, just have the vote.

So I join my colleagues on the Republican side to say: What is the problem? Everyone knows this person is going to be voted on and is going to be approved because there is such wide bipartisan support, but for my Democratic colleagues to say: Nope, we want to drag this out for weeks, I just don't think it is the right thing to do. Clearly, they disagree, but I don't think it is the right thing to do.

30th Anniversary of Oklahoma City Bombing

Mr. President, next week, Oklahoma and the Nation will pause for a moment, and we will remember, nationally, for a moment, on April 19 at 9:02 in the morning.

And some people will look around and go, ``Has it been 30 years?'' and other people will say: ``What happened 30 years ago?'' because it depends on your generation of when you were born and how old you were or if you were even alive in 1995, but if you were alive in 1995, you remember where you were when the news came out that there was an explosion at a Federal building in Oklahoma City.

It was the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. A man who was mad at the government and determined he was going to cause an uprising of people to take down the Federal Government pulled a Ryder truck in front of a Federal building, loaded it with diesel fuel and with ammonia nitrate, lit fuses, walked away, got in his car and drove away.

As he drove away, behind him, the explosion went off that killed 168 people, including 19 children who were in the daycare center on the ground floor. And our Nation was forever changed.

We pause every year still in Oklahoma. We have never forgotten. Every year, we think about those who were killed and those who survived and those who were changed forever. We remember every single year, as we will again this year on the 30th anniversary, and we will pause to remember.

The people that are around us in Oklahoma are our neighbors, they are our friends, but many of them are also survivors or family members of survivors or family members of those who are lost. There are still police officers and firefighters that have literally never been back to that location because it is too painful to be able to return to a spot where they carried out the bodies of their friends and neighbors.

There are individuals that their family was truly forever changed. And now, 30 years later, they still get together and talk and visit, catch up with each other. There are survivor networks that still engage and still keep in contact with each other, remembering what happens when out-of-control anger took the lives of 168 people.

On that sacred ground, there is still a quiet reflection pool. There are 168 chairs there to remind people of the 168 lives. There is a phenomenal museum that is next to it that people come to literally from all over the world to study terrorism, domestic terrorism in particular, and to be able to walk through what happened in the crime scene and how it was so quickly resolved. We have law enforcement, first responders, families and communities that come from everywhere just to be able to learn and to reflect.

There are children that survived the daycare center that are now adults. Let me give you two: Brandon and Rebecca Denny. Brandon was 3 years old, and he literally barely survived his injuries; in fact, doctors gave him a 10 percent chance of survival, but he did. As an adult, he works to still help and serve others.

Rebecca, she was rescued from the rubble at 2 years old. She now has a family of her own. She speaks powerfully, still, about forgiveness over bitterness.

They were some of those miracle babies that survived. Many of the children around them did not.

This past week, it was really a remarkable moment that a lot of people in this town probably missed, and I understand. There is a lot of things going on right now. But on the south side of the Capitol, there was a spot of dirt that was dug up there and a group of Oklahomans, along with the Architect of the Capitol, buried a seedling tree.

Now, that may not seem like a big deal on the Capitol grounds, but there aren't many trees that are planted on the Capitol grounds. Many of the trees that are on the grounds are 100 years old or some, 200. This is a great historic place and a spot of reflection.

But in one spot there, we just planted a tree. And you may say: What is the big deal about that tree? Well, if you are in Oklahoma, you already know the rest of this story, but I would like to be able to tell this body the rest of that story.

On April 19, 1995, when that truck bomb explosion took place, it took 168 lives. It destroyed the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. Across the street was

the Journal Record Building; it just demolished a big section of that as well, blew out all the windows, destroyed it. In the parking lot there in front of that building was an American elm tree. It was a scrubby tree growing in a parking lot. If you have seen a tree in the parking lot, you know it is not usually the healthiest looking thing, but it was just growing there in the middle of the asphalt. But when the explosion happened, it literally destroyed all those lives. But for that tree, it blew literally every leaf off of that tree. But the force of the impact and the heat of the impact was so strong, that it literally turned the tree. The bark literally that usually has this nice little stripe as it grows literally has a turning point in it and around it, and everyone just assumed that tree is dead. No one paid attention to it.

In the year of the cleanup and all of the recovery and what was happening during that time period, no one paid attention to it, until the next spring, that scrubby little tree in the asphalt started sprouting. And people were shocked. It is alive. And suddenly it went from being a scrubby tree in the parking lot that was just going to be cleared out to being a sign of hope.

So we cleared the asphalt and everything else away from it. An arborist came and began to fertilize it and to take care of it. That scrubby little tree is now nicknamed ``The Survivor Tree'' now, and it is the picture of Oklahoma after that bombing. We survived.

That scrubby little American elm tree is now enormous 30 years later. Its branches and its leaves spread out over that site. It is the shaded spot. And on the morning of April 19, there will be survivors and families that will sit under its branches. And as we pause for 168 seconds and as we read the names of those who we lost, they will be underneath that Survivor Tree thinking again of: We survived. We are still here.

The term ``the Oklahoma standard'' was born during that time period as neighbor helped neighbor and as we cared for each other and the people who came to our home from all over the world, literally.

If you walk into my office, you will see a picture of the Survivor Tree that is there. How does that seedling that we just planted and that Survivor Tree connect? Well, that seedling is a daughter of that Survivor Tree. A seed was literally picked up off the ground under that Survivor Tree, was planted and grown, and now it is about 3 feet tall. That seedling, that daughter, we just planted 30 years later at the U.S. Capitol so that this Nation will never forget the out-of-control anger that turned to violence and hatred.

It is our prayer from Oklahoma that, as people walk down the path outside, that they would stop and read the plaque beside that little seedling tree. That in the decades ahead, it will grow to be a giant American elm, just like its parent, the Survivor Tree, and that people would remember the lives that were lost, those who survived, and those who were changed forever.

That is our hope. That is why that tree was planted on the Capitol lawn this week.

My simple request for my colleagues: April 19, it is a Saturday--when it comes, at 9:02 central time, would you just pause with us for just a moment and remember? Join us because we will absolutely never forget.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 174, which is at the desk.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

Mr. President, April 19 is coming very soon, and the country will pause. I am grateful that the Senate has passed now a resolution from this body that all 100 Members have stated together that we as a nation will pause and remember April 19, 1995, and as a nation this April 19, we will remind the Nation again, we have not forgotten the loss that was there in that Federal building in Oklahoma City.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Senator Wyden and I both be able to complete our remarks before the vote.

Mr. President, I do appreciate so much my colleagues coming to the floor just to be able to talk about the scourge of fentanyl and what it is really doing in our communities. Senator Ricketts, Senator Moody, Senator Budd, and Senator Hoeven spent a lot of time laying out the challenges we really face.

I think most Americans know it and have seen it, and they just don't realize how fast it is really moving. Ten years ago, we had 700 deaths in the country due to fentanyl. Last year, we had 87,000. That is the acceleration we have seen in a decade.

A vast majority of fentanyl used to come across the border from, quite frankly, China. It was being mailed in. Active work was done to be able to shut that down. It started to come through Mexico--that is progressively. We are taking that on. The cartels and the criminal organizations are shifting more and more to Canada to be able to find ways to be able to move it in. The Canadians have seen that and they have noted that as well by the aggressive actions they have taken.

Just to give you a quick glance at this, dealing with just the fentanyl issue, in 2020, the Canadians interdicted 1,000 pounds of fentanyl precursors; in 2021, it was 11,000 pounds. That is the acceleration that is also happening for these criminal organizations that are trying to be able to move fentanyl into our country and, quite frankly, into Canada as well.

So we are grateful for their partnership, but we definitely see this as an emergency. A decade ago, the United States did not move fast enough to be able to stop the movement of fentanyl into our country. We lost tens of thousands of Americans. President Trump is determined, and, quite frankly, this Congress is determined. We are not going to be asleep on that again. We will take it very, very seriously. It is a very big emergency.

So I thank my colleagues for coming here to be able to talk about it today.

Reserving the right to object, my friend from Oregon-- and we are friends, and we had the opportunity to be able to serve together, and we have worked on a lot of issues. He is correct, and I am glad to be able to see a larger proposal to deal with unemployment insurance. It has been an issue for a long time, but this is one of the most classic examples of saying the perfect is the enemy of the good.

Today, we have people getting away with fraud--today--and we can do nothing about it because the statute of limitations has run out. The House has passed a bipartisan bill by a wide majority to deal with this one problem, and they have come to an agreement by a wide, bipartisan majority to say let's at least solve this part and then we will work on bigger solutions later.

What my friend is recommending is to say: No. Let's force everyone to work on the bigger solution, and every single day, let more people get away

with fraud until we come up with a bigger solution and can agree on it.

We should stop as much fraud as we can today and keep working on the bigger solution to be able to get the bigger issues done.

If I can also say to my friend, he also knows this bill well. This is not about incidental actions that have happened through someone who accidentally filled out something or a State did something inappropriately. This bill is very clear. That is why it had such strong bipartisan support out of the House. This is about criminal actors. These are people who criminally engaged in large-scale fraud deliberately. It is $191 billion out there that the inspector general under the Biden administration even identified.

I want to do as much as we can on the unemployment insurance side, but let's do things as quickly as we can to be able to stop criminal activity and be able to prosecute those individuals.

So, in knowing that, I will not modify my request.

Mr. President, I look forward to working on a larger proposal in the days ahead, but that larger proposal is not going to move in the House in the next month or 2 months. In the meantime, we are going to have criminal organizations getting away with it over and over and over again. So let's move as much as we can as fast as we can, but at least, at this point, let's solve what we can today.

Mr. President, we are in the tenth week of the first 10 weeks, obviously, of this Senate's session. It has been exceptionally productive during this time period.

We have not only moved more nominees into confirmation for President Trump than any Senate has done in more than two decades, we have passed bills like the Laken Riley Act, which will absolutely help us in trying to remove criminal aliens out of the country.

We have rolled back a lot of Biden's last-minute regulations that he literally threw in in the final hours that did not have the oversight, did not have the appearance. And they, obviously, didn't do it in the first 3\1/2\ years of their term. They stalled it till the very end on that for a reason: because it was unpopular with the American people.

Those have been rolled back, many of them, and we still have several to go.

Today we are finishing up a bill called HALT Fentanyl. The fentanyl epidemic is raging in our country.

If you go back to just 2019 and compare that to 2023, in that short period of time, in my State of Oklahoma in 2019, we had 50 people who died of fentanyl. Fast-forward 4 years to 2023, the last year that we have complete records on; that is actually 730 people died. In 2023, across the country, we had 74,000 Americans who died from fentanyl overdose.

Again, go back to 2019. Only about 10 percent of the opioid deaths in my State had fentanyl connected to it. Fast forward to 2023, 90 percent of the opioid-related deaths were connected to fentanyl.

What the Mexican cartels are doing and what Chinese precursor chemicals coming into the country are causing is the death of fellow citizens, as they slip it into different fake pills, as they slip it into methamphetamine, as they slip fentanyl into cocaine, as they slip it into different places, to have someone who is using a drug or someone who never intended to use that drug to take their life. It has to stop.

Even worse, the cartels not only know what they are doing, but they are trying to find specific ways to be able to avoid our laws. Fentanyl has a very specific definition in science of exactly what makes up fentanyl. And so what the cartels are doing is they are changing that chemical makeup ever so slightly in what they call an analog, and so it is really not ``fentanyl'' as a definition--meaning law enforcement, when they see it on the street, it has the same effect: It still kills you, but it is, actually, technically, not fentanyl, so you can't be prosecuted for it.

This bill that we are bringing to the floor today opens up the fentanyl definitions to deal with fentanyl and the analogs of fentanyl so that the cartels can't continue to bring these deadly drugs into our country to take the lives and increase addiction in America and get away with it. This puts it in the hands of law enforcement, where they have been disarmed in that area, enforcement priorities, so they can actually enforce the law on these cartels and on the drug dealers and so we can identify it for what it really is. It is a killer drug.

The HALT Fentanyl Act is incredibly important. And I am fully aware that in a week where our country is talking about: Are we going to have another government shutdown, it is going to slip through and people aren't even going to notice it. But law enforcement will notice it, and families in the future will notice it.

The folks aren't dealing with the same addiction, as we are putting one more piece out there to be able to take this off.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum calls with respect to the cloture votes on the Chavez- DeRemer nomination and the motion to proceed to Calendar No. 18, S. 331, be waived.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that we move to begin the vote right now.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, this body knows from just my conversations in the hallways that I am a proud dad of two amazing daughters. They are remarkable young ladies that I am terribly proud of.

I was also one of those dads that was up way before dawn when they were in middle school and high school because they were cross-country runners. Cross-country runners in high school have a long-term saying that their sport is other sports' punishment.

They are there at 6 a.m., stretching out and running a mile so they then can prepare to go run 5 or 6 more just to be able to get ready for cross-country meets in the fall. They were remarkable athletes in high school and enjoyed that.

They ran with guys and ladies when they were training, in all of their time in the training time, because the team was a team of guys and girls. But when they actually got to the competition day, my daughters competed against other girls in that competition because what we all know to be a fact, to be true, is that boys in cross-country that are training for cross-country and girls that are training in cross-country--both great athletes--have different times to the finish line. That is just a reality. It is not one negative on another. It is not diminishing one to another. It is a reality.

In the last Summer Olympics, the woman who was a remarkable athlete that won the women's marathon as the greatest runner of our time, when she came in as the Gold Medal winner, her time would have been beaten by 67 of the men who ran in the Olympics in the same sport, same distance, same track--gold medalist for the women. The top 67 men running in the marathon would have beaten her.

Where am I going with this? This is common sense that we all know and that we have all seen in our own families and in communities. It is the reason that we have protected women's' sports for years to be able to make sure that women and girls have the ability to be able to have great competition, to enjoy the joy of sports and all the lessons that you learn from sports, and to be able to have equal competition levels.

But in the past few years--really, very, very recently in our country--there is a movement to be able to say if a biological male, transgender individual, wants to be able to compete in the women's sports area, they should be allowed to do that.

The question is, Whom is that fair to? Is that fair to this transgender individual or is that fair to the other female athletes? Because culturally, there seems to be a push to say I don't care if it is unfair to the female athletes. I picked this one transgender individual, and I want to be fair to them.

I look at a whole team of other folks to say: Whom is this fair to? This seems like basic common sense that 15 years ago wouldn't even have been a dialogue in our country. Fifty years ago, it wouldn't even have been in discussion in our country, but now we are having this dialogue. This is not about disrespect for any individual or the rights of individuals to be able to make choices in their own life. It is about respecting the rights of women and girls in their sport to be able to compete on a level playing field to make sure they are able to thrive in their sport the same as men are able to thrive in their sport and to enjoy the thrill of competition without the intimidation of someone crossing over into their sport to be able to take it away from them. It doesn't seem reasonable.

For some reason, in this room, contrary to the rest of the country, this is some kind of irrational conversation. It is not. It is basically common sense. But in this room, we just had a vote this week to be able to say women should compete in women's sports, and men should compete in men's sports.

In that vote, just to begin the debate on the bill to say let's open it up for amendment, let's talk about this as a concept, every single Republican for just that simple of a bill said: Let's start debate on this and figure out where we are going to go.

Every single Democrat said: I don't want to even debate this. This is not up for discussion.

Well, it is up for discussion, but where it is up for discussion is in homes and families and communities all over the country because in homes and families and communities all over the country, there are lots of dads like me of amazing daughters that are saying: I don't want my daughter to compete against a biological male because there are inherent advantages in some sports and in some speeds just based on bone density and muscle structure.

Again, it is not negative toward female or male on that. It is reality and basic biology.

Families across the country are talking about this, and for some reason this room is allergic to talk about it. Well, we are going to continue to be able to bring this up because Americans have an expectation that this is going to be resolved. I am grateful to President Trump that he has rescinded the Biden administration's Executive order allowing transgender individuals to compete in girls' sports. That is a good thing. That sets ladies across the country at ease to say: Let's go play soccer; let's go run in cross-country; let's go do the sports we want to be able to do and not have to worry about somebody hitting me in the face at high speed in a volleyball game but to go compete on a level playing field.

That is a good thing. But it is an Executive order. That means it doesn't last from President to President to President. I don't know what the next President is going to do, but I think I know where Americans are still going to be.

They are going to want to say: Let's compete. We may all train together; we may be all friends together; we may all hang out with each other at school, but when the competition comes, give me a fair, level playing field for competition and watch people compete and enjoy the sport. That is what sports have been about, at least that is what they used to be about. Now, they seem to be about political messaging instead.

So we are going to continue to be able to bring this up. I am grateful to Coach Tuberville for the work he has done on this and grateful to President Trump for the work he has done on it. But it is unfinished business at this point, to the great frustration of a lot of families around the country, including in my own State of Oklahoma.

I yield the floor.