Floor Statements

Mr. President, last week, the Senate voted to confirm Pam Bondi as U.S. Attorney General. I was proud to support her nomination both at the Senate Judiciary Committee level and on the Senate floor.

Today, the Senate Judiciary Committee held a markup on the nomination of Kash Patel for Director of the FBI. Likewise, I was happy to support his nomination in committee, and I look forward to supporting him here on the Senate floor as soon as that vote comes before us.

One of President Trump's most important pledges during the campaign was to end the politicalization and the weaponization of the Department of Justice, including the FBI. Pam Bondi and Kash Patel, I think, are outstanding picks to fulfill this pledge, which is very important. I am pleased the Senate is moving to confirm them with no delay.

I believe that the FBI and the Department of Justice are two of the most important institutions in America. If you look around the world, you see a lot of countries that have a similar economic system to ours, and you wonder, why is America uniquely prosperous? Why is it that we succeed where others fail?

I believe it is two things. One is our independent judiciary, and secondly, our institutions of justice like the FBI and the Department of Justice that are supposed to discharge their responsibilities without regard to politics and without regard to the sorts of activities we have seen in recent years.

We know that both of these individuals--Mr. Patel and Ms. Bondi--have their work cut out for them.

The mission of the Department of Justice, after all, is to uphold the rule of law, to keep the country safe, and to protect civil rights. The FBI's mission is to protect the American people and to uphold the Constitution of the United States.

Under the Biden administration and even before that, the Department of Justice and the FBI failed to achieve those noble and worthy goals. Of course, back even during President Trump's first term of office, there was the infamous Crossfire Hurricane FBI investigation. There was the so-called Russian hoax based on a phony piece of Russian propaganda known as the Steele dossier, which ultimately we found out was part of the opposition research that Hillary Clinton's campaign collected during her campaign against President Trump back in 2016. This was dressed up to make it look like a credible bit of intelligence, when, in fact, it was Russian propaganda, we ultimately found out, Russian disinformation.

Two weeks ago, during his hearing at the Judiciary Committee, Kash Patel told me that the rule of law is one of the fundamental precepts that make America an exceptional nation. Without the rule of law, he said, ``we go back to the Uganda that my father fled.''

Kash Patel's adherence to the mission of the FBI and its parent Agency, the Department of Justice, is a stark contrast from what we have seen in recent years. We saw, for example, Merrick Garland's misguided memo in October of 2021 directing the FBI to work with U.S. attorneys to ``discuss strategies for addressing threats from parents'' who were taking an active role in their children's education by participating in parent-teacher meetings and school board meetings.

Similarly, we have the FBI Richmond Field Office that sent a memo in 2023 suggesting that traditional Catholics might pose a threat as violent domestic extremists.

So we know that there is example after embarrassing example of how the FBI and the DOJ have gotten off track.

A report from the House Judiciary Committee highlighted, for example, the FBI's misguided attempt to artificially inflate the number of domestic extremism threats by claiming Americans who were exercising their First Amendment rights were somehow potential domestic terrorist threats, not to mention the FBI's role in censoring information related to Hunter Biden's criminal activities.

A Senate report from the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, in 2020, detailed many of Hunter's and his associates' unseemly--and likely illegal--activities, including payments from Ukrainian, Russian, Kazakh, and Chinese nationals and revealed that the FBI may have had knowledge of these activities for some time and done nothing.

In September 2020, when the House Judiciary Committee sent a followup letter to Director Wray, related to Hunter Biden's alleged misconduct, the FBI stonewalled them and refused to confirm or deny any ongoing investigations.

I know that is a common response by the FBI. Well, they are not going to talk about ongoing investigations, and, certainly, we understand that, as a routine matter, there shouldn't be any sort of interference in ongoing investigations. But Congress has a unique constitutional role of oversight, and, essentially, what Director Wray was saying was, he wasn't willing to give the Congress, as an oversight body, the information we need in order to do our job.

Of course, despite these numerous efforts within the FBI and the Department of Justice to protect Hunter Biden from accountability for his crimes, we know his own father issued a Presidential pardon in the final weeks of his Presidency, even though for months he had said he would never do such a thing. But then he did, claiming his son was selectively and unfairly prosecuted.

Well, my recollection was Hunter was convicted of one crime by a jury but pled guilty to others. So it is not clear to me how President Biden can say that he was selectively and unfairly prosecuted for the crimes that he pled guilty to.

It is hard to imagine thinking someone was unfairly targeted when the entire government--all the government Agencies involved--did everything they could to assist the Biden family and to protect that person from justice.

While it is no surprise that the American people were upset and even outraged by this, who could forget the marked differences, the double standard, in response to when President Trump was found to have sensitive documents in his home in Mar-a-Lago and when President Biden was found to have sensitive documents in his home in Wilmington, DE.

And all the while, during the historic crime wave we have experienced in recent years, Merrick Garland directed his Agency not to enforce mandatory minimums against most drug crimes. He did this while Americans across the country were suffering from fatal drug overdoses at record numbers, especially from fentanyl, which took the lives of approximately 70,000 Americans last year alone.

The results of all of these abuses of authority has been a loss of trust and confidence by the American people in these important institutions: the FBI and the Department of Justice. These institutions were no longer believed to be engaged in the fair administration of justice based on facts and evidence, as opposed to political gamesmanship.

Now, I realize that Attorney General Bondi and soon-to-be Director Patel are going to have a huge task ahead of them to restore these Agencies to their core missions and to restore the trust that has been eroded of the American people in our American system of justice. But both of these individuals have pledged to do just that, and I believe they should have an opportunity to do that.

Pam Bondi, after all, has been a career prosecutor. She then went on to be attorney general of Florida for two terms. As a former attorney general of my State in Texas, I know how tough that job can be. But she has done an outstanding job, and I have no doubt that her promotion to U.S. Attorney General by President Trump was well deserved. She is prepared for this important job.

My goal for the Department of Justice and the FBI is to restore the nonpartisan functioning of our country's chief law enforcement Agencies. The American people deserve an FBI and a Department of Justice that they can trust. They deserve to live under a system where the guilty are prosecuted and where the innocent are not unfairly targeted. They deserve to live in a place where political views are not a basis for a criminal investigation and where an accused person is still presumed innocent until proven guilty. In

short, we need a Department of Justice that will deal out justice evenhandedly, without fear or favor.

I believe that being Attorney General is probably one of the toughest jobs here in Washington, DC, because you are not only the chief law enforcement officer for the country, you are also a member of the President's Cabinet.

But even given the difficult nature of the job, Merrick Garland practically abdicated his responsibilities as chief law enforcement officer in order to be a partisan advocate for President Biden's policies.

President Trump's Attorney General will have a chance to turn the page from Merrick Garland's failures by reversing the partisan hackery that has been a part and parcel of President Biden's Department of Justice. President Trump's Attorney General can restore the Department of Justice to its core mission. Pam Bondi can serve President Trump and the Nation well by enforcing the law that is on the books and ending the weaponization of political enemies.

Similarly, Kash Patel has an opportunity to turn the page from the abuses and the lack of accountability that we have seen at the FBI in recent years.

So I look forward to working with Ms. Bondi and Mr. Patel in their noble endeavor to restore trust in our Nation's justice system, and by doing so, to restore the trust of the American people.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, the Governor of the great State of Texas, Greg Abbott, has made a request to the U.S. Congress to reimburse our State for the expenses we have incurred in attempting to combat the Texas-Mexico border security crisis during the 4 years of the Biden administration. I am proud to support this request, along with my colleague Senator Cruz and Members of the Texas delegation in the House of Representatives.

Securing the Nation's borders is the responsibility of the Federal Government, plain and simple. Given the division of responsibilities between the States and the Federal Government, there is no doubt that this is a Federal responsibility. For 4 years, though, President Biden and Vice President Harris and Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas intentionally and willfully refused to enforce the laws on the books to keep the border secure and to keep our Nation safe.

Even before his first day in the Office, President Biden rolled out the welcome mat to illegal immigrants in speeches during his campaign, inviting--inviting--what ensued.

Early in his Presidency, President Biden ended President Trump's very effective policy known as ``Remain in Mexico.'' This, very simply, provided that those who sought asylum needed to remain outside of the borders of the United States while their asylum claim was litigated and ultimately decided, knowing that only about 15 percent of people who claim asylum ultimately are awarded that by an immigration court.

The Biden administration ended construction of President Trump's border wall, and, instead, spent Federal funds to store those materials that had already been paid for, squandering taxpayer dollars in the process.

And as this crisis was evolving and worsening, President Biden ended title 42 authority, the COVID-era policy that was the last string in place helping to keep the lid on the illegal immigration crisis. So not only did the Biden administration turn a blind eye to what was an international responsibility and thus a Federal Government responsibility, they went a step further and actually actively enacted policies to make it worse.

The Department of Homeland Security invited more illegal immigration when it created an app for your phone called the CBP One app, Customs and Border Protection app, which allowed immigrants to literally schedule an appointment at a port of entry in order to illegally enter the United States. Of course, even those who did not claim asylum were simply paroled or released into the interior, along with a work permit.

Here, again, there was no manner of deterrence saying: Well, if you want to enter the United States, you need to do so according to the rules in an orderly basis.

Essentially, all the rules were set aside, and a big green light and a welcome mat were laid out for anybody and everybody who wanted to come--and come they did. Tens of millions of people--we really don't know exactly how many--took advantage of this open border policy by the Biden administration. Let's say 10 million in round numbers. We know that about 1.7 million people were ``got-aways,'' which is what the Border Patrol calls those who were evading law enforcement who presumably are up to no good because they know they can't enter otherwise because they have either a criminal record or they are transporting drugs or engaged in some other illicit activity.

At the same time that the Biden administration laid out the welcome mat to anybody and everybody who wanted to come to the United States across our border, they issued hundreds of millions of dollars in reimbursements to nonprofits and nongovernmental organizations that helped facilitate this illegal immigration through FEMA's Emergency Food and Shelter Program. Instead of meeting their responsibilities to secure the border, they essentially funded those organizations that facilitated it.

Vice President Harris was assigned the task, as we know, of being the border czar that helped manage this crisis, but she failed to even understand the assignment and failed utterly at completing that assignment.

She visited the Texas-Mexico border once in sort of what I would call a driveby during the 4 years that President Biden and Vice President Harris were in office.

It is safe to say she had no concept or clue about what conditions were like on the border and how dangerous this open border policy was. Clearly she didn't care and was unwilling to do anything about it.

On her one and only visit to the Texas border, she steered clear of the hotspots, like the Rio Grande Valley, which was the very epicenter of the border crisis at the time. Instead, she went to El Paso for a sanitized, made-for-TV visit. Different parts of the border are very different, and instead of going to the place where she knew the action would be, she went to a place that was relatively calm and sedate. But she did it for a TV hit and no other reason.

In 2024, when the Democratic Party deposed President Biden as their nominee and coronated Vice President Harris as their Presidential candidate, she suddenly found herself campaigning to be President of the United States, but she actually shirked from the responsibilities President Biden had given her as the border czar and claimed that she was never actually tasked to oversee the migration crisis.

Suffice it to say that the Biden administration's handling of border security was an unmitigated disaster. As a consequence, the State of Texas, which has 1,200 miles of common border with Mexico, was basically left up to its own devices. We had no choice but to pick up the slack and try to secure some semblance of basic safety for Texans and the rest of the country. Everything the State of Texas did to fill the gap inured not just to the benefit of the 31 million people who live in Texas but to the entire Nation.

Governor Abbott initiated something called Operation Lone Star, which resulted in the apprehension of more than half a million illegal immigrants by Texas law enforcement. Thanks to Operation Lone Star, law enforcement arrested more than 50,000 criminals trying to make their way across the border. Texas also built 240 miles of border barriers when the Federal Government refused to do its job. And officers across the State have seized more than half a billion deadly doses of fentanyl, which is the No. 1 cause of death for young people between the age of 18 and 45 in this country. As a result of Operation Lone Star, without any help at all from the Federal Government, Texas was able to reduce illegal immigration into the State by 87 percent.

Unfortunately, the State had to spend nearly $4.8 billion--money that should have been provided by the Federal Government--Texas taxpayers had to foot the bill for $4.8 billion on walls and barriers, local grants to counties and cities, processing criminal arrests, and moving migrants out of small Texas towns. The State also spent $3.6 billion to deploy the National Guard for building border barriers, guarding and constructing those barriers, and assisting Border Patrol and Customs

and Border Protection. Another $2.25 billion has gone toward personnel cost for Texas State troopers, law enforcement who were responsible for repelling additional illegal immigrants, arresting those who were committing crimes, as well as transnational gang members, cartel members, human smugglers, and human traffickers.

But this was just the start. There were costs associated with the prosecution of border crimes. At Operation Lone Star's criminal processing centers, State game wardens had to pitch in to help control the Rio Grande River on the border to help prevent illegal entries, and criminal processing centers required health and safety services.

We are all familiar with the saying ``There is no such thing as a free lunch,'' but President Biden and Vice President Harris failed to pony up for 4 years and then asked Texans to pick up the tab for their bill. All told, Governor Abbott and the State legislature had to spend more than $11 billion to make up for the Biden administration's blunders and malfeasance and nonfeasance when it came to border security and immigration.

So it is not particularly complicated. Securing the country's borders is a function of the Federal Government. And $11 billion is no small amount of money for a State--particularly one that doesn't have an income tax--to provide that benefits the rest of the country. But this is no different than when the Federal Government steps in to help States that have to deal with extraordinary expenses during the wake of a natural disaster, as they did for Texas in the case of Hurricane Harvey. But instead of a natural disaster, what we had during the 4 years of the Biden administration was a manmade disaster.

While every State became a border State during the last administration, there are costs that Texas had to shoulder that our neighbors had not. It is just fair and right and just for Texas taxpayers to be made whole for the border security responsibilities it took on as a result of President Biden's dereliction of duty.

I am proud to support Governor Abbott's request for the State to be reimbursed. My colleagues on the House and Senate Appropriations Committees should expect me and Senator Cruz and the entire Texas delegation to be strongly advocating for reimbursement for Texas in the coming weeks. I look forward to working with them in order to make this a reality.

I yield the floor.

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

Madam President, last week, the Senate voted to confirm Chris Wright as President Trump's Secretary of Energy.

The United States has been blessed with incredible natural resources, and it is something, frankly, that it seems like President Biden sought to deny the American people the benefits of that endowment with vast natural resources. And President Trump is going to reverse those policies and make sure we take full advantage of it for many reasons.

I was proud to support Secretary Wright's nomination, and I can't think of a better candidate to oversee the implementation of one of President Trump's key campaign promises: to unleash American energy in a new golden age of prosperity.

Under 4 years of the Biden administration, Americans suffered from burdensome energy prices resulting from his backward approach to energy policy. We know that inflation was part of what was driving those high energy prices, but also the refusal to take advantage of what God has given us in terms of natural resources. From day one, President Biden prioritized the view of climate radicals, while the interests of Texas families and our national security were apparently an afterthought.

His first action was to revoke the permits for the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline, a project that would have allowed us to transport crude oil from Canada to refineries in the Midwestern United States. Because the pipeline was not built on a timely basis, it didn't mean the crude didn't come. It meant it was put into railroad cars and shipped in a way that was, frankly, not as safe and, certainly, not as efficient as a pipeline would be.

And, in 2022, President Biden signed the Inflation Reduction Act, and while this law did nothing to reduce inflation, it did create massive subsidies for electric vehicles, most of which average working American families can't afford to buy. But it is the car of choice for many high-income coastal elites.

But it wasn't enough to just subsidize electric vehicles. In 2024, the Biden administration went further in finalizing a rule requiring-- requiring--two-thirds

of new cars on the market to be electric or hybrid by 2032. The Biden administration made clear that their end game was to end gas-powered cars.

Now, most Americans who buy a car keep it for an average of about 10 years, and President Biden basically wanted to force them into buying something that was not their preference but was going to be subsidized by hard-working families--again, a vehicle that many of them could not themselves afford. It is hard to see this as anything but an affront to those hard-working families back home in Texas or Alabama or anywhere else in the country.

It is not just the cost that we are talking about here. President Biden's press for fast adoption of electric vehicles was a gift to our greatest strategic adversary. That is because China controls the supply chains for a majority of the critical minerals required to produce EV batteries. Seventy-five percent of lithium-ion batteries, 70 percent of cathode, and 85 percent of anode production capacity required for EV batteries, as well as 50 percent of the processing facilities for lithium, cobalt, and graphite, are all located in China.

On the other hand, the United States produces virtually none of these critical minerals and certainly does not process them, which is admittedly a very difficult and sometimes dirty process. But in China, they process 90 percent of the world's critical minerals, and, frankly, they don't care too much about the consequences.

But President Biden's insistence on this rapid transition from gas- powered vehicles to electric vehicles put our national security concerns and working families in the backseat to Xi Jinping and the climate radicals. But he didn't stop with electric vehicles.

Last January, President Biden issued a pause on all American exports of liquified natural gas in order to conduct a study on the environmental impact. Well, I can tell him what a study has shown--what experience has shown is that natural gas has driven down the number of carbon emissions that previously occurred because of the broad use of coal. So natural gas is really a much cleaner source of energy.

Of course, this pause on exports had major repercussions in Texas, which is one of the leaders of the LNG industry.

A 2023 study from the National Association of Manufacturers found that liquefied natural gas contributes $43.8 billion to our GDP. It supports more than 200,000 jobs and generates $11 billion in Federal, State, and local tax revenue. In Texas alone, the oil and gas industry specifically supported more than 178,000 direct and indirect jobs in 2023 and purchased nearly $100 billion of U.S. goods and services.

But President Biden's pause on exports was not the only time the Biden administration chose to pick a fight with Texas over energy.

Last fall, the DC Circuit Court issued a ruling that revoked a permit for the LNG export terminal at the Port of Brownsville. This export terminal and related projects had already been approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Just one of the projects affected by this ruling would have created 6,000 jobs and more than $18 billion of investments in South Texas.

But the DC Circuit sent them back to the drawing board, insisting that they needed to ``adequately consider the environmental justice impact'' of these developments.

These were for projects that had already been approved by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Of course, we already know that liquefied natural gas is one of the cleanest sources of energy, and of all the places in the world to source LNG, the United States of America has the highest standards. But environmental considerations aside, this war on American energy exports is in direct conflict with our national security priorities.

Prior to the pause on LNG, the United States was supplying energy to our European allies. This, of course, allowed them to rely far less on Russian energy sources to keep the lights on and keep their houses warm. By turning off our LNG spigot, President Biden sent a gift to Vladimir Putin in the form of another source of revenue. Of course, it is the revenue that comes from the sale of energy in Russia that Putin uses to fund his war machine, which has resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Russians and Ukrainians.

President Biden's energy agenda put Texas workers and their families and our national security last, choosing instead to bend a knee to foreign adversaries and to radical climate activists.

But, thankfully, that is not where the story ends. President Trump and Secretary Wright are now at the helm, and President Trump has lost no time in righting the ship to put American consumers and our national security first. President Trump is already off to the races to unleash a golden age of energy dominance in a number of important ways.

On the first day of his Presidency, he reversed President Biden's disastrous LNG pause. This will allow our allies access to the oil and natural gas that come from Texas projects in the Gulf of America rather than relying on our adversaries.

Furthermore, it is not just Texans and our European allies that can benefit from President Trump and Secretary Wright's agenda; by reforming the permitting process, we can make sure everyone within the United States has access to our abundant domestic energy supplies. And it will bring prices down, as President Trump has said is important in his fight against 40-year high inflation under the previous administration.

Unfortunately, some of our New England States--notably States like Maine and Massachusetts--are still reliant on foreign fuel, and that is because of the lack of pipelines that would take the LNG and transport it up into that part of the United States.

Due to stringent shipping requirements from the Jones Act, it is more costly to transport natural gas from the Gulf of America to New England than it is for these States to import fuel from foreign countries. The Jones Act was intended to protect U.S. shipping, but in this case, it has the unintended effect of decreasing our energy independence. I have no doubt that commonsense permitting reforms can right this wrong.

I look forward to working with President Trump and his administration to unleash American energy through an ``all of the above'' approach so that Texas and the Gulf of America can once again supply the Nation and the world with reliable, affordable energy.

The Biden administration's energy policy has lined the pockets of America's adversaries to appease climate radicals while hard-working Americans were stuck with the check. But President Trump has promised a golden, new age, and I look forward to making Texas and America the center of that.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to be able to complete my remarks before the vote.

Mr. President, I would like to continue along the theme that our majority whip has talked about, particularly the hand-wringing that we are seeing and fearmongering we are hearing from some of our Democratic colleagues over President Trump's promise to secure the border and the actions that he has taken already early in his administration to do exactly that, including enforcing our existing laws by repatriating, or deporting, people who have no legal right to be here in the first place.

So, instead of the fearmongering of mass deportations, you might just call this enforcing the law--something that is long overdue and that the Biden administration did not do--because the fearmongering is not based on reality. Our Democratic colleagues would have the American people believe that an elderly grandma down the street--a peaceful neighbor who would never hurt a fly and who poses no threat to anyone-- will have ICE banging on her door tomorrow morning. Well, that is the picture that the left wants the American people to imagine when they hear the words ``mass deportation.''

Last December, in a Judiciary Committee hearing, then-Chairman Durbin, the Senator from Illinois, went so far as to say the President's repatriation program would ``weaken our Armed Forces'' and ``devastate our economy.'' That is a lot of hyperbole there. If that is what enforcing our law means, it certainly sounds disturbing.

But the American people can see right through what our Democratic colleagues are trying to do here. They are trying to sow fear into the hearts of the American people that this President, whom a majority of the voters elected, is going to tear their communities and their families apart. But the image could not be farther from the truth. We know that the Biden administration's own policies and failure to enforce the law have been doing just that--tearing families and communities apart.

Start with the fentanyl epidemic in our country, which is among the leading causes of death--the leading cause of death--for young people between the ages of 18 and 45 and which took the lives of more than 70,000 people last year alone in this country. Then there are the 400,000 or more unaccompanied children who have been trafficked across our open borders, and tens of thousands of these children have simply been lost because of the Biden administration's carelessness.

The New York Times ran a couple of investigative stories, saying they tried to contact the sponsors for 85,000 of these unaccompanied children who had been placed with sponsors during the Biden administration. There was no answer and no follow-up because the Biden administration took the responsibility that it was no longer their job; it was the job of the child welfare agencies in the various States.

These tragedies are the result of the policies of the Biden administration, not the Trump administration, and it is one reason President Trump was elected decisively on November 5, but there is more to the story.

Untold misery and heartache have been caused by criminals who have entered our country illegally. By our best estimate, roughly 1.7 million ``got-aways'' came across the open borders during the Biden administration. These were people who, if they were here for, let's say, benign reasons, could have just turned themselves in to the Border Patrol and claimed asylum, knowing they would be released or would have been paroled by the Biden administration and given a work permit; but at least 1.7 million ``got-aways'' were evading law enforcement, frankly, because they were up to no good.

We have now learned what the toll of this invasion of criminality has caused. Last summer in Houston, TX, a 12-year-old girl named Jocelyn Nungaray disappeared on her way to the grocery store. She was found dead in a creek, having been strangled and killed by two men from Venezuela who had entered the country illegally. Both of these men had been apprehended by Customs and Border Protection months earlier, but they had been given a court date and then were released.

Last month, an illegal migrant from Mexico was caught with a blowtorch near the side of the Kenneth fire--one of the deadly fires that was ravaging Los Angeles. This is a man who was already on probation and had violated that probation.

If it is proven that he had started the fire, this would be a slap in the face to everyone whose world has been rocked by the devastation we have seen from these terrible fires out in California. If it turns out that he was one of the ones who started the fire, that would be another indictment of the policies of the Biden administration for the last 4 years.

Then 2 weeks ago, Boston ICE officials arrested multiple MS-13 gang members and criminals on a worldwide law enforcement ``wanted'' list for serious crimes. They arrested murder and rape suspects, including a member of the Haitian gang who had 18 convictions. These were the types of people that the Biden administration allowed loose in our country.

We know that ICE--Immigration and Customs Enforcement--has now arrested criminals who have committed sexual assault, domestic violence, and drug- and weapon-related crimes, but these are just a few examples of the hundreds of criminal arrests made just in the few short weeks since President Trump took office.

To the Democrats who would decry these arrests, would you want these criminals to be your neighbor? I am going to guess the answer is no.

With criminal illegal migrants running rampant throughout the country, it is no surprise that Americans voted overwhelmingly for a President who pledged to reverse the course from the reckless open border policies of the Biden administration.

We know last week President Trump signed the Laken Riley Act. I was honored to be present at the White House with our friend and colleague Senator Katie Britt to watch him sign this legislation into law.

Laken Riley, for whom this law was named, was a 22-year-old woman who went missing after going on a run. She was killed by a Venezuelan national who was also a gang member. He should have never been running loose in our country in the first place. It was President Biden's open border policies that led to this horrific murder of Laken Riley.

The Laken Riley Act will now, having been signed into law, require the Department of Homeland Security to detain noncitizens charged with or convicted of theft-related crimes or any crime that results in death or serious bodily injury. I introduced an amendment during the deliberations on the bill that would add assaulting a law enforcement officer to that list.

As we know here in the Senate, there is a 60-vote threshold to be able to close off debate and to actually move on to pass legislation. It ensures that we have bipartisan consensus. I am glad to say that the Laken Riley Act passed the Senate with bipartisan support. I appreciate the recognition that the status quo during the previous administration could no longer exist.

The Laken Riley Act is not an example of some extremism, but it is an issue that affects the day-to-day safety and livelihoods of regular Americans.

I think it is perfectly fair to say that the deportations or repatriations that the Trump administration has already begun are very much in the spirit of the Laken Riley Act.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem made clear over the weekend that the Trump administration's first priority will be to detain and deport what she called the ``worst of the worst''; that is, bad actors with warrants out for arrest for murder, rape, assault, and drug trafficking.

After the criminal aliens are deported, she said the next priority will be individuals under final orders of deportation; in other words, those who have exhausted all possible legal recourse to be able to stay in the United States, having lost their claim for asylum.

There are more than 1\1/2\ million--1\1/2\ million--immigrants who have exhausted their legal remedies in a court of law and are under final orders of deportation, but the Biden administration simply did nothing about it. So removing these individuals who have no legal right to remain in the United States and who have been given due process and have lost their case--deporting them is a commonsense next step and one that is long overdue.

So when the mainstream media and our Democratic colleagues engage in fearmongering about these so-called mass deportations, I hope people remember we are talking primarily about criminals, and we are talking about people who have no legal right to remain in the United States, having exhausted all of their legal remedies in order to do so. I hope we can all agree that these are not people who deserve to remain in America.

America naturalizes about 1 million people a year. I personally believe and I think Americans generally agree that legal immigration has been the secret sauce for America. It is what helped make us the great country we are today, prosperous and strong. But it is illegal immigration that has been a scourge and has created much heartache and misery and, frankly, makes us a laughing stock when we talk about the rule of law.

Removing and deporting en masse the criminals and gangs who have entered our country illegally over the last 4 years and faced no consequences means that Americans will have less to fear, and they will be safer in their communities and in their homes. They will no longer have to fear that one of their children will accidentally take a fentanyl-laced pill--make it less likely. We still have work to do there, obviously. They no longer will have to fear that their daughter will go on a run around her college campus or walk to the grocery store and never return home because she has been abducted and murdered by somebody who had no legal right to be here in the first place.

By ending President Biden's open border policies and deporting criminals and gang members and people under final orders of deportation, President Trump is making our Nation safe again. That is not something we should fear; it is something we should welcome.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, as the world knows, it goes without saying that one of President Biden's biggest failures was security at our southern border. In fact, the situation is so dire that now Democrats, after the November 5 election, are actually finally seeing the light that they need to do something to recapture the support of the American people, and that was reflected in the first piece of legislation we passed that President Trump will sign into law tomorrow: the Laken Riley Act.

Twelve of our Democratic colleagues in the Senate and 46 in the House supported that bill, which I have to think, before the November 5 election, they would have uniformly voted against. But they realized that they were so out of sync with the American people and our national security interests, I would love to say they got religion or saw the light. Maybe they just counted the votes.

I am heartened, though, that they have seemed to buck the liberal status quo when it comes to the border and actually helped us pass a law that will strengthen our security and make our communities safer. But let's make no mistake about where this crisis came from that took the life of Laken Riley and so many others. This is one that the Biden administration invited and exacerbated from day one after President Biden took office.

On the campaign trail in 2020, President Biden made this pledge. He said:

I would in fact make sure that we immediately surge to the

border all those people who are seeking asylum.

Now, that was a big welcome mat or invitation for anybody and everybody across the planet to show up at the border and to claim asylum. And because of the backlog in asylum claims and the fact that they would be released into the interior of the country, basically that was a free ticket into the United States outside of what should be our regular, orderly, lawful immigration system.

But President Biden didn't stop there. When he assumed office, he ended all of the policies of the previous administration--very successful policies like President Trump's ``Remain in Mexico'' policy. He halted the construction of the border wall and, instead, spent Federal dollars to store unused wall materials. And then, right before the election or right after the election, we found out they were actually selling these border wall materials for essentially salvage or for pennies on the dollar. And knowing that, with President Trump resuming office again, we would have to repurchase those items, it just seemed like a kick in the teeth for the American taxpayer and contemptuous, frankly, of law and order.

So we also know that, sort of to add insult to injury, the Biden administration created the so-called CBP One app. This is an app for your phone. CBP stands for ``Customs and Border Protection.'' So, basically, what happens is people outside of the country who wanted to come here and claim asylum, knowing they would be released into the interior of the country and have to wait for years--maybe as long as a decade--before they would appear before an immigration judge, they could literally make an appointment to show up at a port of entry using the CBP One app.

So here you have the Federal Government, the U.S. Government, facilitating the movement of people into the country that were transported here by criminal organizations that got rich thanks to the Biden administration. And it was not uncommon to see people coming from far-flung parts of the planet.

Now, I live in Texas. We have a 1,200-mile border with Mexico. We are accustomed, over the years, to people from Mexico or Central or even South America coming to the border, but not people from Latvia, from China, from the Middle East. But under the Biden administration, they knew that they were going to be able to come to the United States, and they could actually even schedule an appointment thanks to the misguided policies of the Biden administration.

Even as this crisis continued to grow, President Biden ended the use of the very effective title 42 authority, which was used during COVID to limit the

movement of adult males into the country because of the COVID situation.

While this is a national crisis that President Biden created, it is one that has been felt most acutely by the people of Texas, the 31 million people I represent. In the midst of the Biden administration's abject failure to keep the American people safe and to control the movement of people and drugs, including some of the most dangerous criminals you can imagine, it was up to the State of Texas and our leadership, like Governor Abbott, to step up and defend our people and our borders the best we could.

Now, understand, border security is not normally a State function because this is an international border, which means it is a Federal responsibility. But what are we supposed to do when the President of the United States and the Federal Government fail to do their job? Well, the State stepped up, which means not only our leadership, our National Guard, but also Texas taxpayers. In other words, we had to pay the tab to provide for border security such as we could, instead of the Federal Government picking up the tab, as it should have.

So Governor Abbott initiated Operation Lone Star, which resulted in more than half a million illegal immigrants being apprehended by Texas law enforcement. More than 50,000 criminals were arrested, and more than 240 miles of border barriers were built by the State--not at Federal expense, a Federal responsibility, but at State expense, by State taxpayers.

This law enforcement operation also intercepted a half a billion doses of fentanyl. Fentanyl, as we now know, is spread throughout the United States--is hidden in counterfeit pills that look like an innocuous pharmaceutical, only to find out that it will kill you in small doses. It took roughly 70,000 lives last year alone, and it is a leading cause of death for young people between the age of 18 and 45. That is what comes over the border in addition to the millions of people.

I applaud the efforts of the Governor and our State legislature to step up and to secure the border and to protect my fellow Texans, even when the Federal Government--the President of the United States and Vice President--turned a blind eye.

As a result of Operation Lone Star, Texas was able to reduce illegal immigration into the State by 87 percent. But, as I said, these efforts came at a very real cost. The State of Texas spent nearly $4.8 billion on walls and barriers, local grants to counties and cities, processing criminal arrests, and moving migrants out of small Texas towns.

Deploying the National Guard for building border barriers, guarding and constructing those barriers, and apprehending migrants who were illegally present in the United States cost another $3.6 billion. Then Texas had personnel costs for our State troopers, Department of Public Safety troopers, who were responsible for repelling additional illegal migrants, arresting those who otherwise broke the law, transnational gang members, cartel members, human smugglers, and human traffickers. The Federal Government didn't do it; so Texas did. That came to an additional $2.25 billion in taxpayer expenditure--money that should have been provided by the Federal Government for a Federal responsibility, borne by the taxpayers of my State.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice spent an additional $311.2 million on anti-gang violence. The number of dangerous gangs emanating from Central America or Venezuela are well-known and, indeed, these are some of the most dangerous people that have made their way into the United States as a result of the policies of the Biden administration. So Texas had no choice but to deal with anti-gang violence.

And then there is a cost associated with the prosecution of these border crimes at Operation Lone Star's criminal processing centers.

And then the game wardens--this was an ``all hands on deck.'' Even the game wardens in Texas played a role. They patrolled the Rio Grande River to prevent illegal entries.

Criminal processing centers required health and safety services. And the list goes on and on and on.

This was an all-of-government effort in the State of Texas. Even the Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission put millions of dollars toward interdicting human trafficking at the border.

All told, as a result of the Biden-Harris administration's abject dereliction of its responsibility at an international border, to enforce the law cost the State of Texas about $11.1 billion.

Now, Texas, unlike many of the States in the rest of the country, doesn't have an income tax. We fund our government through sales tax and through property tax, and we don't have an income tax. This was a painful expenditure by the Texas legislature and by our leadership. And that figure doesn't even take into account what local counties and cities and other nonprofits were forced to further shoulder when it came to the financial burden.

Before President Biden came to office, Texas spent $800 million every 2 years on border security, roughly $400 million a year. That means that taxpayers are on the hook for nearly 14 times what they typically spent on border security due to the failure of the Biden administration.

It wasn't just negligence. It was intentional. It was willful.

Keeping our Nation's border secure is the responsibility of the Federal Government. It is not and it should not be the responsibility of the individual States. That is part of our constitutional framework.

This is a crisis that the Biden administration literally invited by rolling out the welcome mat and refusing to enforce laws that were on the books.

What is worse? In the midst of this disaster, the Federal Government reimbursed others--nonprofits, nongovernmental associations--to help facilitate illegal immigration, through FEMA's Emergency Food and Shelter Program to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

So Texas has been stuck with the check for the Biden-Harris failed policies, and that is wrong. Governor Abbott has asked Congress to reimburse Texas for its costs that should have been incurred by the Federal Government in the first instance. I support this request. And along with our State delegation, we are going to fight to get Texas taxpayers the money they are rightfully owed.

The Texas congressional delegation is 40 individuals strong--38 in the House and 2 here in the Senate--and we believe it is only right and just for the Federal Government and the Congress to reimburse the State for expenditures it should have never had to make if the Biden-Harris administration had simply done its job, which is to provide for a secure border.

Surely, if the Federal Government can reimburse nongovernmental organizations for rolling out the welcome mat for illegal migrants, it could also cover Texas's expenses for keeping U.S. citizens safe.

And the work that was done along the border did not accrue to the benefit solely of people in Texas. I mentioned the fentanyl crisis. Fentanyl now, unfortunately, has spread to 50 States. But the work that was done at the border, keeping some of the fentanyl out of the country and arresting criminals at the border, that benefited people in all 50 States--again, another reason why this is a Federal responsibility.

It is only a matter of basic fairness that the Federal Government should step up and help address a crisis that was a problem of its own making. Texas taxpayers should not have to foot the bill alone as a result of President Biden's mishandling of border policy.

So I urge all of our colleagues here in the Senate, as well as our colleagues in the House, to work with me and the Texas delegation--all 40 of us--on fulfilling this request by Governor Abbott to reimburse Texas for its expenses that it never should have had to spend and make, if President Biden and the Federal Government had simply done their job.

The Federal Government created this crisis, and it is up to the Federal Government to pay the tab.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, it has been 4 days. It seems like it has been longer than that, but it has been 4 days since President Trump took the oath of office as the 47th President of the United States. We have seen a flurry of activity since that time, which you would expect from President Trump. He has been waiting for that day for some time now and has worked really hard to get there. But from securing our borders to securing protections for women in sports, it is abundantly clear that President Trump is not letting any dust gather under his feet.

I am particularly pleased to see him dismantling the Biden-Harris administration's DEI regime throughout the Federal Government. Some people may be asking: Well, why would the President waste his time on that? What could be wrong with having a diverse workforce?

Well, the truth is that, while DEI--or diversity, equity, and inclusion--may sound like a benign or a nice thing, the dystopian reality is that there is nothing inclusive about DEI programming. On the contrary, it is quite divisive. In practice, DEI initiatives do the exact opposite of what they purport to do, and they fly directly in the face of everything that America stands for.

On Monday of this week, we celebrated Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday. In what was perhaps Dr. King's most famous speech, the ``I Have a Dream'' speech, he said:

I have a dream that my four children will one day live in a

nation where they will not be judged by the color of their

skin but [rather] by the content of their character.

To me, that is the ideal.

At the heart of the civil rights movement was a desire for everyone, regardless of race or gender, to compete on a level, merit-based playing field.

What is so misguided about these DEI initiatives is that they do the exact opposite of what Martin Luther King spoke about. Instead of judging people on the content of their character, the DEI regime would have us assign points to people based on characteristics like skin color and gender and give preferential treatment to people on that basis. These are immutable characteristics, not something any of us can control. So it is profoundly unfair to decide that one person in a job candidate pool gets more weight put on their application because of something that was an accident of their birth. I think most people, if they understand what DEI is all about, would agree that this amounts to an unfair hiring practice. It treats people differently based on gender or the color of their skin or some other immutable characteristic.

President Trump's Executive order does not just affect Federal hiring; it also directs Agencies and Department heads to eliminate DEI practices in grants and contracts as well.

I think this would be a great opportunity for the Department of Government Efficiency to take a look at it as well, as there is a lot of room to eliminate waste and inefficiency in Federal grants and contracts.

According to the Government Accounting Office--GAO--the Federal Government spent $759 billion on Federal contracts in 2023, which represents roughly 12.5 percent of Federal Government spending for that fiscal year. A significant number of these contracts are for the Department of Defense. With billions of dollars and our national security on the line, it is critical that these contracts are awarded to contractors on merit, not based on some DEI-centered criteria. We owe it to the taxpayers to be selecting the best and the brightest and the most effective people for a job, not picking the consulting firm that simply racked up the most DEI points.

One of the downstream effects of DEI requirements in Federal contracts is they create an incentive structure for these divisive practices to bleed into the corporate world. This goes all the way back to then-President Richard Nixon, who implemented affirmative action requirements for private companies that contract with the Federal Government.

Since that time, there have even been instances of companies committing outright fraud in order to qualify for contracts that were prioritized for minority-owned businesses by claiming that an employee is a 51-percent owner in order to qualify for minority-owned status and thus get preferential treatment.

Now, some of the folks in the media not surprisingly are framing this action by President Trump as a reversal of the progress we have made in America in the civil rights era, but nothing could be further from the truth.

What we have to keep in mind is that the reforms of the civil rights era were enacted to address particular problems that our Nation was going through at that time; namely, segregation and widespread racial discrimination. Of course, these practices of racial discrimination that were so widespread during that time were far from our finest moments as a nation. I am thankful--thankful--that our country has been able to move forward from that era, and I applaud the men and women who went to great lengths and risked everything to help us turn the page on that chapter as a country.

But today, with rights granted to everybody, regardless of race, color, or creed, by law, we have a different situation where the law and the policies that were intended to end racial discrimination have evolved into the modern DEI apparatus, creating a new kind of discrimination--something we sought to avoid but which has now crept back into our country.

So the policies that were enacted to address one problem back during the civil rights era have been turned on their head--not to accomplish their original purpose but to do something entirely different, which is to enact preferences based on race, gender, and other immutable characteristics.

In fact, while the Civil Rights Act was being debated right here on the Senate floor, one of its architects, Senator Humphrey, expressed direct opposition to what is now part of the DEI bureaucracy. He said:

If the Senator can find in Title VII any language which

provides that an employer

will have to hire on the basis of percentage or quota related

to color, race, religion, or national origin, I will start

eating the pages one after another, because it is not there.

So I think it is fair to say that President Trump's actions earlier this week are not a reversal of the progress we have made since the civil rights movement. They are better understood as the righting of the ship back to what Congress and the Nation intended to accomplish: a nation where all people have a chance to succeed or fail based on their merit and not on race.

So this action by President Trump, rather than reversing progress, is a return to the ideal that the United States of America should have always stood for but unfortunately did not, which is the equal dignity and equal treatment of every American under the law. That is our goal, and I am glad to see that President Trump has returned us to that original ideal since the civil rights era rather than to somehow paper over this effort to treat people differently based on their race, gender, or other characteristics.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, it seems like a long time ago that we had the general election on November 5. It seems like a lot of water under the bridge, over the transom, whatever your metaphor might be, but we do know with clarity that this election was a referendum on the policies of the Biden administration and on the direction that they had chosen for the country.

And the vast majority of Americans believed, according to public opinion polls, that the country was heading in the wrong direction. And so if you think about it, one of the great strengths of democracy in our great Republic is when people feel like the country is heading in the wrong direction, they have the power to change it, and, indeed, they did by electing President Trump and Republican majorities in the House and Senate on November 5.

Over the last 4 years, we know that people in my State of Texas and across the country have been living under the burden of high prices and high interest rates, almost exclusively caused by reckless, excessive spending by the Federal Government.

I had a chance to question Russ Vought who will be the next Director of the Office of Management and Budget, and he confirmed what Milton Friedman told us a long time ago; that inflation is almost exclusively the consequence of excess Federal spending.

And when you think about the gasoline that the Biden administration poured on the fire of inflation and what it did to decrease the standard of living for people in my State and across the country, it is a tragedy.

And then the Federal Reserve, of course, doing their job, trying to figure out how do you damp down inflation using the tools that they have. They raise interest rates, and, of course, everything became more expensive from home mortgage to buying a car. If you are a farmer or rancher, the cost of the inputs into your next crop are higher because of the cost of borrowing.

So I couldn't be more excited about President Trump's administration and this new direction for the country, what he called a new golden age of prosperity.

So I was thrilled also to happen to meet with and get to know some of the people that I did not know in his Cabinet. Fortunately, the President wisely

chose three Texans in his Cabinet, people I know well. I had the opportunity to introduce Brooke Rollins as Secretary of Agriculture this morning before the Agriculture Committee, but I didn't know all of the people that will serve in President Trump's Cabinet, so it was great to get to know them and a little bit about their background. People like Scott Bessent, nominated to head up his team at the Department of Treasury, a very important Cabinet post; Howard Lutnick as Secretary of Commerce; and Russ Vought, who I mentioned a moment ago, who will lead for the second time the Office of Management and Budget.

These three gentlemen bring a wealth of experience and expertise, and I have no doubt that America will be better off with them at the helm assisting President Trump during his administration.

As I mentioned, Howard Lutnick was one of the individuals I got to know a little bit better who has been tapped for Secretary of Commerce, and, of course, Mr. Lutnick is well-known in financial circles, having been a fabulously successful businessman and investor. He has successfully led organizations in the financial service industries for decades.

And at first glance, people may assume, well, this is just another rich guy serving in the Trump Cabinet, but there is much more to the story about Howard Lutnick than initially meets the eye, and I just want to tell that story just briefly.

Howard and his wife have four children, and he, quite literally, would not be with us today if it weren't for his family. On September 11, 2001, in New York, where they live, it was the first day of school--of kindergarten for his son, Kyle. And Howard, like a good father, decided he was going to take his son to school.

And so he was planning to go a little bit late to his office at Cantor Fitzgerald. Cantor Fitzgerald, his business, his company, was located in the World Trade Center, and we all remember the tragic story of 9/11, what happened that day. More than two-thirds of Cantor Fitzgerald's employees--Howard Lutnick's company--including his own brother, were killed that day.

Howard told me in my office, he said: These were my friends. He said:

I have always made a point of hiring people, working with

people who I know personally and can trust.

And so his friends, his employees, two-thirds of them, including his brother, were killed that day. It is hard to fathom what a profound loss that must be.

As anybody can imagine, this company, now having lost two-thirds of its employees, was in a vulnerable state, and many people expected it to close shop.

Yet in the midst of this personal tragedy, with the future uncertain, Howard picked up the pieces and rebuilt Cantor Fitzgerald. This is a man unlike most men, a person of heroic character. There is no doubt in my mind that Howard Lutnick will be well-suited to help rebuild the American economy and help put the country back on track.

As a matter of fact, Mr. Lutnick basically gave a significant portion of Cantor Fitzgerald to his employees, something he was not obligated to do, in order to get them back on the right track.

In addition to Mr. Lutnick, President Trump has tapped other impressive individuals to lead his economic agenda. Last week, I had the pleasure of speaking with Scott Bessent in the Senate Finance Committee in which I serve. One of the issues we discussed during the hearing was something we all care about, which is the threat of the Chinese Communist Party.

Mr. Bessent named China as one of America's biggest challenges, which should come as no surprise to anyone here in the Senate. We all know, for example, that Chinese fentanyl is the No. 1 cause of death for young people in America between the age of 18 and 45. We all know that China is conducting joint military operations with Russia and continues to assert excessive and illegal maritime boundary claims in the South China Sea, threatening a regional conflict that may not be confined to a region.

President Xi, the President of the People's Republic of China and the head of the Chinese Communist Party, has signaled his plans to invade Taiwan by 2027. That is just 2 years away.

And, of course, one of the reasons China has been able to become such a threat economically and from a military standpoint to the United States is U.S. investments in that country.

Mr. Bessent rightly noted last week that China has one of the most unbalanced economies in the history of the world, and they are using their surpluses to fund their military machine to modernize and threaten the peace, not only in the Indo-Pacific but more broadly. I am glad Mr. Bessent shares this very serious concern of mine. It shouldn't be a secret to anybody in the Senate that I have been working on this issue for some time now.

Back in 2023, the Senate voted 91 to 6 to adopt my amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would have required transparency for outbound investments; that is, American investors investing in China. But then, unfortunately, that provision did not make its way into the final version of the National Defense Authorization Act. We came very close to passing provisions to address outbound investment in the continuing resolution at the end of the year, but, of course, that continuing resolution was loaded down with a whole lot of other last-minute provisions and collapsed under its own weight. So I am hopeful--and I am actually optimistic--we will get it done this year. But the fact of the matter is we are running out of time.

It is unfathomable to me that the U.S. Government, including our intelligence Agencies and our military, would be blind to the economic threat and the military threat of massive U.S. investment into China.

We know China does not respect any firewall or dividing line between the military and businesses. They actually have a law, a military- civilian fusion law, which requires companies in China to share their technology, their data, with the People's Liberation Army and the Chinese Communist Party. It is unfathomable to me that the United States would continue this process without regard to what the potential consequences might be. It is no exaggeration to say that it could well be investments from the United States into the People's Republic of China that allow them not only to build their economy but their military as well and threaten regional and world peace.

And as one of our colleagues, a former U.S. Marine, said: And end up nose to nose, gun to gun, with Marines when President Xi decides to invade Taiwan, if that day occurs.

So I was very pleased that Mr. Bessent agreed with me about the necessity of transparency for policymakers to understand exactly what is going on, especially in industries like artificial intelligence, quantum computing, and advanced semiconductors.

Mr. Bessent is going to be a great partner because he understands how the economy works and how it is intertwined with our national security.

Finally, I had the pleasure of speaking once again to Russ Vought, who was formerly the Director of the Office of Management and Budget, a job he held previously under President Trump during his first administration. Mr. Vought led the OMB then, and so he has had extensive experience to build on in President Trump's second term.

At yesterday's hearing, we had a chance to talk about the government's spending problem. We have approaching a $37 trillion debt. The Federal Government spends roughly $6.75 trillion a year. And while we talk about it on a regular basis, Congress has yet to do anything significant to deal with that mounting debt. And right now, we are paying more for interest on the national debt than we are on our own defense and national security. It is unsustainable.

Years ago, ADM Mike Mullen, who was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said ``the biggest threat to our national security is our debt.'' At the time I thought, Well, that is kind of an interesting comment. But what he said then has become actually true. We can't spend more as we need to do on our national security to reestablish deterrence, to prevent us from having to fight in wars--which is the goal of our military strength--if we can't afford it. And with the mounting demands of interest on the national debt, this is simply unsustainable.

I believe we have a historic opportunity with President Trump's second

term and with Republicans in the majority in the House and the Senate to look at mandatory spending programs. Unfortunately, without bipartisan support--which we are, frankly, not going to get--we can't look at salvaging or saving Medicare and Social Security, but we can look at the hundreds of billions of dollars in mandatory spending programs that are on autopilot and that have been growing at 5, 6, 7, 8 percent a year. And surely we can find some savings on those mandatory spending programs.

Just like most families and most businesses, if you think about how much money you have coming in the door, you say: Well, we have got certain things that we need, we must have--food, shelter, and the like. You have other things, maybe, that you would like--maybe a new TV, a new car, whatever. And then you have things that you simply can't afford. That is what every family in America has to do. That is what every business has to do, but not the Federal Government. Well, it is about time that we do exactly that.

And, it is also important to get spending under control to ease the historically high inflation, which has robbed every man, woman, and child in America with a hidden tax, reducing their standard of living. That comes, in large part, from excessive Federal Government spending.

And then we talked about commonsense things, which I am really happy that Elon Musk and the Department of Government Efficiency and President Trump have talked about, things like getting Federal employees back in the office in person. What a novel concept.

And, of course, reinstating work requirements for able-bodied adults to get them back in the workforce. We have a lot of means-tested programs, that means based on your income. But if you have an able- bodied individual who is capable of working and providing for their family, why should the taxpayers have to pick up the tab? So getting able-bodied men and women back in the workforce and off of these means- tested programs is really important.

There is no secret that the American people were profoundly disappointed at the Biden administration's handling of the U.S. economy, but I have no doubt that with President Trump, Howard Lutnick, Scott Bessent, and Russ Vought on President Trump's team, we will be in good shape to get the economy and our national security back on track and usher in not only a new age of American prosperity, but also to reestablish the sort of deterrence that will prevent the young men and women in this country from ever having to fight wars that could simply be prevented by reestablishing that deterrence.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I want to start by thanking my friend and colleague Senator Lankford from Oklahoma in organizing a colloquy here recognizing the importance of protecting the lives of the unborn and to bring us together today to make a statement about the importance of standing up for the right to life.

I look forward to joining my constituents back in Texas on Saturday, later this week, at the Texas Rally for Life, where I will be honored to speak.

It is no mistake that the Declaration of Independence recognizes the importance of the right to life. Life and liberty are among the unalienable rights that have been guaranteed by our Constitution but, more importantly, by our Creator.

Now, 3 years have passed since the Supreme Court struck down Roe v. Wade, which was judge-made law, drawing an arbitrary line at when abortions would be available or when they would not be available, and excluding any kind of participation from the American people, across this great land of ours of 330-plus million people, about what they thought.

This decision returned the authority where it should have been in the first place, until the Supreme Court ruled in Roe v. Wade, back to the States, because now the elected officials in the various States are going to be accountable to their constituents at where that line is drawn.

All the States and, thus, all the American people, through their elected representatives and their State legislatures, have an opportunity to weigh in. And I know that this can be a controversial topic. It is fraught with emotion and strong feelings. But it is important to point out that, notwithstanding where you think the line ought to be drawn at when an abortion should be available in America, it is the Democratic Party that is extreme and out of touch with the American people on this issue.

Our Democratic colleagues have made clear that they support abortion on demand--anytime, anywhere, anyplace--funded by the taxpayer, even, up until the moment of birth and, in some instances, even after birth.

This week, we will vote on the Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would guarantee certain basic medical care to children who are born as a result of an unsuccessful abortion. In other words, if they are born alive, are they left to die or are they given the basic medical care that any infant would be given?

My Democratic colleagues are on record for saying they think medical care is a basic human right. I heard the Senator from Vermont this morning, in the Budget hearing, talking about a fundamental right to healthcare. Well, now we are about to see whether they will vote to deny basic medical care to infants who survive abortions. If there is a basic right to healthcare in this country, will it be afforded to the most vulnerable of our citizens--children born alive as a result of an unsuccessful abortion--or not?

It has been said before by many great minds that civilizations should be measured by the way we treat our most vulnerable members. It is hard for me to imagine anyone more vulnerable than an infant who has been born, who

isn't wanted by his or her parents. To deny protection to these helpless newborns amounts to infanticide, and it is a tragedy that this is legal in our country.

If America is to be truly great, we should, without question, be willing to, at least, provide basic medical care to these innocent children.

I would hope our Democratic colleagues would examine their conscience and realize that there are more important things than politics in this world. In the end, we all have to live with our own consciences, and I would hope they would join us in voting for this legislation to protect the right to life for these, our most vulnerable citizens.

Mr. President, as the world knows by now, yesterday, President Trump was sworn in as the 47th President of the United States. I think he is only the second President who has been sworn in on two different occasions. He is both the 45th and the 47th President of the United States.

It was an honor to see him take the oath of office yesterday in the Capitol Rotunda. I only regret, because of the weather, that more people weren't able to see that in person. I was with a number of my Texas constituents this morning. They are not accustomed to the cold temperatures, but they were prepared to dress warmly and to deal with it. They all seemed to be in good spirits because of the outcome of the election, and they were happy to see the President sworn in, as was I.

I want to express my personal congratulations, along with that of millions of people across the country, to President Trump and our former colleague J.D. Vance.

I have told people, when J.D. Vance came to the Senate, I actually had met him before because when he went to Yale Law School, he actually was an intern on the Judiciary Committee that I serve on, and he worked in my office for a very brief period of time. I didn't know him then. As I told him, I knew him before he was famous, before he wrote ``Hillbilly Elegy'' and his career took off like a rocket ship. I am proud of what Vice President Vance has been able to accomplish.

If you think about it, here is a guy who at 40 years old is Vice President of the United States, and if you read or listen to ``Hillbilly Elegy''--about the circumstances under which J.D. Vance was raised--you can see that he has overcome a lot of obstacles in life. He served as a U.S. marine, and I know he was celebrating last night with the Ohio State championship win, being a graduate of that school. It was great to see him get sworn in yesterday as well. Again, only in America--only in America--can something like that happen.

Immigration

It is no secret either that in the last 4 years, the Biden administration's policies have been nothing but a disaster for the Nation, and no State has been more negatively affected than my State, the State of Texas. We have 1,200 miles of common border with Mexico, and the open border policies of the Biden administration have been an unmitigated disaster from a public health standpoint and a public safety standpoint. Many of our border communities have simply been overwhelmed and overrun just by the sheer volume of people coming from all around the world.

This is not the sort of immigration that you have seen in the past where poor people have come to the United States across the border to work and send money home. You literally have seen, with the Biden open border policies, people from all around the world show up and claim asylum or be paroled into the interior of the United States, which is like a blinking green light to anybody and everybody who wants to come to America, knowing they would be released under the Biden administration's policies.

We have seen millions. Nobody really knows for sure how many millions of people come and basically move into the United States outside of our legal immigration program, which I think is very important, but there are also the roughly 2 million, we think, ``got-aways''--people evading law enforcement--and you can only imagine what they are up to. We know that there was no reason to evade law enforcement under the Biden administration if you didn't have a criminal record or if you weren't up to no good, because you knew you would be released. So it only was logical--it only made sense--that these were people who were either carrying drugs or had criminal records or were otherwise engaged in antisocial activities. Like I said, we think maybe about 2 million of those people made their way into the interior of the United States.

One of the most important ways that President Trump began with his signature on these Executive orders, beginning yesterday, was to reverse the policies of the Biden administration and to get our country back on track in securing our southern border. This border crisis, as I indicated, is one that President Biden himself practically invited-- invited--during his first campaign when he encouraged migrants to ``immediately surge the border.'' I mean, this is crazy talk if you think about it, but that is what he said. Of course, this is perhaps the one campaign promise President Biden actually kept.

In the early months of 2021, President Biden appointed Vice President Harris--we all remember this--as his border czar. Well, he tasked her with the role of managing this growing surge of migrants. Even back then, in the early stages of what was to become a historic humanitarian disaster, some expressed concerns that Ms. Harris might not be up to the task, but when she was made aware of and made to answer for her lack of qualifications, she hadn't actually been to the border.

Specifically, as to the fact she hadn't been there, Kamala Harris made light of the question with a famous quip.

She said:

And I haven't been to Europe. . . . I don't understand the

point you're making.

Somebody pointed out that she hadn't been to the border. She said, ``I haven't been to Europe,'' and she didn't understand the point. Well, everybody else got it even if she didn't. She was singularly unqualified, and she bore this out, I think, by her service as the border czar. She was singularly unqualified to be the border czar, and it took another 3 months for her to accomplish her one and only visit to the Texas-Mexico border.

I can tell you that, as I said, Texas has a 1,200-mile common border, and the United States has a 2,000-mile common border, and not every piece of the border is the same. If you go to Arizona or California or New Mexico, many of those places are very different from the border with Texas and Mexico. But on this one visit to the border in Texas, Vice President Harris steered clear of ground zero of the surge of illegal immigration, which is the Rio Grande Valley. That was the epicenter of the border crisis, yet she was a no-show. Instead, she traveled to El Paso--which is another border town but very, very different--for a sanitized, made-for-TV visit.

To add insult to injury, the Vice President visited Texas multiple times last summer to fundraise and to campaign for President, but she didn't take the time to go to the border at all. But this should come as no surprise because she seemed completely disinterested in performing any function as the border czar. Under her negligent watch, the surge at the beginning of President Biden's Presidency only went from bad to worse.

The Biden-Harris administration presided over daily, weekly, and monthly records of illegal crossings across the border. Customs and Border Protection, the Federal Agency responsible, has tracked more than 10 million encounters across the Nation under President Biden's leadership, including 8.7 million at the southern border. More than 400,000 unaccompanied children--to me, this is one of the scandals that really hasn't gotten adequate attention--400,000 unaccompanied children have been encountered at the border and placed with sponsors in the United States.

Now, the Biden administration resisted any sort of background checks on the sponsors. As a matter of fact, they placed these children with other illegal immigrants in the country and in homes where we didn't know whether there were either gang members or people with records as sex offenders, for example. And the sad truth is that these children, like the 10 million or so other migrants that came across the

border, ended up in the United States courtesy of the cartels, criminal organizations that get rich smuggling people into the United States. But they don't just smuggle people; they smuggle drugs and other contraband too.

But these children in particular, once they arrive in the United States, many of them are exploited, treated as indentured servants until they pay back the debt they owe their traffickers. And those are the lucky ones. Others are trafficked for sex, recruited into gangs, neglected. We don't know.

The Biden administration couldn't tell you whether these children were going to school or getting the healthcare they need or the like. As a matter of fact, they said: We have no responsibility. That is the responsibility of the State child welfare organizations.

We know they are overwhelmed, and here are 400,000 more children that are dumped into their hands. As a result of the shelter facilities becoming increasingly crowded, the Biden administration rushed the placement process of these children and now has completely lost track of at least 85,000 of those unaccompanied minors. That is according to a New York Times investigative story where they actually followed up calling the sponsors, only to get no answer. Knocking on the door, nobody would come to the door. So we don't know--they don't know--what happened to these children.

We also know the cartels are getting richer trafficking in drugs, as I mentioned, including fentanyl, a synthetic opioid which is very different from heroin and cocaine, which require a lengthy process of growing a plant and then processing the drug. Cartels are selling fentanyl, which uses chemical precursors that come from China that then go to Mexico and are mixed up and then pressed to look like a pharmaceutical drug. But they are counterfeit drugs, and they killed more than 70,000 people last year alone.

This drug that comes across the southern border with very little-- well, we just don't know how much of it actually makes its way across. We know how much is interdicted, but it could be just a fraction of the number that actually makes its way across the border. And here is the tragic statistic. This is the leading cause of death for young people between the age of 18 and 45 in America.

I have been to numerous high schools in Texas where grieving parents said: Well, our child ate dinner at the dinner table; then, the next morning, we went and found him or her dead in her room--having taken something they thought was a relatively innocuous drug, only to find out the hard way that it was laced with fentanyl, which took their life.

Well, our Border Patrol has simply been overwhelmed by the volume of people coming across the border because there is no such thing as deterrence. One of the things about law enforcement you learn is, by enforcing the law, you can discourage other people from violating the law. And by actually enforcing border security, you can deter people from coming in the first place.

But without deterrence, under the Biden administration, the Border Patrol has simply been overwhelmed. With historic numbers of people attempting to cross and successfully crossing, they have not gotten the support they need to handle the magnitude of challenges they face every day.

The men and women who serve in the Border Patrol are my heroes. They are loyal, patriotic Americans who put on the uniform and do what their government has asked them to do, until they are told that you have to tie one hand behind your back and you can't actually do your job because you just have to welcome people into the country, and you can't keep people out who are violating the law.

So I am going to extend my gratitude to the men and women who serve in the Border Patrol, as well as the National Border Patrol Council, which has been enormously helpful as a credible source of what actual conditions have been along the border so that the American people can know how bad it has gotten to be. The National Border Patrol Council has been our partner and friend and helped as Senator Cruz and I have welcomed many of our colleagues to the border so that they can see firsthand what we have learned as a result of our many times visiting there.

And I particularly want to express my gratitude to Jason Owens, who is the outgoing Border Patrol Chief. Even when the administration did not provide adequate support to handle this historic crisis, Jason had the backs of the men and women of the Border Patrol.

But the good news is that, under President Trump, all of our Border Patrol agents will start receiving the support that they need and that they deserve from the Federal Government.

President Trump used his first day in office to make a number of actions addressing this crisis. He declared that this historic, ongoing crisis is a national emergency, which it is. He designated the cartels that smuggle the people and the drugs into the country as foreign terrorist organizations. He directed the Departments of State and Homeland Security to resume the migrant protection protocols, otherwise known as the ``Remain in Mexico'' program.

So people who want to come to the United States legally through the asylum system, they can't come to the interior of the United States and simply be released; they have to remain in Mexico and await the processing of their claim for asylum. This will, of course, deter economic migrants from making this dangerous journey by having them await their asylum hearings in Mexico.

At the same time, the President directed the Department of Homeland Security to stop catch-and-release. If you ask the Border Patrol: How do you explain all of this, this huge mass of humanity, this tsunami of people coming across the border, they say: There are no consequences for coming illegally under the Biden administration. And one of those incentives for people to continue to come is employing a catch-and- release policy because, without detention, you are never going to stop the flow. And this was a primary pull factor of migrants under the Biden administration.

President Trump also terminated the Biden administration's unlawful Cuban-Haitian-Nicaraguan-Venezuelan parole program. So ``parole'' is a word that people may be familiar with in a criminal context, where people can be paroled out of prison. This is a little different. In the immigration context, this means that individuals who meet certain select criteria can be released into the interior of the United States, but it is supposed to be done on a hardship, case-by-case basis.

The Biden administration completely transformed parole by doing it categorically. In other words, they said 30,000 migrants per month are allowed to be released in the United States if you come from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, or Venezuela. That is 360,000 a year just released into the interior of the United States and not done on a case-by-case basis. It violated the law Congress put in place, but the Biden administration didn't really seem to care about what the law was; they were going to do what they wanted to do.

I am pleased that President Trump has directed the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Justice to completely fulfill the requirements of the DNA Fingerprint Act of 2005, a bill that the former Senator from Arizona, Senator Jon Kyl, and I worked to enact. Under that law, the Department of Homeland Security will protect Americans from dangerous criminal illegal immigrants by collecting DNA samples from migrants apprehended at the border. In many instances, it can just be a cheek swab, but that DNA allows you to positively identify people who may be criminal aliens.

President Trump's order that the Department of Homeland Security verify the relationships claimed by family units apprehended at the border will help put an end to the cartels' child trafficking that the Biden administration policies enabled. Because the cartels are smart and they knew what the policies were, if a family unit--that is, an adult and a child--came together, they were treated a little bit differently. But we found out the hard way that the cartels would simply hire out these children so that the adults could get into the country claiming to be a family unit. Again, more child trafficking-- child abuse, if you will. President Trump's order that the Department of Homeland Security verify

these relationships will help put an end to the cartels' child trafficking which the Biden administration enabled.

I am pleased that President Trump has also ended the use of the Customs and Border Protection One app. This was an app that you could download on your phone that allowed migrants to more quickly and efficiently cross the open border.

Under the Biden administration, you could simply make an appointment using this app on your phone, meaning the Federal Government would facilitate your entry into the United States on a quicker basis. It is really bizarre if you think about it. But it gave the cartels other ways to make money by selling appointments that they had made on the app. It was obviously hijacked by the cartels, who are not dumb--they are smart--and they are driven by a profit motive.

I am glad that President Trump made border security a day one priority of his administration. I look forward to continuing to work with him to help improve the safety for communities all across Texas and all across the Nation.

But I am also thrilled that President Trump has chosen a new U.S. Border Patrol Chief, a Texan, Mike Banks. People may have heard of Mike Banks before because he was Governor Abbott's border chief.

Mike brings incredible credentials to this job. While the Vice President made only one trip to the Texas-Mexico border during her entire tenure, Mike is a former Border Patrol agent. He has got vast experience at the border.

He understands firsthand the impact on our border communities and what our Border Patrol agents have been through. He spent two-thirds of his more than three decades of Federal law enforcement at the United States-Mexico border. As I indicated, Governor Abbott had selected him to serve as the Texas border czar, and Mike has also served in the U.S. Navy military police.

So I have had the privilege of getting to know Mike, and I know his qualifications, his experience and his competence and his firsthand experience dealing with the challenges at our border, and I have no doubt that he will make an outstanding 27th head of the U.S. Border Patrol.

I look forward to working with him and President Trump to secure our borders and to make our community safe again.

This is one of the main reasons that President Trump was elected, along with sky-high inflation, and the very dangerous world that seems to have grown up in the face of the weakness projected by the Biden administration around the world. But job No. 1 is to secure our borders and protect the American people. And I am proud of the fact that President Trump has, on day one, taken such important steps to begin that process.

Mr. President, yesterday, I highlighted some of President Biden's final actions as he leaves--parting gifts, if you will. Today, I would like to highlight another of his parting gifts. And I use that in parentheses or with quotations because they really are a slap in the face for the American people and American taxpayers.

This past Monday, the Department of Education canceled student loans for 150,000 borrowers. This is not really a cancellation of those loans. It is just a transfer of the responsibility to taxpayers and wiping the slate clean for people who actually agreed to borrow this money so that they can attend schools.

Then on Wednesday, just 2 days ago, the Biden administration announced an additional cancellation of $4.5 billion for 261,000 borrowers.

The President's actions this week and the last week of his Presidency brings this total taxpayer bailout to $183.6 billion.

Now, remember in June of 2023, the Supreme Court ruled in a 6-to-3 decision that the Department of Education lacks the authority--the legal authority--to implement these across-the-board student loan cancellations. But the Biden administration, never to be one that actually obeys the law, has continued to ignore the ruling of the Supreme Court, issuing blank check after blank check to borrowers to let them off the hook from paying bills that they agreed to pay in the first instance.

This policy is not just illegal; it is profoundly unfair. It is unfair to the families who have sacrificed and saved to send their own children to college. It is unfair to the students who worked multiple jobs during college to avoid accruing large amounts of debt. And it is unfair to all the graduates who have worked hard and paid off their loans. Finally, it is unfair to Americans who have forgone a college education because they couldn't afford the cost. And now they have to pick up the tab for those for whom President Biden has canceled their debt.

Any family with a mortgage, a car payment, or credit card debt knows there is really no such thing as canceling the debt. Somebody is going to pay. Every dollar that was borrowed will, eventually, be repaid by somebody. It is just a matter of who that someone is. And, in this case, it is the American taxpayer.

It is really a slap in the face, a kick in the teeth--you choose your metaphor. But it is no surprise that the American taxpayers have rejected the direction in which President Biden and his administration have taken the country. They voted for a new direction on November 5.

But that just makes it even more offensive that a lameduck President would proceed full speed ahead with more student debt cancellation after being told ``no'' by the Supreme Court and being told ``no'' again by voters on November 5.

Back in May, along with my colleagues Senator Ernst and Senator Cassidy, I introduced a congressional resolution of disapproval that would have overturned the Biden administration's reckless and unfair student loan socialism. Of course, the Democratic-controlled Senate did not bring that CRA--the Congressional Review Act--up for a vote. But now with Republicans in the majority, I hope this is something we can and will address.

Student loan socialism would be a great opportunity for the Department of Government Efficiency--headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy--to take a look at it because there is nothing less efficient and more wasteful and more unfair than taking billions of dollars from taxpayers who didn't go to college to pay for those who did and who agreed to pay the money back but simply now will not have to do so.

The vast majority of Americans don't benefit from this student loan socialism. And 87 percent of Americans don't have student debt; so the 13 percent who do are now foisting that responsibility on the 87 percent. If you look at

those who do benefit, it becomes even more clear how little sense this makes.

Even the progressive Brookings Institute pointed out that blanket student loan forgiveness benefits those who are better off by income, by education, and by wealth.

Unsurprisingly, those with student loans are more likely to have higher paying jobs. If we look back at the institutions and not just the individuals who are benefiting from these massive taxpayer subsidies, which is what they are, we will also find that this is anything but an efficient use of American taxpayer dollars.

Over 100 colleges and universities in the United States, including Columbia, Cornell, Yale, and Princeton, are currently under investigation from the Department of Education because of their mishandling of incidents of anti-Semitism on their campuses since October 7, 2023.

Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibits discrimination on the basis of ethnicity for institutions that receive Federal funding. So the complaints of anti-Semitism in the wake of the terrorist attacks on Israel have in some cases amounted to violations of Federal law.

Many of these colleges and universities are rushing to enter into settlements with the Biden administration before the Trump administration takes office on Monday, which, of course, is not surprising.

President Trump has made clear that taxpayer support for those universities that failed to end anti-Semitic propaganda that has run rampant over the past few years, that that taxpayer support will end.

Now is not the time to reward these institutions with widespread incentives to continue raising their tuition by canceling student debt.

If we want to address the affordability of college--an important topic--widespread student loan socialism is not the way to do it.

So as I said, for a variety of reasons, this would be a great place for the Department of Government Efficiency to shine the light on and for us to do something about in the coming days.

The Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget pointed out that we could save the taxpayers as much as $550 billion by reversing all of President Biden's actions on student loan cancellation--$550 billion. So we have our work cut out for us. But one great place to start would be to end the Biden administration's reckless student loan socialism.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.