Floor Statements

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, since President Biden took office, consumer prices have risen more than 20 percent. The Nation hasn't seen this sort of persistent drain on our economy since the Carter administration, and the Biden administration is desperate to avoid the obvious comparison to the stagflation back in the 1970s.

The White House recently asserted that ``President Biden's top priority is beating inflation, which is why he has taken historic action . . .''

Well, that begs the question: Which historic action are we talking about here? Is the administration referring to the time it invited historic inflation over the warnings of top liberal economists like Larry Summers but ignored that and went ahead with the so-called American Rescue Plan or the time they did the same thing again but called it the Inflation Reduction Act?

The Biden administration is still looking for a safe landing spot, and liberal commentators are literally tying themselves in knots. One liberal editorial board recently suggested that since employment and consumption levels are steady, ``people will . . . start to notice and the `vibes' will also return to more normal levels''; that ``[i]t's possible that Americans are experiencing the economic equivalent of a hangover.''

But, Mr. President, that is just utter nonsense and is not fooling anyone who actually has to balance a family budget. A recent survey reported that nearly two-thirds of middle-class Americans say they are facing economic hardship.

Numbers don't lie; neither do consumers. The high prices they are facing aren't a matter of ``bad vibes.'' They are the predictable and avoidable consequences of Bidenomics.

Mr. President, on another matter, I have spoken before about the Biden administration's political obsession with closing the terrorist detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, even if it means letting terrorist butchers plead out of their just desserts and actually return to the fight.

Last month, new reports indicated just how close the President was to

shipping 11 more terrorists from Gitmo back to the Middle East to a country that is reportedly expelling former terrorist detainees into the wilds of Yemen; that is, until Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad launched their savage massacre of Jews on October 7. Apparently, the administration has bowed, at least temporarily, to the political inconvenience of releasing radical Islamic terrorists into the wild.

The American people don't need a barbaric attack on Israel's civilians to remind us that radical Islamic terrorists are targeting us, murdering our allies, and sowing chaos around the world. The growth of terrorist threats worldwide on President Biden's watch is an indisputable fact, and his administration's abject lack of a coherent counterterrorism strategy is a damning failure.

The President may have removed the Iran-backed Houthis from the terrorist list, but the Houthi terrorists didn't get the memo. The Shia Houthi terrorists and the al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula Sunni terrorists of Yemen are both--both of them--on the march, working to extend the chaos and violence Hamas is sowing in Israel and Gaza across the entire region.

The White House may have thought they could maintain shoestring partnerships and counter exploding terrorist threats in critical regions, but Russia's inroads to supplant U.S. influence in the Sahel and North Africa tell a different story. They may have bet the farm that over-the-horizon counterterrorism operations could replace an active coalition presence in Afghanistan, but the resurgence of groups like ISIS-K and al-Qaida suggest otherwise.

How many counterterrorism strikes has the U.S. military conducted in Afghanistan since the withdrawal? The current state of affairs benefits those who wish America and our allies harm. From the administration's paralyzing fear of escalation to its desperate pursuit of detente with the world's top terror sponsor, the status quo gives our enemies cover.

And had the Biden administration's plan to export another 11 terrorists from Gitmo actually gone ahead, it might very well have swelled their ranks. We don't have to imagine it. We saw what happened when the terrorists detained at Bagram Air Base in Kabul were sprung loose. We have seen repeated terrorist jailbreaks in Syria as well.

And in light of recent reporting, we know that 50,000 ISIS suspects and their families are detained by U.S.-funded nonstate actors in that country, at the epicenter--the epicenter--of terrorist unrest.

The Biden administration might genuinely believe that outsourcing its responsibility to hold and prosecute those who wish America harm would be more humane or that it would make America safer, but they would be dead wrong on both counts. Relying on proxies to detain tens of thousands of low-level suspects in alarming conditions risks inviting a whole new generation of terrorists to put America in their crosshairs.

Administration officials cannot credibly signal virtue by releasing hardcore terrorists from Gitmo while quietly relying on proxies to detain low-level terrorists in such conditions. The men who await justice at Gitmo are the worst of the worst. Recidivism is a serious concern. And the Democrats working breathlessly to close America's terrorist detention facility don't have a serious plan to address it. They make it harder to strike terrorists and harder to detain them at the same time. In fact, the administration is now trying to block any constraints on their ability to empty Gitmo from the coming year's

Mr. President, on Saturday, in a daring daytime raid, Israel rescued four innocent hostages who had suffered in Hamas captivity since October 7. The mission was the product of careful planning. It demanded the utmost secrecy, professionalism, and bravery. In the case of one elite commander, it required the ultimate sacrifice.

The people of Israel can take pride in their Nation's dedication to restoring its security and delivering justice for the brutal attacks that shattered a quiet Sabbath morning last fall.

Of course, the same operation also exposed even further the tremendous obstacle that continues to threaten Israel's sovereignty and block the prospect of peace for both Israelis and Palestinians. It brought into focus the appalling lengths to which hardened terrorists will go to sow chaos and exploit innocent suffering, and it raised uncomfortable questions about the broader complicity of some Palestinian civilians.

With the help of U.S. intelligence, the Israeli forces' mission led them not to the depths of Hamas terror tunnels but to the heart of a refugee camp run by the United Nations and to the family home of a Hamas terrorist who self-identified as a journalist.

So the brutal exploitation of civilians is a well-documented tactic in Hamas's playbook. These are, after all, the terrorists who repeatedly deploy their weapons and combatants in or beneath schools, hospitals, and mosques in order to use civilians as human shields. The detention of Israeli hostages in family homes is a predictable extension of this despicable practice, and every drop of blood spilt this weekend is the responsibility of the party that violated a cease- fire, launched a barbaric attack, took innocent hostages, and has refused calls from around the world to release them.

These are the basic facts, but predictably, they are not what we read over the weekend in the coverage of Western media. Instead of outrage that a Hamas terrorist would exploit their profession as a cover for hostage-keeping, major publications have directed their indignation at Israel for seeing through the

terrorists' flimsy cover as doctors and journalists and daring to bring its people home.

One major national newspaper's initial coverage of the raid made no mention of the fact that Hamas had chosen to hide its hostages in private homes. Just days after publishing its own analysis of the bogus casualty reporting of the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health, another outlet reverted to breathlessly parroting the terrorist group's own death toll propaganda in the headlines of its coverage on the hostage rescue. And to the surprise of absolutely no one, the U.N.'s so-called Special Rapporteur on Palestinian human rights shamelessly accused Israel of using hostages to legitimize killing innocent civilians.

If this--if this--is the media diet the American people have to consume, then what came next should surprise no one.

In New York, masked protesters waving Hezbollah flags jeered at visitors to an exhibit honoring the victims of the October 7 attack on the music festival from which the hostages freed this weekend were abducted. Predictably, news broadcasts characterized the protesters, who chanted ``Long live the intifada'' and ``Israel, go to hell,'' were merely pro-Palestinian, not anti-Israel.

Meanwhile, unhinged throngs of Hamas apologists occupied Lafayette Square, outside the White House, defacing statues, attacking law enforcement, and chanting disgusting anti-Semitic slurs--a generation of useful idiots and fifth columnists adrift on a sea of performative sympathy for terrorists and beyond the reach of fact or reality. Lest anyone doubt, this contagion is not confined to so-called elite universities.

Americans who are rightly worried about crime and violence may wonder why on Earth the President would permit this lawlessness on Federal property, let alone the park outside the White House, or why no arrests were made. They especially ought to wonder why the Biden administration chose this moment, as the people of Israel celebrated a small but precious victory in securing the freedom of four of its citizens, to try to box Israel in with a stunt--a stunt--vote at the U.N. and why the White House so desperately wants to constrain our ally's freedom of movement and to micromanage its military.

This weekend's developments may feel like a significant inflection point, but the fundamental realities of this situation have not changed. Israel has a right to defend itself. Terrorists have no right to take innocent hostages, and they alone--they alone--bear responsibility for the consequences of their actions.

Mr. President, on another matter, I haven't spared any breath calling attention to the parade of unfit nominees that the Biden administration would like to see confirmed to lifetime seats on the Federal bench.

I have urged my colleagues to consider Adeel Mangi's alarming connections to terrorist sympathizers and Nancy Maldonado's record of staggering unproductivity in the lower court. So it is only fitting that I call attention to another nominee whose affiliations bear all the hallmarks of the dark money influence that so animates some of our senior-most colleagues on the Judiciary Committee.

The Senate hears a great deal from our colleague the junior Senator from Rhode Island on the subject of dark money, but so far, I haven't heard him express any concern that Sparkle Sooknanan, nominated to the DC Circuit Court, has secured the support of Robert Raben.

Mr. Raben, of course, is a notorious shepherd of liberal nominees whose client list reads like a who's-who of liberal dark money, with groups backed by everyone from George Soros to Arabella Advisors.

Apparently, this nominee engaged in a discussion with Mr. Raben and his associates after--after--her nomination was announced. This sort of contact between liberal nominees and liberal handlers doesn't fit with the Senate Democrats' idea of dark money influence as simply a conservative pastime.

So it is hardly surprising that senior members of the Judiciary Committee's majority haven't found time to scrutinize Ms. Sooknanan with the sort of vigor they devote to tarring organizers for conservative causes.

Of course, maybe Senate Democrats actually support Ms. Sooknanan's legal defense of so-called vulture funds as they cut to the front of the line of Puerto Rico's creditors.

One Democratic House Member from New York says the success makes her nomination ``an insult to the people of Puerto Rico.'' Ah, but what does she know?

Or maybe they agree with Ms. Sooknanan's supposedly conservative former law firm that she didn't disparage the former President's election-litigation efforts on a conference call and that the New York Times is simply lying when they say that she did.

It just doesn't add up, unless the real ledger being used is the one with liberal dark money from Robert Raben and Arabella Advisors.

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

Mr. President, the Supreme Court term is about to end, which means it is time for Democrats and their media allies to bully and harass the Justices. The most recent example of this is the risible attack leveled against Justice Alito for his wife's flags.

I have nothing to say about those attacks themselves because they are so profoundly unserious, but I do have an observation about how some of the attacks have been leveled.

Three of our colleagues have taken it upon themselves to write to the Chief Justice and demand Justice Alito's recusal in cases. One went so far as to tell the Chief that he should strip Justices Alito and Thomas of their ability to write majority opinions unless they recuse from the cases liberals don't want them hearing.

This goes beyond the standard disgraceful bullying my Democratic colleagues have perfected. Recusal is a judicial act.

These Senators are telling the Chief Justice, privately, to change the course of pending litigation. This is known as ex parte communication, and it is frowned upon by the ABA's Model Rules of Professional Conduct.

This matters because at least two of these colleagues of ours--the junior Senator from Rhode Island and the senior Senator from Connecticut--seem to be members of the Supreme Court Bar. If so, they are, therefore, potentially engaging in unethical professional conduct before the Court.

They may be under the mistaken impression that their persistent attempts to threaten the Federal courts are a permissible use of their legislative office, but they are officers of the Court and bound by a different set of rules than a mere Senator. These rules provide for discipline against those who engage in ``conduct unbecoming'' an officer of the Court.

I might suggest to our colleagues that unethical ex parte communications seeking to change the course of pending litigation is such conduct and that the Court should take any remedial action it feels to be appropriate.

The legal profession is in distress. Unethical behavior by attorneys serving political causes, unfortunately, knows no party or faction. It is up to the legal profession to police itself, and in the end, this means that courts, including the Supreme Court, must police their officers. We don't need to appeal to heaven to fix this problem, just to the Supreme Court's power to police the ethical practice of law among the members of its bar.

Mr. President, on another matter, unaccountable international judicial juntas have made headlines in recent weeks.

First, it was the self-aggrandizing International Criminal Court, whose rogue prosecutor sought preposterous arrest warrants for Israeli leaders in a grotesque attempt to draw moral equivalence with Hamas terrorists.

Not to be outdone, the unelected and unaccountable International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea has issued an advisory opinion that seeks to establish an international law requirement to regulate greenhouse gases, including a right of action against wealthy, industrialized nations.

The New York Times reports that such an opinion is unsurprisingly expected to lead to ``wide-ranging claims for damages against polluting nations.'' The paper of record also tells us the U.N.'s International Court of Justice is also seized of the matter.

Climate justice warriors are swooning as they contemplate the largesse they might receive from this redistributive lawfare. This is a money grab and a power grab, pure and simple.

All of this unaccountable globalist socialism is just another reason President Reagan refused to sign the U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea and why the Senate has rightly refused to ratify it. At this point, it should be called the ``ICC of the Sea.''

I know some of my colleagues believe we should ratify this treaty, and they mean well, but I would urge my friends on both sides of the aisle to ask themselves if they are willing to put U.S. sovereignty into the hands of the ``ICC of the Sea.''

No country or entity has done more to protect the freedom of navigation than the United States. The U.S. and allied navies are the ones who protect commercial shipping lanes the global economy relies on, and self-important jurists of the ``ICC of the Sea'' would do well to remember this fact the next time they consider biting the hand that feeds.

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

Mr. President, 1,231. That is how many days it has taken President Biden to do something--anything--about the humanitarian and security crisis that has consumed our southern border and is engulfing our country.

Here is another number: There are 154 days until election day. In other words, the Biden administration has waited nearly its entire term before lifting a finger to address the open borders anarchy that it invited. In that amount of time, the CBP has reported more than 7.8 million encounters with illegal migrants at the southern border, and that is not counting the 1.6 million known ``got-aways.''

Fentanyl poisoning is now the leading cause of death among American adults between 18 and 45. The lethal pipelines that began with Chinese chemical makers flow north across a broken U.S.-Mexico border.

And perhaps most disturbing is the increasing number of individuals on the Terror Watchlist who have exploited the border chaos to set foot on American soil.

With an election just months away, the President hopes that an issued Executive order will demonstrate that he cares about this crisis and is trying to fix it, never mind that his order would still allow more than 900,000 illegal aliens to come in every year at the southern border. This is on top of the half-million illegal parolees President Biden intends to continue waiving into the country. Combined, that is more than the population of 10 States. It is a new Dallas, TX, every year. This is like turning a garden hose on a five-alarm fire. And the American people are not fools. They know that this play is too little, too late.

On a different matter, I have spoken repeatedly about how Adeel Mangi, President Biden's nominee to the Third Circuit, is unqualified for the bench. But the red flags on this administration's nominees aren't limited to radical associations and ethical lapses.

Judge Nancy Maldonado, a trial judge nominated to the Seventh Circuit, has distinguished herself with sheer--sheer--incompetence.

Thanks to reforms put in place by then-Judiciary Committee Chairman Biden, Federal courts keep track of how many fully briefed motions have been sitting without a decision for at least 6 months, a report often known among judges in Chicago as the Biden list.

It was a good reform because justice delayed is justice denied. And as it turns out, Judge Maldonado has by far the largest number of motions pending for more than 6 months among the judges of the Seventh Circuit, with 125. She would need to rule on one of these motions every workday for the next 6 months just to clear her existing Biden backlog.

There are only a handful of judges in the country who are this far behind on their work. Judge Maldonado's Biden backlog puts her beyond the 99th percentile of all district judges nationwide in terms of slowness.

The Biden list requires judges to explain why they are so far behind. Judge Maldonado blames her record on ``complexity of the case,'' ``voluminous transcripts/briefs to be read,'' and ``heavy civil and criminal caseload.'' Does the President think his nominees will face less complex cases on the court of appeals, lighter caseloads, less voluminous transcripts or briefs?

Why on Earth would our colleagues consider giving new and greater responsibilities to a judge who is clearly struggling with the ones she has already gotten or, for that matter, why would they consider promoting someone whose instinct is to pass the buck?

I wish I were making this up: When our colleagues asked Judge Maldonado about her case backlog in written questions, she blamed her clerks. That is probably cold comfort to prisoners seeking relief for inhumane treatment or litigants paying months of legal fees awaiting her decisions. Apparently, it is not the woman with a judicial commission who is responsible for justice delayed; it is the 25-year- old brandnew lawyers on her staff. But passing the buck is what Judge Maldonado does.

The junior Senator for Louisiana asked her how she defined ``assault weapon'' in a brief supporting Illinois' assault weapons ban, and the judge said she didn't know because she didn't write the brief. She was only--get this--the counsel of record.

Do our colleagues really expect a promotion to the court of appeals to turn things around? Do they really think one of the Nation's least productive jurists actually deserves such a promotion?

It doesn't have to be like this. Without even leaving Chicago, Washington Democrats will find a different trial judge, Judge Mary Rowland.

Judge Rowland has impeccable liberal credentials. She satisfies the left's desired diversity metrics. The only difference? She is actually good at her job.

Her Biden list is three cases. And her reason? These opinions are being drafted but need to have hearings. Complex cases and voluminous briefing don't faze Judge Rowland.

This matters. The Seventh Circuit is a busy court. They hear oral arguments for every case that has a lawyer and publish all of these opinions as precedent. It is also the last stop for almost all litigants in Wisconsin, Illinois, and Indiana.

Confirming Judge Maldonado to that court would be taking a judge who has proven herself incapable of swimming in the shallow end of the pool and throwing her into Lake Michigan.

The people and litigants of the Seventh Circuit deserve better. And if my colleagues want to see basic competence in their judges, they ought to reject this nominee.

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

Mr. President, we are nearing the end of President Biden's term, and the American people's patience for his failure to secure our southern border is running thin. After 3 years in office, nearly every conceivable metric has distinguished the Biden administration from its predecessors for all of the wrong reasons. Since the President took office, Customs and Border Protection has seen the highest annual total for border encounters on record. CBP has reported more than 7.8 million encounters with illegal immigrants at the southern border, and this doesn't even count the 1.6 million known ``got-aways.''

Fentanyl and other lethal drugs pushed by China through Mexico and across our border are the primary cause of death among American adults between ages 18 and 45.

And reports of individuals on the Terror Watch List trying to sneak across the southern border have literally soared on President Biden's watch. Five years ago, CBP didn't encounter a single individual on the list between southern border ports of entry. Last year, they encountered 169.

This is what broken borders look like. This is humanitarian and national security failure of the highest degree.

And it is no mystery how we got here. President Biden and Vice President Harris were promising open borders 4 years ago on the campaign trail, and they started following through, literally, on day one. The Biden administration rescinded policies like ``Remain in Mexico'' that helped CBP hold the crisis at bay. They froze construction of physical barriers at the border out of spite for their predecessor, a move that most Americans now say they want to see reversed.

Every Senate Democrat voted to let President Biden repeal title 42, a pandemic-era policy that represented border officials only meaningful tool to stem the flow of illegal arrivals.

The administrations supposed border czar traveled widely to discuss the root causes of migration, but for months, she couldn't find time to visit the border itself. And for years, Washington Democrats have refused to call the situation what it obviously is: a crisis.

At every step, the American people have been left, literally, scratching their heads. In some cases, they have been left with unimaginable grief, like the family of Laken Riley, the student murdered by a man who shouldn't have been allowed into the country in the first place. And in every case, they have wondered why their elected leaders are missing in action.

Families are wondering why Senate Democrats opposed Senator Blackburn's proposal to allow State and local law enforcement to cooperate with ICE to detain and deport criminals; why they voted down Senator Budd's legislation that would have prohibited granting legal status or citizenship to individuals who have assaulted a law enforcement officer; why they blocked the proposal that would have required that individuals DHS deemed to be ``special interest aliens''--potential national security risks--are detained at the border and not released into the interior by the thousands. They are wondering why leftwing groups are exploiting the crisis to line their own pockets.

But one thing the American people don't have to wonder about is why Washington Democrats are suddenly chomping at the bit to convince their constituents that they care about border security. After all, working families are the ones telling pollsters the border is their very top election-year concern. The American people aren't fooled. They know that the President's summary reversal of commonsense border authorities is what started the crisis, and they know the solution is not cynical Senate theater.

The solution is a President who is willing to exercise his authority, to use the tools he already has at his disposal, and to start cleaning up this mess. If Senate Democrats wanted to start fixing the crisis tomorrow, they would be urging the President to do exactly

that. The American people have every right to expect secure borders, along with safe streets and stable prices. They don't have time for distraction, and neither do Senate Republicans.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

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

Mr. President, last week, just days after President Orban rolled out the red carpet in Budapest for President Xi, the Chinese dictator rolled out a red carpet in Beijing for Vladimir Putin. The ``friendship without limits'' struck between America's greatest strategic adversaries will now endure ``for generations to come.'' And it appears to be rooted in a shared myth about the nature of world conflicts and a victim complex that would be laughable if it didn't carry such grave consequences for Western peace and security.

At last week's summit, Russia and China together accused the United States of threatening the world's strategic balance, as if it is Washington rather than Beijing or Moscow trying to redraw borders by force or to disrupt global order.

Well, if you are looking for the government that has doubled its nuclear arsenal in 3 years, you will find it in Beijing, not Washington. In fact, Americans' own strategic deterrent continues to suffer from chronic neglect. And the Biden administration continues to submit defense budgets that fail to keep up with inflation, much less with the growing threat posed by the PRC.

And if you are looking for the regime recklessly developing an insanely provocative and destabilizing nuclear weapon to deploy in space, you will find that one in Moscow.

The world's leading authoritarians never seem to let the facts get in the way. But economic and military realities matter enormously to the future of fledgling democracies and developing nations who are vulnerable to their economic coercion and thuggish political intimidation.

The challenge to Western peace and security is not confined to the Taiwan Straits and the trenches of Ukraine. Chinese debt traps and Russian security forces are expanding malign influence from Central America to Central Asia to Africa and to our own Western Hemisphere.

Russia's efforts to strangle democracy and wrestle free societies back under its control are perhaps most glaring along the borders of Europe.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the unshackled nations have largely chosen freedom and worked to build democratic governments and societies oriented squarely to the West. And the neo-Soviet imperialists in the Kremlin see that as a threat.

Leaders in Washington are prone to forget how fragile our own experiment in democracy was during its earliest days and how precious are the safeguards our Founders enshrined in our government to protect the minority from the excesses of authoritarianism of majority rule.

Sometimes, of course, politicians in Washington even flirt with the idea of tearing down these safeguards of democracies to deny the minority any meaningful power.

Fortunately, there is still a bipartisan firewall in the Senate against this sort of shortsighted radicalism. But for nascent, vulnerable democracies, such safeguards face even graver threats. And in Georgia, a parliamentary majority's quest for power is threatening to suffocate the nation's civil society and unravel the guardrails of its democracy.

In an attempt to consolidate its hold on government, the Georgian Dream Party would stamp out the Euro-Atlantic aspirations of the Georgian people.

And while the political opposition is large, it is chronically divided against itself. Despite their feckless party leaders, thousands of Georgians have taken to the streets to protest. Their desire for self-determination and freedom from Russian coercion is obvious. Four in five Georgians tell pollsters they want a distinctly European future.

They believe that planting themselves firmly in the West, among democratic nations where the rule of law prevails, is in their best interest.

Whether Georgia looks East or West matters to the United States. Standing with free people resisting the aggression of tyrants like Putin or Xi is in our own interests. This is true of Taiwan and Ukraine, Estonia, and Japan.

And it is true of Georgia. The Georgian people deserve the right to write their own future, not have it dictated to them by Moscow's preferred party chiefs.

And why is it that Russians obsess over controlling Georgia's future? It is about more than acting out Putin's neo-imperialist fantasy. Geography matters. For millennia, Georgia and its Black Sea coast stood at the crossroads of the civilized world. It is a key transit point for critical resources. And today, along with Armenia, it sits as a tantalizing link in the land bridge between authoritarian partners in Moscow and Tehran.

The people of Georgia have a long history of enduring conflict and conquest. They have a long tradition of resilience and a rich culture to be proud of. And they know there is a difference between bending to Russia and turning to the West.

So, like friends of the Georgian people across the West, I am hopeful this moment will be one which can take yet more pride, as a moment when the opposition to Russian coercion puts petty differences aside and stands united.

Of course, this must also be a moment for Georgia's ruling party to recognize the costs of ignoring their people's will in order to fulfill Putin's whims and to stop short of shredding their relationship with the West.

I hope those in power in Tbilisi will put sovereignty over subjugation and withdraw the coercive ``Russia law'' from parliament.