Jeff Merkley

Madam President, we have a challenge--a problem--and that is the President is exercising a line-item veto, and line-item vetoes are unconstitutional because the Constitution assigns the power of the purse to Congress, not to the President of the United States.

Laws are not suggestions. The Constitution is not optional. A President is not a King. That was the Founders' vision for our democratic Republic.

But on Friday, President Trump swung a wrecking ball at the Founders' vision, at the Constitution. He and Russ Vought, the head of the Office of Management and Budget, proceeded to--in the dark of night--notify that they were canceling nearly a billion dollars in programs authorized and funded by law.

Well, let's be clear. Canceling resources for these programs is both illegal and unconstitutional--illegal because the funding is in law, passed by Congress and signed into law by the President himself, and unconstitutional because the Constitution creates a separation of powers, with the power of the purse belonging to Congress, not the President.

This has been tested a few times. In 1996, Congress tried to give the President a line-item veto, and the Supreme Court struck it down. It struck it down as unconstitutional because it violated the Constitution's separation of powers.

Yesterday, the independent, nonpartisan Government Accountability Office reaffirmed that this strategy by Trump, called a pocket rescission--a fancy name for a line-item veto--is illegal. Here is what they said. I will quote it at some length.

GAO has previously concluded that the Impoundment Control

Act does not permit the withholding of funds past their date

of expiration.

The plain language of the ICA provides that amounts

proposed for rescission must be made available for obligation

unless Congress completes action on a bill rescinding them.

The legislative history of the ICA, Supreme Court precedent,

and the overarching constitutional framework . . . compel

this conclusion.

Therefore, the rescission proposals contained in the

President's September 25, 2026, special message to Congress

do not permit the President to withhold the appropriations

beyond the end of fiscal year 2026.

And that fiscal year--we are hours away from it ending.

So, in other words, more simply put, it is Congress' job to design, authorize, and fund programs. It is the Executive's job--the President and his team's job--to implement those programs. The assignment of responsibilities is designed to ensure that we have a government that serves the people.

In a democratic republic, the people's representatives in Congress-- from every part of the country, from every walk of life--debate and negotiate and legislate so that you will have programs and spending decisions that reflect the needs of every part of the Nation. We don't just deliver programs for red States when Republicans have the majority; we don't just deliver programs for blue States when Democrats have the majority--no. All of us, working together, produce spending bills to serve people throughout this country--urban and rural, north and south, east and west, plains and coast. However you want to divide up the country, we serve everyone. So a President taking those bipartisan agreements to serve everyone and canceling out individual programs is both illegal and unconstitutional.

But in an authoritarian, strongman state it is all different. The President alone decides what gets funded and can use that power to reward allies and punish opponents. In those states, there is no separation of powers; there is one authority. Call it a King. Call it a czar. Call it an emperor or a dictator or a tyrant. Whatever you call it, it doesn't fit in a democratic republic.

We do not have a tyrant or a dictator. We do not have a King. We have

a President with responsibilities under the Constitution to implement the programs that we design, authorize, and fund here in Congress. That is how you get government by and for the people rather than by and for a billionaire or by and for an elite class or by and for a King himself.

But last year, Trump did exercise his strategy of operating as a King in a, if you will, line-item veto through this fancy term ``pocket rescission,'' canceling nearly $5 billion in programs authorized and funded by law.

That tool, called a rescission, was created under the 1974 Impoundment Control Act, and it allows the President to propose canceling a program, but it also says that cancellation does not take effect unless Congress votes to cancel the programs, and we haven't voted to cancel these programs. So, therefore, that is why it is illegal to cancel them.

Well, it is pretty straightforward. The law says that no rescission or cancellation goes into effect without Congress authorizing the cancellation by law.

Madam President, I have here what I would ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record, a statement from the chair of Appropriations, Senator Susan Collins.

Madam President, we have heard tonight from the independent Government Accounting Office that what the President did in proposing and putting forward this line-item veto is illegal. We have heard in the words of the Republican chairman of the Appropriations Committee that this is illegal. We have heard colleagues speak tonight from different directions about why it is illegal--because the Constitution makes it so. The Constitution says the power of the purse rests with Congress.

There have been undoubtedly a number of Presidents who wish they had a line-item veto. Nixon tried. He cut funds that had been passed into law, and the Supreme Court said: Nope, you can't do that. Have you read the Constitution, President Nixon? That is not just illegal; that is unconstitutional.

Then in 1996, Congress tried to actually shed its responsibility and give the President a line-item veto and say: Hey, Mr. President, we passed these bipartisan spending bills, but strike out anything you want.

The Supreme Court responded and said: No, Congress, you actually have this responsibility. You can't assign it to the Supreme Court. You can't assign it to the President. No, the Constitution places it squarely on Congress.

There is a reason for that, and that is, Congress represents the power of the people from every corner of the land coming together to craft programs and to decide how to fund them that serves this Nation. To delineate or to assign that important function representing people throughout the Nation and say ``None of that matters; the President can just kill any program he wants'' is to believe in a King.

I have news for my colleagues: There is no King in the Constitution. That is why we are here tonight.

There is also a very practical consideration. If you craft bipartisan spending bills that serve every part of the country, but then a partisan President can strike down the ones that, well, maybe are more likely represented by Senators from the other party or House Members from the other party, well, then you have undermined the whole concept of us working together to serve the whole Nation, and therefore you make it very difficult to do bipartisan bills in the future.

So that is why so many people have come to speak to this. That is why the chair of the Appropriations Committee put out such a powerful statement on it. That is certainly why I am here tonight. And that is why we have come to the floor with a bill, S. 5670, to fix this-- because the President, in exercising this line-item veto, said: I am going to do something clever. I am simply going to hold on to the funds that I am supposed to spend under the law until there is no time left in the fiscal year, in the financial year--a year that expires a couple hours from now.

So as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 5670, introduced earlier today; further, that the bill be considered read three times and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Madam President, the Constitution matters. And what does the Constitution say?

No Money shall be drawn from the Treasury, but in

Consequence of Appropriations made by law.

That is pretty straightforward, and yet my colleague from Wisconsin just wanted to shred the Constitution. He says: It doesn't matter. We want a President to cancel programs.

He said he wouldn't even care if it was a different President.

Imagine a different President canceling programs in his home State. Maybe that Senator would be singing a somewhat different tune.

And then we saw that debt chart. Wow, well, let's understand where that debt comes from: the war in Afghanistan, from a Republican President; the war in Iraq, from a Republican President; the Bush tax cuts--1 and 2--for the billionaires and megamillionaires, from a Republican President; the tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires under Trump 1 and 2. Those are the sources of that debt.

And so it would be a nice thing if someone would come to the floor about debt--from the other side of the aisle--and would actually own that they are the problem, that they have been pissing away our national wealth on foreign wars and giveaways to the richest and most powerful Americans, running up last year a bill that added $30 trillion to the debt over the next 30 years.

I didn't hear that in the commentary from my colleague from Wisconsin nor did I hear from him that he knows that if the interest rate is 1 percent higher than the Congressional Budget Office estimated, that $30 trillion debt that he voted for last year will be $50 trillion over the next 30 years.

And do you know what else? The estimate used for that debt was 4 percent, and right now we are paying 5 percent. So we are already 1 percent higher.

It just would be nice that those who preach fiscal responsibility would not continue to be the ones who are spending this Nation into bankruptcy. That would be nice because then we would have funds to invest in families, healthcare, and housing and education and good- paying jobs.

This century is going to belong to the nations that invest in education and infrastructure, not to the ones that give away the national Treasury to the richest Americans and say: The hell with families across this great land.

Madam President, congressional stock trading is profoundly corrupt. We in this Chamber were elected to serve the public, not our portfolio.

But what do the American people see? They see Senators and Representatives who are thinking about their portfolios when they are voting on different measures, including a whole lot of tax credits and tax deductions. They are both different elements.

If someone in this Chamber is sitting on a significant holding--let's say renewable energy stocks--they might be thinking about: I want to promote those stocks, rather than ask the question: Is this the right move for America?

What if they are sitting on fossil fuel stocks or oil stocks or maybe Wall Street stocks and they are thinking, ``I want to give a big break to the banking community on Wall Street to inflate my personal wealth''? That is just absolutely wrong. It is a massive conflict of interest.

About now, 14 years ago, Senator Sherrod Brown and I introduced the idea that we should end this stock trading, and that means buying, that means selling, and that means holding.

It has been a while to build the momentum on this, but even the President of the United States, in his last State of the Union, said we should attack this problem.

And the American people see that, while Members here are thinking about their portfolios--trying to make themselves richer, corrupting their votes on the issues before us--they are suffering.

Instead of thinking about your stock portfolio, maybe you should be thinking about the price of gas at the pump, maybe thinking about the cost of diesel and fertilizer for our farmers, maybe thinking about a war of choice--an unconstitutional war of choice--that is spending more than $1 billion a day.

Maybe we should be thinking about the fact that we have the most expensive healthcare system that delivers the least effective healthcare for a person in the developed world, and maybe we need to improve it.

Maybe we need to think about the fact that the career technical programs in other developed programs--other developed countries--are pretty good and maybe ours should be better.

Maybe we should think about the fact that college debt is a millstone around the neck of our children, when children in other countries are able to go to college debt free.

Maybe we should care about families instead of thinking about our portfolios.

The American people see Congress--the House and Senate Members--and

the President of the United States cashing in on stock trades. The President of the United States actually invested in stocks before announcing big agreements for major companies--buying Dell stock before a major announcement, buying Nvidia stock before a major announcement.

Come on. This is massively corrupt, and we should be ending it. So let's end it.

Entry-level employees and executive branch Agencies are required to recuse themselves from conflicts of interest, but Senators and Representatives think it is just fine to get rich on conflicts of interest and corrupt their representation of the public.

That is why we need the ETHICS Act, which would ban Members of Congress and their spouses, their dependents, and the President and the Vice President and their dependents from owning, trading, or holding individual stocks. If they want to invest in America, invest in a broad-based mutual fund that has establishment in all of these industries at once, like the S&P 500 fund.

Members of Congress should be banned from making new trades, and Members of Congress will have to divest their holdings or move them to mutual funds.

There is so much corruption that we need to tackle--banning crypto corruption; banning funding for Trump's gold-plated, billion-dollar boondoggle; stopping insider trading on prediction markets; implementing a binding code of ethics for the Supreme Court; outlawing the taxpayer-funded ``cash for cronies'' slush funds, like the President arranged with his $1.8 billion fund when he sued himself to award himself $1.8 billion of money; banning Members of Congress to have a longer period before they serve as lobbyists; and more.

But Congress can lead by example. Right now, let's pass the ETHICS Act.

Now, some may say: Well, wait. Isn't there this bill coming from the House?

That House bill leaves people holding the very portfolios that we have to get rid of. It preserves the conflicts of interest. That is pretty damn weak tea--keeping the corruption and legitimizing it--and, meanwhile, throwing in an extra measure on the bill that proceeds to engage in the effort to rig the November election.

Wow, well, that is certainly not a serious effort to address this corruption. But the ETHICS Act, it is that serious effort. Let's pass it. Let's ban Members of Congress from trading stocks. Let's make it clear to every American that we are here to serve the people, not our portfolios

Madam President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the bill at the desk, the ETHICS Act; further, that the bill be considered read three times and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Madam President, I wish my colleague had actually got a bunch of things right, but he got a bunch of things wrong.

I don't know what propaganda he was reading, from what source that wants to continue the corruption.

But he said that the bill that came earlier today said you could not hold stocks. It actually allows you to hold those individual stocks. It allows the corruption to continue. And yet, he is saying: Oh, I voted for this great bill because it bans holding of stocks. But he is wrong.

There is a reason this was done. It was to allow a vote in the House, a vote in the House that pretended to address the issue, rather than addressing the issue.

And we have had a bill virtually parallel to this bill come through committee. It has been worked on in committee. Many of these elements and nuances--great. Fine. Let's continue that conversation. But don't come to this floor and misrepresent the bill that you voted on earlier tonight as having banned the holding of stocks because it allows it.

And second, blind trusts. They are called bogus blind trusts. As one Member of this body said to me: I meet every quarter with the guy who runs my blind trust.

You want another example? Who runs a blind trust for the President of the United States? His family runs it. His son is involved in running his blind trust.

Are you kidding me? Everyone understands blind trusts are not blind. So bring a bill that doesn't have bogus blind trusts.

It has an extensive exemption for small businesses, and yet we heard a lot of conversation about small businesses.

And then voter ID. Can't we be honest about the voter ID strategy? It was written to disenfranchise--fancy word for block citizens from voting that Republicans don't want to vote.

The President put forward an Executive order that said: You have to submit your voter roll to the President's team, they will decide who votes, and send the list back to you.

And then they went and got an ethics act--not an ethics act--SAVE Act--the SAVE Act. What did the SAVE Act say? The same thing. The President gets to decide who votes. That didn't pass here. And it didn't even have a majority support here, let alone supermajority support.

So, the President did another Executive order. And under this order, the President would strike down--his team would strike down people that look suspect to them.

What are we talking about? We are talking about 64 million American women whose last names do not match their birth certificate. Your name doesn't match your birth certificate, you can't vote. And the President could strike this down right before the election, making it impossible for people to proceed to get reauthorized to vote. And they couldn't even get reauthorized to vote, reregistered to vote, using their birth certificate. Wow.

And they didn't want Native Americans to vote, so they put in a provision that said any ID that doesn't have an expiration date is excluded. Well, you know, you are not a Tribal member year by year or month by month, my friends. You are a Tribal member for life. They don't have expiration dates. They knew that, and they put it in to stop Native Americans from voting.

Why? Why do you want to stop women from voting? Because they vote more on the blue side of the aisle.

Why do they write those ID requirements to stop Tribal members from voting? Because they vote more on the ``D'' side of the aisle.

People have called this Jim Crow 2.0. What are they talking about? After the Civil War, we had a national consensus, we were going to protect people's right to vote. And in the South, you had a lot of States that had a majority of Black citizens.

To this very Chamber, 2 U.S. Senators were elected from Mississippi; 14 Members of the House were elected from the South that were Black Americans. And then reconstruction ended in a horrific deal that was struck and the result was almost a century of blocking Black Americans from voting. And that is what the President wants to do.

Not specifically Black Americans, not the same way, but any group that votes predominantly on the blue side of the aisle.

Now, we actually had a bill, and it was called the Freedom to Vote Act. It had ID in it, but it wasn't ID designed in a partisan fashion.

So I say to my good colleagues: How about you actually come forward with a version of ID that isn't designed for partisan advantage? That would honor the vision of the Constitution. That was what was in the Freedom to Vote Act.

And the President wants to attack vote-by-mail. And why is that? Vote-by-mail is the highest integrity system in the land, bar none. Why is that? Because on election day, it is easy to manipulate the election.

Here is what you do: You change the location of the precinct voting from the previous year so people go to the wrong place; you proceed to put out false information about the location; you put out the wrong date for voting; you put out text messages--and this has been done-- saying ``sorry you missed the election last week, hope you will vote next year'' when the election is actually coming up the next Tuesday; you put in machines that don't work; you put in staff members that don't work; you perceive to create 8-hour lines like they created in the urban areas of Georgia--recent history.

That manipulation can't be done in vote-by-mail. That is why the President hates vote-by-mail, because it stops the rigging of American elections on election day.

And it has this very powerful form of voter ID called a signature. The same thing we use to verify checks and so many other transactions in life. Same signature we use on our marriage certificates. Same signature we use on financial transactions. And if the signature doesn't match, it gets challenged, and a voter has a chance to cure it.

My point here is that the bill that came before this Chamber earlier today was designed to rig the November election--my colleagues know that--and it allowed the corruption in stockholding to continue.

That is why we are creating and putting forward a real bill with real ethics tonight.

Madam President.

Mr. President, they say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and that is certainly true when it comes to wildfires and smoke. And as climate chaos makes the fire season longer and hotter and more dangerous, wildfires are ravaging States across our country, certainly including my home State of Oregon.

This year, at the beginning of fire season, the risk maps showed that the State of Oregon was the epicenter of the highest risk for the most time anticipated. Unfortunately, that crystal ball prepared by the experts turned out to be right. We had a record 2.5 million acres burn this summer. Well, we broke the 2 million acres last summer and the 2.5 million acres this summer. It wasn't that long ago when 1 million acres would have been an extraordinarily horrific fire year. Forests burning, grasslands burning, more lightning strikes, more wind, more drought, more dryness, hotter temperatures--all of it combined to create that extraordinarily destructive summer we have just gone through.

I will never forget 6 years ago the Labor Day fires, at the beginning of September, when we had a combination of lightning strikes and wind that brought, basically, a force up from the east, wind over the top of the Cascade Mountains and down every valley, and every valley was burning. We had six cities burn to the ground, and we had another six that were badly scorched. When you saw those cities, it looked like a bomb had gone off. I mean, everything was reduced to ashes, with maybe a cast-iron tub over here, with maybe a metal staircase or a pipe dangling over here, then on the ground a pool of metal when the wheels on cars would melt and run across the ground. It was just devastating to go to the fairgrounds--where thousands of refugees were headed--and hear of their harrowing escapes. Sometimes their cars were starting to melt and smoke as they drove through the fire. Others were seeking refuge in the streams.

These fires? They are terrible, and they fill the air with toxins-- toxins

from the burning buildings and the burning homes and burning vehicles that are filled with plastics and electronics. Who knows what else is in that smoke? That smoke is incredibly dangerous as well. That is why we need to pass the bipartisan Wildfire Emissions Prevention Act on which I am so pleased to partner with my colleague Senator Curtis from Utah.

This bill prepares our communities in two different ways.

First, it makes it easier for communities to do prescribed burns. Now, if I turned the clock back about 16 years, communities would say to me: We don't want those prescribed burns. We don't want that day or two of smoke.

But after the 2020 Labor Day fires, communities are like: We want to do the prescribed burns. We want them carefully monitored so that they do not escape and cause a larger fire, which has happened on rare occasions. We want to make sure they are done on days when there is enough humidity and so little wind and so little risk of wind that they can't possibly become something other than the prescribed burns.

They have to be meticulously planned, carefully controlled, and then they reduce so much fuel on the ground and provide a lot of protection thereafter. So prescribed burns are--along with thinning and mowing-- significant ways to reduce the fuel load and reduce the devastation when there is a fire.

But here is the thing: a prescribed burn produces smoke, and that smoke may become a penalty under the Clean Air Act for our communities. So this bill solves that problem so that smoke from a prescribed fire does not create a penalty under the Clean Air Act.

Second, this bill helps communities prepare for smoke, to have locations that are safe for people, particularly people with lung problems, with asthma or emphysema or so forth or people who are particularly allergic to the content of the smoke to be able to get to places that have clean air through filtering. So that is essential.

And this bill incorporates the Smoke-Ready Communities Program based on the Smoke and Heat Ready Communities Act that I introduced before. It gives communities the tools and the resources to prepare for wildfire smoke and unhealthy air.

They say an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. That is a pretty good foundation for a bill--a bill, the Wildfire Emissions Prevention Act, that will give our communities the tools they need to prepare for wildfires and smoke pollution, and I would encourage that we adopt this bill today.

I yield to one of my colleagues.

Mr. President, I come to the floor to propose that Democrats and Republicans join together to stop a monumentally horrific idea, an idea called Trump's triumphal arch. It distorts our history while destroying historic views. It disregards the Constitution's separation of powers. It disrupts air safety at DC's Ronald Reagan Airport, and it disrespects the sacrifices of our veterans and their families.

How much worse could an idea possibly be?

Then, when Trump encountered fierce pushback about this unfunded, unauthorized construction, he invoked a national security justification, saying the arch would house drones and snipers and ammunition. This is a replay of the justification that he used on his billion-dollar ballroom, gold-plated boondoggle. Those oversight procedures called an authorization by Congress and funding by Congress are absolutely inherent to our Constitution, and we should absolutely not be going forward or be allowing anything to go forward that so blatantly violates so much of what we stand for.

Let's talk about why a memorial arch distorts our history.

We are a Republic. We are not a monarchy. We are not an imperial regime. It is called a democratic republic. I would like the President of the United States to actually understand the difference. With this arch, he is imitating what the Roman Empire did in commemorating great military victories and leaders. The Arc de Triomphe, in

Paris, was commissioned in 1806 by Emperor Napoleon.

While Trump may fancy himself a modern American emperor, his war in Iran is hardly a great military victory. It is quite the opposite. It is a towering, 250-foot-tall edifice, topped with golden statues--twice as tall as the nearby Lincoln Memorial that has such a place in the heart of every American, 100 feet taller than the Arc de Triomphe, and 30 feet taller than the largest triumphal arch in the world--the Monumento a la Revolucion in Mexico City. Imitating emperors and authoritarians is not what America is about. Constructing things with no authorization and no funding is in violation of the separation of powers.

Let's talk about disregarding the Constitution.

Under Federal law, only Congress has the power to approve the placement of new monuments and memorials on Federal lands.

It is written into law to ensure that memorials are the product of deliberation and consensus, accountability through the legislative process.

But there has been no legislative process in this Congress or any prior Congress that said something about putting a massive arch, disrupting the connection between the Mall and the Lincoln Monument and the Arlington Cemetery. No such discussion has taken place. No congressional deliberation. No congressional authorization. No congressional funding.

And yet Trump is planning to divert funds from other accounts while American families are struggling--struggling--because of the high cost of gas and diesel and groceries, fertilizer. Everyone is hurting, but Trump wants to build this massive monument to himself in violation of the very premises of our Constitution.

And now he has this brilliant idea. He says he is the smartest man around. His brilliant idea is to launch drones into the air in the runway up to the Reagan Airport.

Can someone please explain to him that launching drones into the air with oncoming jets is a bad idea.

Just last year, 67 civilians were killed in a flash of light when a plane collided there with a military helicopter.

In August of this year, the Presidential helicopter Marine One lifted off at the same time as a jet was taking off from the airport, and that gave a lot of people anxiety. They did not hit each other, thankfully, but close calls are scary as hell.

And now Trump says the arch will house a large number of drones to be launched up in the air to counter national security threats. Launching drones directly into the approach of DC's airports is a reckless invitation for a collision.

And Trump's proposed arch disrespects the sacrifices of our veterans and their families. Back when I was working for the Secretary of Defense, I traveled through Arlington Cemetery a lot. It is a sacred place. More than 400,000 military servicemembers are laid to rest there across the river. The Americans buried there died defending a Republic by and for the people, not defending a dictator or a sovereign, not defending an imperial regime. A triumphal arch in the tradition of dictators and authoritarians is an insult to their sacrifice defending our Republic.

Veterans and their families have come forth and said: Please don't do this. The observation deck that Trump wants to build violates the solemnity of the cemetery's hallowed grounds. As one Gold Star mother put it--a Gold Star mother is someone who lost her son or daughter in battle--she said:

We don't need tourists overlooking the funerals.

So this arch, it distorts our very premise and soul of our country as a Republic. It disregards the separation of powers of our Constitution. It disrupts the air safety of DC's Reagan National Airport, and it disrespects the services and the sacrifices of our veterans buried at Arlington Cemetery.

This legislation is very simple and cosponsored by several of my colleagues, and it simply says this: that this arch cannot be built without authorization in law.

Mr. President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of this bill at the desk and that the bill be considered read three times and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

I would ask my colleague from Utah--and I appreciate his staying for this--if I reframe this, if I come back and say unanimous consent, if I come back tomorrow and say let's have debate for an hour on this and actually vote on it, would you object to that or would you approve that, let us debate it and consider it?

Mr. President, I would like to think that at least, as those in the Senate carried the oath of our office to defend the prerogatives of our Constitution and separation of powers, we could at least debate such a bill rather than block it.

Unanimous Consent Request

Mr. President, I have a second bill I would like to see us pass tonight by unanimous consent. To be summed up in a sentence, a memorial to honor a President of the United States, designated by an act of Congress, may not be demolished unless authorized by an act of Congress.

This has, of course, to do with the President planning to demolish the Kennedy Center. Kennedy said:

A nation reveals itself not only by the men it produces but

also by the men it honors, [and] the men it remembers.

And those words have taken on special meaning this month. Following President Kennedy's assassination, Congress renamed the National Cultural Center the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts as a ``living memorial'' to our slain President--a ``living memorial'' to our slain President.

I was in second grade on the West Coast. The word came. Everything shut down immediately. The Nation wept. And this is the way we honored President Kennedy. It was a fitting memorial to a President who reminded us:

The life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a

distraction, in the life of the nation, is close to the

center of a nation's purpose.

But now we are in a chapter where President Trump wants to demolish this memorial. He wants to demolish this enormously incredible building, which hosts operas and plays and ballets, concerts, the Kennedy Center's Honors Program that is watched by millions of Americans every year celebrating our Nation's most revered artists.

But the doors have been locked shut at the Kennedy Center. How did that happen? Last year, when President Trump won election, took office, he filled the Board of the Kennedy Center with loyalists. He installed himself as chairman. He renamed the institution after himself, not because he asked for legislation to do so but because, with his imperial mindset, he can put his name on anything he wants because he is the imperial ruler of our country.

But we are not a nation with an imperial ruler, a man sitting on a throne to whom people must genuflect. We are a Republic. And there is a stark difference in the ways that the two Presidents' names were added to this building.

In 1964, the U.S. Congress passed a law to remember President Kennedy's commitment to the arts. That was the legislation that made the Kennedy Center this living memorial.

And then, in 2025, Donald Trump broke that law by renaming the Kennedy Center after himself. It is wrong--constitutionally, legislatively, morally.

Morally, the Kennedy Center has been a place for generations where people of both parties go to celebrate the arts. They put aside their politics. They honor America's artists. They revel in incredible performances.

Back in 1977, I dropped out of college for a year to be here, to be here during the first year of the Carter administration to see how a new administration would shape a change of course for our Nation.

And during that year, I worked all these different odd jobs and volunteered for different groups. And I was volunteering for an environmental nonprofit. They were working on the Law of the Sea, a treaty that never has come before this Chamber almost a half century later, Law of the Sea. In

walks someone--they said: There is a concert tonight that pertains to the environment and the Law of the Sea. Would anybody like a free ticket?

I said: Well, yes. Yes, I would. I would like to go.

And I went that night. And I have never been in a venue like that. I was just kind of struck in awe. Lots of folks from Washington's elite were there--Senators and House Members--and sitting up in the box was President Carter. And Rostropovich played a cello concert. It was stunning. I mean, I had never heard a cello played except for the kind of slow, droning sounds of my sister when she was learning the cello. I mean, this was just amazing.

And I have been there when President Trump was in the Presidential box. Politics set aside; American people rejoicing in the arts in this living memorial to President Kennedy, our President who was slain.

Constitutionally, the separation of powers means no President can ignore laws passed by Congress, which is exactly what a Federal judge ruled on May 29 of this year. He said that the President cannot rename the Kennedy Center unless Congress approves it because Congress, by law, made the Kennedy Center a living memorial to the President--by law. And you can't undo the law unless you pass a new law.

Immediately, Trump's handpicked Board tried to get around the judge's ruling by proposing to add the words: ``Restored and Renovated by President Donald J. Trump'' or by renaming the Kennedy Center's plaza, the President Trump Plaza. And the Federal judge, citing the law, on September 15 said:

Simply put, defendants cannot install memorials for

President Trump or anyone or anything else at the Kennedy

Center without Congress' blessing.

In other words, done by law.

So it isn't about President Trump; it is about the principle that would apply to any President who was proposing breaking the law, and the President's court says you can't break the law. You want to do what you do? Go get a law that says you can do it.

Apparently, that infuriated President Trump. A judge--how dare he tell him that he had to follow the law. After all, he is our King. He is our imperial leader. He is the ``on high'' who can do any damn thing he wants in this country. He can start wars when the Constitution says he can't start wars. He can spend money on projects where the Constitution says he can't spend money on projects.

And, boy, did it infuriate him that a judge said he had to follow the law. How dare we have a judge stand in his way?

So he called into the Kennedy Center Board meeting to scream at a Board member, Congresswomen Joyce Beatty. Beatty had filed the lawsuit defending the Kennedy Center.

Minutes later, the Board voted to shut down the Kennedy Center for 2 years because President Trump couldn't have his name on it.

Oh, they said: Well, we will shut it down for renovations. You are shutting down the beating heart of our arts world that reverberates across America because the President can't put his name on it? What kind of children are serving on that Board? And what kind of childish tantrum was thrown by the President of the United States shutting down the Kennedy Center?

Shortly afterward, Trump implied on Truth Social that the Kennedy Center would not reopen until he had his name on it.

Let's be clear, this is an aging building. It needs maintenance. It needs to have old boilers replaced and electrical wiring updated and old seats modified and ceiling tiles, water damage fixed. There is a lot of work to do, standard types of maintenance. You don't shut down the building to do these types of maintenance. But he can't have his name on it. So he is shutting it down for 2 years.

But the situation got a lot worse on September 16. Photojournalists captured images that show Trump looking at a large poster, talking about demolishing the Kennedy Center. The words said: ``Kennedy Center

Would my colleague object if I come back--

Thank you. I think I am recognized.

Would my colleague from Utah object if I come back with a proposal that we debate this for a limited amount of time so that this Chamber can weigh in on defending our Constitution?