Floor Statements

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

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 President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, roughly a year ago, President Trump made good on his ``MASS DEPORTATION NOW!'' promise--it was a campaign pledge--when he unleashed ICE into cities across the country to carry out his brutal immigration crackdown. In its wake, including in the city of Chicago, the so-called ``worst of the worst''--remember? The President said he was going after those who were rapists, murderers, terrorists, criminally insane, and predators. The ``worst of the worst''--that is who we are going after. He said it over and over and over again. Turns out that the ``worst of the worst'' didn't fit in that category at all. Who were they? Some were U.S. citizens, legal residents, and people with no prior criminal history whatsoever--none.

The administration brutally carried out this political theater by deploying military-grade weapons and using overwhelming displays of force that left communities and our country on edge.

I saw it firsthand in the city of Chicago: Operation Midway Blitz. In our Hispanic neighborhoods, people were afraid to come out to go to church, afraid to send their kids to school. Were these criminals who were harboring their children from going to school? Hardly. They are people who work in common jobs every single day, who stood next to you in the line in the grocery store, and who were with you in the pew at church on Sunday. ``Worst of the worst'' didn't hold up at all.

At its peak, tensions boiled over with the killing of two American citizens at that time. We saw it in real time and on videotape: Renee Good and Alex Pretti in Minnesota.

After the public outcry, these ICE raids were quietly scaled back by the Trump administration and Stephen Miller. But now Stephen Miller, the President's domestic adviser, and Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security Mullin are quietly resuming these efforts, with immigration arrests surging this month to the highest levels in this administration. I assume they felt that America just wouldn't notice that they were back in business, but we have.

In the last 2 weeks, two fatal shootings by ICE agents in Texas and Maine have thrust this government's tactics back into the spotlight.

Earlier this month, ICE shot and killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo during a traffic stop in Houston. Mr. Araujo had lived in the country for more than 30 years and was not the intended target of the operation. He is survived by his children, who are U.S. citizens.

Instead of investigating, the ICE agents detained the witnesses that were around the scene. The Harris County district attorney has said these witnesses are critical to the investigation, but they have been detained by the ICE agents.

Last week, Joan Sebastian Guerrero was also shot and killed while in his vehicle in Maine. He is survived by his wife and their 3-year-old daughter, who will now grow up without a father.

The ICE agent who fatally shot Mr. Guerrero was hired by the Trump administration despite the fact that he has a long history of domestic violence, abuse, and mental health issues. Yes, a man with a long history of mental health issues, abuse, and domestic violence was hired as an ICE agent and given a gun and a mask. It is not clear whether ICE simply failed to vet him or identified these issues and ignored them.

DHS quickly rushed to claim that both shootings were justified, without any body-worn camera footage or any serious investigation.

You know, it is interesting. This Agency, which is actively trying to arrest, detain, and deport thousands of people, meeting quotas set by Stephen Miller each day, the agents involved in this are not like your hometown police. They are not like your State police either. We know that their background checks are obviously very weak, and the training is limited. We also know that when they are on the job, on the clock, they are wearing masks.

When is the last time your local police wore a mask in your hometown? How about your State troopers when they pull you over on the highway? Are they wearing masks? Of course not. But this is insisted on because these ICE agents are so notorious.

These fatalities that I have talked about could have been avoided. These people could be alive today. After the killings of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, we tried time and again to get our Republican colleagues to sit down and agree just on some basics. Without a search warrant or an arrest warrant, a person posing to be a policeman should not be crashing down the door of your home. That is pretty basic, isn't it? If there is a warrant or extraordinary circumstances, that is one thing, but the ICE agents crashed down the door of people they suspect might be in the United States undocumented. Many times, they are just plain wrong. Sometimes, those homeowners turn out to be U.S. citizens.

Yet when we sit down and say ``That should be basic in America, shouldn't it? If somebody is going to invade my home, with my wife and my kids or grandkids in there, for goodness' sake, they ought to have at least the color of law behind them, the support of the court behind them''--not ICE agents--every instance we have tried to make these changes--simple, commonsense law enforcement changes--the Republicans said no. Instead, the administration has lurched in the opposite direction, enabling these abuses to continue.

On the heels of these back-to-back killings which I have described, ICE temporarily paused traffic stops, but President Trump quickly took to social media to personally reverse that decision. The President said:

``The men and women of ICE are doing a GREAT job''--

Despite the recent reports of killings--

. . . and ``we CANNOT give up one of I.C.E.'s most

important and effective Crime Fighting tools, THE TRAFFIC

Mr. President, on a separate topic, last week, the President of the United States delivered a prime-time address from the White House. These sorts of addresses are usually reserved for national crises or the marking of a major milestone. So what was the occasion last week for President Trump to make such an address? To air 6-year-old grievances and lies about the outcome of the 2020 Presidential election.

You see, despite the fact that Donald Trump lost to Joe Biden in 2020 by 7 million votes, President Trump refuses to acknowledge the truth, and he continues to complain, which was the reason for his statement last week. In a 25-minute rant, the President alleged sweeping foreign interference in voting and railed against the so-called deep state. He was actually railing against his own administration. You see, the 2020 election was during his first term as President. He was in charge. He appointed the people that were supposed to enforce the law. The press conference and the announcement last week ignored that fact.

These claims would be laughable if they weren't so dangerous.

First, the President was famous for not reading and requesting shorter and shorter versions of a brief provided by our intelligence community each day. He alleges the deep state misrepresented what actually happened to hide information from him.

Second, his then-Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe, whom President Trump now has leading the Central Intelligence Agency, made public remarks addressing all of these concerns in 2020. It is hard to hide information you publicly discuss in press conferences.

President Trump claimed the Department of Homeland Security has identified 278,000 noncitizens registered to vote in Federal elections. Think of that. The President of the United States claimed that his Agency of government has the names of 278,000 noncitizens registered to vote in Federal elections. Well, I sure want to see that evidence. I am sure the American people do too. The President can't produce it. It doesn't exist--none, not one page of documents backing up the claims he made in his public statement. No evidence. Election experts and State officials have called out this claim as ``wildly speculative.''

Here are the actual facts. You know the SAVE America Act which the President is focused on, fixed on, can't think of anything else? The idea behind it is to make sure that noncitizens don't vote in the United States.

Would you guess that it is currently against the law in the United States for noncitizens to vote? It is true.

Well, let's take a look. Took a look at the Heritage Foundation, which is a conservative group, and asked them to provide information on how many noncitizens have been caught trying to vote in the United States. When we took a look, between 1993 and 2023--that would be 30 years, 1993 to 2023--millions and millions of votes were cast. How many noncitizens have we identified tried to vote in those elections? Well, if we are going to change the laws of the United States, there must be a lot of them. Turned out there were 77. Out of the millions of people who registered and voted, 77 were actually not citizens of the United States.

The President wants to change the law. And how does he want to change the law? Well, if you want to register to vote, under the President's approach, you have to prove you are a citizen of the United States.

How can you do that?

Well, I will show my driver's license.

I am sorry, that is not enough under this law. Under this law, you would have to show your passport. Got one in your back pocket?

Half of Americans don't own a passport.

If you want to get a passport so you can vote in the next election in about 100 days, what does it take? Well, you go to the passport Agency, and you plop down $165--that is what it costs for a basic passport in this country--and then you hope--you hope--it arrives in time. If you want to speed it up, get an accelerated process, it is $225.

So in order to exercise your right to vote, under the SAVE America law, the President wants you to pay a poll tax, a passport fee, of up to $225 to vote. Anything wrong with that? That is just against most of the laws we have promulgated over the years saying that poll taxes on people to vote are fundamentally unfair.

Oh, you can bring your birth certificate.

I was thinking about that when I was home over the weekend.

I asked my wife: Where is my birth certificate?

She said: I think it is in a box in the closet. We haven't seen it in a long time.

Well, according to the President's SAVE America bill, you are going to have to produce one.

Incidentally, if you are a woman with a maiden name on a birth certificate, you have to have additional documentation.

All of this to stop the scourge of noncitizens who voted. There were 77 of them over a 30-year period of time--77 in a nation of millions of people. But the President can't get it out of his head that somehow or another that foreigners have taken over our election. He lost one, and he just can't live with it.

So why would the President have hosted a prime-time address attempting to resurrect these debunked claims? I will tell you: It is exactly what he did in the months preceding the 2020 election that he sought to steal. He is trying to lay the groundwork to justify rigging the results of the next election. That is the real political theater.

President Trump and his Republican Party are struggling in the polls. They know their MAGA agenda is making life more expensive, communities less safe, and government more corrupt. And guess what. We are now again, sadly, in a never-ending war.

So now they are focused on reviving thoroughly debunked conspiracy theories to undermine future elections before a single vote is cast.

Oh, of course. I am sorry. I didn't see the Senator on the floor. I yield to my friend from Wyoming.

I announce that the Senator from Nevada (Ms. Cortez Masto), the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fetterman), the Senator from California (Mr. Padilla), the Senator from Nevada (Ms. Rosen), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), the Senator from New Hampshire (Mrs. Shaheen), and the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Smith), are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy) is neccessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy) is necessarily absent.

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

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the scheduled vote at noon now begin immediately.

I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego) is necessarily absent.

The yeas and the nays resulted--yeas 51, nays 46, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 196 Ex.]

Mr. President, today, the Senate will vote to confirm Jeffrey T. Kuntz to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida.

While Judge Kuntz was under consideration to fill a judicial vacancy, he was also presiding over Alexander v. Trump, in which he authored the majority opinion upholding a lower court's ruling that Trump's defamation lawsuit against the Pulitzer Prize Board could continue.

Judge Kuntz declined to directly answer my question about whether he made the defendants in Alexander aware, while the case was pending, that he was being considered by the plaintiff for a lifetime appointment to the bench.

Instead, Judge Kuntz argued that he was not under consideration for this nomination, claiming that he did not interview with the White House until 2 weeks after the case had been decided.

A closer look at the timeline suggests a different story. Judge Kuntz first discussed a possible judicial nomination with Senator Scott's office in November 2024, 2 months before he was assigned to this case.

Judge Kuntz issued the majority opinion in Alexander on February 12, 2025, ruling in favor of President Trump. Eight days later, he was contacted by the White House regarding a potential nomination.

In fact, Judge Kuntz discussed this case when he interviewed with the White House on February 28, just about 2 weeks after he issued his opinion.

It's hard to believe that it is simply a coincidence that just 8 days after Judge Kuntz issued a ruling favorable to President Trump, he was contacted by the White House about a nomination and interviewed about it shortly thereafter.

Yet again, we have another nominee who has been rewarded for his loyalty to the President with a lifetime appointment to the Federal bench. I urge my colleagues to oppose this nomination.

I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego) is necessarily absent.

Mr. President, today, the Senate will vote to confirm Matthew A. Schwartz to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

Mr. Schwartz joins the growing line of Trump personal lawyers who have been nominated to the bench during Trump's second term.

Even as we consider his nomination, Mr. Schwartz is actively representing the President in two cases on appeal: Trump's 34-count conviction in the Stormy Daniels hush money case and the $464 million judgment against him, his family members, and businesses for inflating business assets.

During his hearing, Senator Booker asked Mr. Schwartz about the President's reported outstanding $400,000 debt to Sullivan & Cromwell, an obvious conflict of interest. Mr. Schwartz downplayed that sum as ``an extraordinarily small amount.''

Mr. Schwartz also represented Tesla in its successful appeal of a judgment from the Delaware Court of Chancery voiding Elon Musk's $50 billion compensation package.

While Musk raked in the billions Mr. Schwartz helped secure, he took a chainsaw to nearly every aspect of our government.

For these reasons, I will be opposing Mr. Schwartz's nomination.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the scheduled vote start immediately.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

I announce that the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fetterman) and the Senator from California (Mr. Padilla) are necessarily absent.