Floor Statements

Mr. President, I know of no further debate on the nomination.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

I announce that the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Blumenthal), the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Sanders), and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Welch) are necessarily absent.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Madam President, I come to the floor again to discuss two U.S. attorney nominations that have been on the calendar for weeks: Rebecca Lutzko, nominated to be U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio, and April Perry, nominated to serve as U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Illinois.

On several previous occasions, I have had to come to the floor to request unanimous consent for the Senate to take up these noncontroversial, bipartisan nominations and confirm these law enforcement nominees. Each time I have come to the floor, asking for this, the junior Senator from Ohio has objected. He says that he ran for office to ``[f]ight the criminals--not the cops.'' It turns out to be a hollow promise when he is holding up criminal prosecutors, at a professional level, in two major parts of the United States--one of them in his own State.

Our communities desperately need top Federal prosecutors in place. Interested in stopping fentanyl? I am. Thousands of people are dying. Well, who is going to prosecute those cases? The U.S. attorneys will-- 93 of them across the United States--but you can't prosecute the case if you don't have the U.S. attorney there to lead the effort and to coordinate the effort with other branches of government. You can have an interim in there, and I am sure that person will do as good a job as he can, but it isn't like having the permanent person that you need as a U.S. attorney. Here we have two who have been chosen by the junior Senator from Ohio to stop--one from his own State.

U.S. attorneys lead the Nation's efforts to prosecute violent criminals and protect our communities from violence, terrorism, and more. The U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio is no exception. While the entire Nation has been impacted by the opioid epidemic, Ohio has been hit harder than almost any other State. Over the course of 1 year--from April 2022 to April 2023--more than 5,000 Ohioans lost their lives to drug overdoses. That number is shocking-- 5,000 in 1 year. On average, every day, 14 Ohio families lose a loved one to drugs.

The U.S. attorney for the Northern District of Ohio could, as we speak, be tackling this drug crisis with community stakeholders, like the Toledo Metro Drug Task Force. Instead, her nomination has been languishing on the calendar here in the Senate for months because one Senator, the junior Senator from Ohio, has promised, I guess, former President Donald Trump that he would do his best to get even with the Department of Justice for even considering holding Donald Trump responsible for his conduct. It would be laughable if it weren't so damned dangerous.

Because Senator Vance is not just harming my State and is not just harming his own State, the precedent he is setting will undermine public safety across the entire Nation for years to come.

As I have stated before, the Senate has a long history of confirming U.S. attorneys by unanimous consent. We don't even have rollcall votes. When it came time for the Trump U.S. attorneys, no votes were required. Democrats--in control for most of that period of time--said to the President and his administration: You pick the U.S. attorneys. That is your right as President. The junior Senator from Ohio does not agree with that.

Before President Biden took office, the last time the Senate required a rollcall vote on a U.S. attorney was in 1975. At the beginning of a new Presidential administration, it is customary for all the U.S. attorneys to resign en masse and for the new President to select their replacements. That is the ordinary course of business. As we have learned in the Senate, you can change that if you want to and run the risk of not bringing someone new to the position if it is that important. That is why, during the Trump administration, 85 of President Trump's U.S. attorney nominees moved through the Judiciary Committee.

Senate Democrats--Democrats--allowed Trump's nominees--every single one of them--to be confirmed by unanimous consent, many of whom we would not have chosen personally, but that was the tradition that we held to. It would not have been realistic to force a floor time debate on every single one of those nominees and still expect 85 U.S. attorneys to be confirmed and be on the job in a timely manner.

That tradition and the logic behind it obviously escapes the junior Senator from Ohio. So we respected our colleagues, and we respected the need for Senate-confirmed leadership in U.S. Attorney's Offices. The Democrats put public safety and the needs of law enforcement ahead of the obvious politics of the day. But now the Senator from Ohio is setting an unfortunate standard as he is putting us on a path of requiring cloture and confirmation votes for every U.S. attorney nominee--something everyone here knows is not feasible.

Does this sound reminiscent of another Republican strategy from another Republican Senator in the State of Alabama? He held up, I believe, 400 military promotions for months at a time. He was angry about a new policy in the Department of Defense after the Dobbs decision. To protest that, he literally put a brick on 400 nominees for promotion in the U.S. military. Finally--finally--2 weeks ago, he relented. We still have 11 to take care of.

To think of the hardship caused to those individuals and the fact that we didn't have leadership when we should have had for our national security is an indication to me of how this strategy of ``just stop the train; I want the world to get off'' is not a sensible one.

So what will happen in the future when, inevitably, dozens of U.S. attorneys are left to function without Senate-confirmed leadership? Public safety will suffer, and we are setting a terrible precedent. To get angry with the administration and to try to require a rollcall vote--at least one, maybe two--on each nominee is just unnecessary; it is not logical, and it doesn't follow the precedent of the Senate--all because one Senator has decided that, because Donald Trump is facing indictments and prosecution in various parts of the United States, he wants to protest by hurting the selection of U.S. attorneys in his own home State of Ohio and the State of Illinois.

We have before us two highly qualified nominees to lead their respective U.S. Attorney's Offices. Until we confirm them, law enforcement agencies in both Illinois and Ohio will be held back from doing their best to fight crime and to end our drug crisis in this country.

When the Senator from Ohio was asked why he was doing this and what his goal was, he was very explicit:

I will hold all DOJ nominations. . . . We will grind [the

Justice Department] to a halt.

June 13, this year.

I can tell you, we just had a hearing--as you know, as a member of the committee--with the Director of the FBI. He talked to us about the battles he is fighting, the terrorism threats across America since the October 7 attack in Israel. He sees blinking lights, he says, in every direction of danger to the United States.

Are we going to have the Department of Justice on the job, with professionals doing the best they can, or are we going to let it grind to a halt? ``Grind to a halt''--those were his words. I hope we have some common sense in this situation, and I hope we do it right now.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that at a time to be determined by the majority leader, in consultation with the Republican leader, the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations: Calendar Nos. 314 and 315; that there be 2 minutes for debate equally divided in the usual form on each nomination; that upon the use or yielding back of time, the Senate proceed to vote without intervening action or debate on the nominations in the order listed; that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order; and that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action and the Senate then resume legislative session.

Madam President, I keep hearing this argument over and over again--weaponizing the Department of Justice. His complaint is that the Department of Justice has decided that Donald Trump, an American citizen, should be held responsible for his own conduct. Why would you argue that any citizen in this country is above the law?

I didn't choose to make that strategy or even support it publicly, but I can't argue with the decision by the attorney general, nor the State of New York, nor the State of Atlanta, who believe that Donald Trump did things that he should be held accountable for. He will have his day in court, like every American citizen. He should not be put in some saintly status that he can't be touched.

To think that in order to show my protest to any policy, I want to see the Department of Justice of the United States grind to a halt-- does the Senator have any idea what he just said? To think that we would stop the court proceedings, we would stop the prosecutions, we would stop the war against drugs, we would stop the war against terrorism, have them grind to a halt because I am mad that the former President is being, in my mind, harassed by this administration--this is irresponsible conduct, it is dangerous conduct, and it is a terrible precedent to set in the Senate that we would say to any individual: You have the power to stop a nominee who has been found to be acceptable on a bipartisan basis through the Senate Judiciary Committee.

You know as well as I do that these nominees come before the committee, and both staffs, Democrat and Republican, tear through them to look for any flaws or any reason to stop the nominations.

These two nominees in Ohio--his home State--and in Illinois both passed the test, the bipartisan test, and they were on their way to do a job for America and make it a safer place to live, and he stops them because he doesn't like the way Donald Trump is being treated. Is that a fact? He admits it on the floor of the Senate.

It is hard to explain to the Senator--he is new to the Senate, relatively new to the Senate--that some of the traditions in the Senate are worth keeping.

The fact that we gave 85 U.S. attorney nominees to Donald Trump as Democrats and did it without a single record vote is an indication we were trying to help his administration do their job. Why won't the Senator from Ohio let the Biden administration do their job and keep his own State safe?

I yield the floor.

I announce that the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. Manchin) is necessarily absent.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, over the weekend, I joined Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia on a trip to Guatemala and Honduras. With us were Senators Merkley, Butler, Welch as well as Guatemalan-American Congresswomen Torres of California and Ramirez of Illinois.

Both Guatemala and Honduras have struggled with conflict, corruption, stark inequality, and fragile democratic governments.

Many of us have forgotten that until the 1980s, much of Latin America was led by military dictators, sometimes with Cold War-era support from the United States.

Guatemala's bloody 36-year civil war only ended in 1996. It is a reminder of why the U.S. attention to this region's nascent and often fragile democracies is so important.

Guatemala is facing a deeply challenging Presidential transition. In October, Bernardo Arevalo won in a decisive landslide election where he pledged to tackle endemic corruption. Early polls showed him at 3 percent of the vote. When the final election took place, he won by 20 percent, a 1 million vote plurality, but outgoing President Giammattei, and Attorney General Porras are, unfortunately, attempting to undermine that peaceful transition ahead of the January 14 inauguration.

I might add that unlike other elections in Central and South America, this election where Mr. Arevalo prevailed was monitored by international sources, and the votes were challenged in court, counted, and found to be still in his favor, overwhelmingly.

In fact, shortly after President Giammattei didn't show up for a meeting with us one morning, his government crudely tried to annul the recent election results. This clumsy coup attempt--which was globally rejected--must not succeed. The Guatemalan voters' choice must be respected.

I want to raise the attention of the Senate to two Guatemalan political prisoners we asked about but were denied an opportunity to visit in prison, former prosecutor Virginia Laparra and journalist Jose Ruben Zamora. You won't be surprised to hear that both focused on issues of corruption, which is why they landed in jail on nonsense charges.

I look forward to working with the new President-elect, Arevalo, once he is sworn in, and hope their release will be one of his early actions.

Mr. President, in 2021, neighboring Honduras elected its first female President, Xiomara Castro, who many hoped would bring much needed change after decades of misrule and instability. Though she claims repeatedly to be an ally of the United States and closely aligned with our values, there have been some actions by her government in transition that raise serious concerns about commitment to democratic norms and, unfortunately, of closer ties to China, Cuba, Venezuela, and even Russia. President Castro still has an opportunity to show that we can work together for the common values that we share. I hope she takes that path.

Early in Senator Kaine's adult life, he spent a year in a Jesuit mission in Honduras, teaching Hondurans how to be carpenters and welders. It was in a Jesuit school for impoverished children where he gave a year of his life. I want to commend Tim Kaine for that effort, what he calls his ``North Star'' in his life, which helped to make him a thoughtful leader and one of the most admired Senators on the floor. His commitment to the region is a reminder that we still have important allies and responsibilities in our own neighborhood.

Mr. President, I would also like to speak briefly on the National Defense Authorization Act. The bill authorizes $886 billion for America's defense, expanding benefits for servicemembers and strengthening national security. It provides a 5.2-percent pay increase for our troops and the Pentagon civilian workforce, the largest increase in 20 years. Importantly, the conference report excludes a number of dangerous partisan provisions that were designed to rip away the freedoms of the very Americans whom, every day, we send to defend them.

This bill includes a number of provisions I offered, including to uphold Ukraine's territorial sovereignty, as that country fights for survival against Russia. Here is this country, hanging on by a thread, wondering if the United States is going to come to its assistance as people fight and die every single day to stop the invasion of Putin and his forces.

It is hard to imagine that we have reached a point where we have promised to stand by a country like Ukraine in this time of testing and we have mobilized the NATO alliance and many other nations to join us in that effort, and then have the rug pulled out from us by Donald Trump, who said he changed his mind on Ukraine.

To strengthen our security partnerships with our allies, such as the Baltics and Australia, we have to stay the course. I am convinced that the Ukrainians will prevail. We must show that we are determined to help them prove it.

This year the bill also authorizes many important programs. It is not

perfect, and it includes an unnecessary extension of section 702. I won't go into the details of this complicated mechanism that we have to try to detect those who threaten our country, but, from the beginning, I raised questions about its compliance with the constitutional guarantees of people being safe in the searches and seizures of the government. We will continue to discuss this over the weeks and months ahead.

Mr. President, I want to close on the topic that Senator McConnell raised, immigration. It is not an easy issue. I have given 20 years of my life here in the Senate to the issue of immigration and feel it was time well spent. It is over 20 years ago that I introduced the DREAM Act. Before I introduced this bill, if you asked most people what the ``Dreamers'' were, they would say a British rock group headed up by a guy named Freddie. Well, today, when you say ``Dreamers,'' people know what you are talking about: infants, toddlers, and children brought to the United States by their parents, growing up here, going to school, and determined to help this country succeed in the future. And what they find when they are teenagers is that they are undocumented; they don't have legal status in the United States.

I have always believed that they deserve a chance. The overwhelming majority of Americans of both political parties believe the same thing. But we have been unable to enact that law, and, as a consequence, at least 800,000 who were helped with the DACA Program by President Obama still have their fate in doubt as it courses through our Federal court system. That is something we should do automatically--we should have done it a long time ago--to protect these young people and the aspirations they have to make us a better nation. These are young people who will serve not only as teachers and engineers, but doctors and nurses and members of our military. If we give them the chance to fight and die for America, they will do it. They want to be part of this Nation's future, and they deserve that opportunity.

But, currently, we are debating only one thing, and that is the policy at the border--the southern border of the United States. I will tell you this: I have taken a close look at the situation at the border, and I know that change is necessary. But it must be change consistent with our values and realistic.

For the Republicans to propose change which says that those who come into the country seeking asylum will either be detained or sent to remain in Mexico--a policy that Donald Trump tried during his Presidency--there are some fatal flaws here. How in the world are we going to detain all those people presenting themselves at the border? That is simply a promise that can't be kept. And, secondly, as for this notion of ``Remain in Mexico,'' there is only one party to this conversation that hasn't agreed to it, Mexico. They don't want to have these people residing in their country for long periods of time while we work out changes in America's legal system.

It is hard to imagine, when you see the intractable positions taken by some on immigration, that there actually was a moment when we agreed on a bipartisan basis to pass comprehensive immigration reform. The Gang of 8, which I was part of, put that together. It was an extraordinary effort, and it was successful because of the hard work of a lot of people and a lot of time spent going through--painstakingly going through--each and every provision of the bill.

It can be done. It needs to be done. But the notion that in 7 days or 14 days we can craft some change in immigration policy that will help us, from time immemorial, is unrealistic and naive, and to condition any assistance to Ukraine on the achievement of that political goal is nonsense.

What we can do is come up with an agreement, I believe, on a bipartisan basis to enforce provisions and rules at the border that are consistent with American values but really do make it clear that we cannot sustain the number of people who are presenting themselves at the current time. I think that can be done, but only as a preliminary step to move us toward comprehensive immigration reform.

There are some, incidentally, who call for immigration reform but have never voted for an immigration bill one time in their political lives. That is a reality. So we shouldn't listen to their guidance if they haven't proven that they are open to vote for anything on the subject.

This is an important issue to a lot of people. I was in Guatemala City yesterday, as a matter of fact--or was it Saturday? This weekend, I met with people from Venezuela who were making their way to the U.S. border--they were mothers with small children--and I thought to myself: Who would embark on that dangerous, deadly journey with small children, realizing that every step of the way they are the most vulnerable person in the country?

As you travel through these countries, they are assaulted by people who steal everything that they own and threaten them with physical abuse and other things. I can't imagine how desperate these people must be to risk their families and their kids to make it to America. But then I think back: As a son of an immigrant myself, I know there was a determination in my family to make it in this country.

We have got to find a way to carefully construct a border policy that still takes advantage of the opportunities of immigration--the people who will come here and make us a better nation in the years ahead--and do it in a fashion that is thoughtful, not vindictive. That is what immigration requires, and I hope that we can reach that goal.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, today, the Senate will vote to confirm Richard E.N. Federico to the United States Court of Appeals for the Tenth Circuit.

Born in Richmond, IN, Mr. Federico earned his B.A.J. from Indiana University in 1999, his J.D. from the University of Kansas School of Law in 2002, and his L.L.M. from Georgetown University in 2012.

Since 2003, Mr. Federico has served the Navy in various positions both in the United States and abroad. More specifically, he has served as: trial counsel in Trial Service Office East of Naval Station Norfolk; director of military justice and trial counsel in the U.S. Regional Legal Service Office of Europe and Southwest Asia in Naples, Italy; defense counsel in the Office of the Chief Defense Counsel in the Office of Military Commissions; executive officer, senior defense counsel, and officer in charge at Naval Station Mayport in Jacksonville, FL; appellate defense counsel in the Appellate Defense Division of the Office of the Judge Advocate General in Washington, DC; military judge in the Navy-Marine Corps Trial Judiciary; and trial counsel for the Navy Reserve Region Legal Service Office Southwest at Navy Base San Diego.

Between 2015 and 2017, he served as an assistant federal public defender in the Federal Public Defender's Office for the District of Oregon. In 2019, Mr. Federico was designated and certified by the Judge Advocate General of the Navy as a military judge. Throughout his naval career, on Active Duty and in the Reserves, he has also been detailed to serve in a quasi-judicial capacity as a preliminary hearing officer. Mr. Federico has been detailed to preside over 11 court-martial cases. Since 2020, Mr. Federico has served as senior litigator in the Federal Public Defender's Office for the District of Kansas. He previously served the office as an assistant Federal public defender and as a research and writing specialist. Throughout his career, Mr. Federico has tried dozens of cases to verdict in U.S. district courts and in military courts-martial, and he has also filed and argued several appeals.

The American Bar Association unanimously rated Mr. Federico as ``well qualified,'' and his nomination is strongly supported by his home State Senators, Mr. Moran and Mr. Marshall.

I am confident that Mr. Federico will serve honorably on the Tenth Circuit. I proudly support his nomination.

Vote on Federico nomination.

I announce that the Senator from Maryland (Mr. Cardin), the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fetterman), the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Heinrich), the Senator from Hawaii (Mr. Schatz), the Senator from Rhode Island (Mr. Whitehouse), and the Senator from Oregon (Mr. Wyden) are necessarily absent.

Mr. President, I move to proceed to legislative session.

Mr. President, I move to proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 304.

Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.

Mr. President, I move to proceed to legislative session.

Mr. President, I move to proceed to executive session to consider executive Calendar No. 305.