Floor Statements

Mr. President, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is in crisis. Tomorrow will be the first time the Director, Kash Patel, will come before the Senate Judiciary Committee as Director to be questioned about his management of the Bureau.

In just the first weeks of this administration, we witnessed the unprecedented and forced removal of dozens of senior FBI officials-- decorated career professionals who spent their lives protecting this country from terrorism, espionage, and cyber attacks. These patriots swore an oath to defend the Constitution and served Republican and Democratic Presidents alike.

They were shown the door for one reason: political retribution. Don't take my word for it. Just last week, former Acting FBI Director Brian Driscoll filed a Federal lawsuit accusing Director Patel and other Trump officials of orchestrating the politically motivated purge of the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Those who are familiar with the history of this Agency know that we went to great lengths to depoliticize the ranks of the FBI, the Director having a 10-year term, which meant that he or she would outlast any single President.

Time and again, we have set standards for the FBI that were above and beyond those across the ranks of government. There was a time when an FBI agent had to either have a law degree or a degree in accounting to qualify to be an FBI agent. It was a professional operation. There were questions raised about J. Edgar Hoover and other in the past, but basically the FBI has enjoyed the reputation of being one of the best law enforcement Agencies in the world.

According to Driscoll, though, Mr. Patel said:

The FBI tried to put the President in jail, and he hasn't

forgotten it.

It makes sense. And no one up and down the chain of command has been spared from his retribution at every level of government. All six of the FBI's Executive Assistant Directors--gone under the Trump administration. At least 18 special agents in Chicago of major field offices--gone. As many as 5,000 nonpartisan career public servants-- gone.

This brain drain at the FBI took place under Patel. It represents thousands of years of institutional knowledge wiped away in the blink of an eye. And when the FBI Director is so clearly ill-prepared to lead when under pressure, this deliberate razing of law enforcement expertise from his organization is even more shocking and dangerous for national security.

Brian Driscoll dedicated his professional life to serving his country. For nearly two decades, he held some of the Bureau's most demanding and sensitive assignments--serving on a SWAT team, leading the elite Hostage Rescue Team, and serving as Tactical Section Chief for the Critical Incident Response Group. For his bravery under fire during tactical operations, Mr. Driscoll was awarded both the FBI Medal of Valor and the Shield of Bravery--among the highest honors the Bureau can bestow.

Mr. Driscoll was forced out after he resisted Patel and the White House's demand that he produce a list of thousands of FBI personnel who worked on investigations related to the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

Keep the record straight in your mind. On January 6, an insurrectionist mob crashed into this building and drove Congress away at time when we were actually counting the ballots for the electoral college to determine the next President.

President Trump had rallied these demonstrators down on the Mall, and they marched up here, crashed through the windows, beat up on our police, and actually came into this Senate Chamber, aping themselves around here, sitting in the chair of the Presiding Officer. It was a sad and embarrassing day in the history of the United States.

I will just draw an analogy. If we heard that a mob crashed through the doors of Parliament in the House of Commons in London, what would we think? My goodness. What has happened to that great country?

Well, it happened here. I was an eyewitness to it, as were hundreds of others--driving out the Senators and the Vice President of the United States, Vice President Pence, from that chair that the Presiding Officer is sitting in.

That was the reality. Over 140 Capitol and DC police were injured in the process. Several gave their lives as result of it.

It was a serious moment. It was an embarrassing moment in our history. And now there is an effort to whitewash it. The first stop was with the FBI.

When the FBI prosecuted these mobsters who crashed into this building and sent some of them to jail, there was a steady beat from Mr. Patel and others that it was unfair. He even went so far as to organize those who had been arrested and prosecuted successfully or pled guilty into a choir. Yes, that is right--a singing group. He had them making some kind of musical selection from time to time, trying to diminish the seriousness of the charges against them.

So what happened when Mr. Patel--totally unqualified--became head of the FBI? He went out looking for FBI agents who investigated those mobsters and those insurrectionists. That is what was behind Mr. Driscoll's decision not to cooperate with him--so that those agents who were simply doing their duty and handing out successful prosecutions would not be penalized.

Mr. Driscoll's removal deprived the FBI of a leader whose expertise, courage, and judgment were forged over

decades on the frontlines defending America's security.

After leaving a promising career in finance, Mehtab Syed dedicated nearly 20 years to the FBI, rising from counterterrorism assignments and overseas postings in Islamabad and Amman to senior leadership in cyber and counterintelligence. She was a special agent in charge of the Salt Lake City field office and now should be leading the investigation of the horrific assassination of Charlie Kirk, but she was forced out this summer because, in the words of someone at the Bureau, she was ``not a good fit.'' She was a woman of color. They don't fare well in the Trump administration.

We don't even know exactly what impact her steady and experienced leadership could have had on this investigation. But we lost a talented and dedicated person whose talents were applied for the safety of our country. We do know that the person who pushed her out--Director Patel--who will be testifying tomorrow, quickly took to social media and falsely announced that the suspect was in custody--remember that?-- only to be forced to walk back those claims shortly thereafter.

At least 18 special agents in charge at the FBI--the top leaders in the field--have been forced into retirement or reassigned to diminished roles.

This hollowing out of the FBI creates a danger to the security of this country. These are not midlevel bureaucrats; these men and women oversee hundreds of agents and manage some of the most sensitive and complex investigations in the country. Many of these special agents in charge have spent their careers in counterintelligence and cyber operations, defending this country against hostile foreign powers, espionage, and cyber attacks.

Many devoted decades to civil rights enforcement, public corruption, and violent crime investigations, ensuring that State and local law enforcement across the country were working closely with seasoned Federal law enforcement leaders they can trust. Still others rose from frontline criminal work to lead major field offices. Their backgrounds range from forensic science to counterintelligence--skills not easily replaced and desperately needed.

Director Patel's foolhardy decision to force out these leaders within the FBI has hollowed out this important Agency. It has cost the Bureau decades of institutional knowledge and diminished its capacity to respond to the greatest threats facing our Nation.

Tomorrow at the hearing, I will go into detail about some of the Bureaus and Agencies within the FBI that have been diminished and hollowed out. Instead, many of the professionals of that Agency have been transported to the President's mass deportation crusade.

These dedicated professionals and so many more were fired, forced out, or reassigned to diminished roles because they had the courage to do their jobs, whether that meant investigating the January 6 riot, preventing domestic terrorism, pursuing corruption, or upholding the rule of law.

The FBI Agents Association has warned that the Patel-Trump purge of the FBI will ``severely weaken the Bureau's ability to protect the country from national security and criminal threats and ultimately risk setting up the Bureau for failure.''

At a moment when foreign adversaries are shredding our cyber defenses, when terrorist organizations remain determined to strike, when violent crime continues to threaten our communities, we are losing the very people best equipped to respond.

The American people deserve an FBI that is focused on keeping them safe and protecting our Constitution. Instead, what they are getting is an FBI that prioritizes political retribution and the Director's social media clout.

Tomorrow, I will press Director Patel on his decisions to weaken the FBI, which was designed to protect our American families, by forcing out its most experienced public servants at the expense of our national security and public safety.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

I announce that the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Heinrich), the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Hickenlooper), and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Heinrich), the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Hickenlooper), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), and the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Warner) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) is necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from New Hampshire (Ms. Hassan) is necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fetterman) and the Senator from New Hampshire (Ms. Hassan) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fetterman) and the Senator from New Hampshire (Ms. Hassan) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fetterman), the Senator from New Hampshire (Ms. Hassan), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Kelly), and the Senator from Michigan (Mr. Peters), are necessarily absent.

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 text of the bill be printed in the Record.

Mr. President, late last week, it was reported that the Pentagon was contemplating ending critical military assistance to European partners, including the Baltic States. The program known as the Baltic Security Initiative. That is a program which I helped to create years ago to strengthen military cooperation with the Baltic States: Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia.

NATO allies themselves with a long memory of Russian tyranny are still very much in Vladimir Putin's crosshairs. The Baltic States are some of the most vibrant, dedicated members of NATO, spending well above proposed funding targets for defense. The dangerous idea to cut this assistance came just as another deadline from President Trump for Russia to end its war in Ukraine came and went without any consequence.

In fact, Vladimir Putin responded like he always does after President Trump sets a deadline and lavishes him with a red carpet treatment in Alaska. He brazenly increased deadly attacks on Ukraine. That is right. While we were trying to get Vladimir Putin and the Russians to finally agree to a cease-fire and end of hostilities in Ukraine, he did exactly the opposite. That is what happened over the weekend, during which Russia launched one of the biggest assaults on Ukraine in the entire war and then did it again this week. During these attacks on Ukraine, Russian drones entered into NATO airspace, specifically into Poland.

Do we take that seriously in Chicago? You bet we do, because Chicago is second only to Warsaw in the percentage of Polish residents living there, people of Polish descent. Polish President Tusk said there were 19 Russian drones in the most recent incursion. Imagine if these were manned airplanes rather than drones, 19 bombers, fighters crossing into NATO territory, several of which were shot down, including with the help of allied Dutch F-35 fighters.

Now this isn't the first time Russian drones attacked a NATO territory. There was a drone crash reported in Poland a few weeks ago as well. And Russia has been behind a campaign of sabotage, assassination, and mayhem across NATO, targeting weapon supplies, infrastructure, and dissidents.

So let me say clearly to President Trump: With Putin thumbing his nose at us, violating NATO airspace, and testing American resolve, this is not the time to back away from our frontline allies. It is certainly not the time to halt bipartisan congressional support to the Baltic States. We should not be fooled. Vladimir Putin is not our friend. The Baltic States and Poland have proven that they are.

Vladimir Putin responds only to strength, and right now, he and other autocrats around the world are bonding together. They sense America is getting weak, and we here in Congress should not be fooled either. We should ensure the Baltic Security Initiative is included in the defense authorization bill and pass the Graham-Blumenthal legislation to tighten sanctions on Russia.

Strengthening Transparency and Obligations to Protect Children

Suffering from Abuse and Mistreatment Act of 2025

Mr. President, on a totally different topic, protecting our children is one of the most important duties of public service. When families send their kids

to school or let them play outside or allow them to go online, they should be confident that the kids are safe. But today, too many parents have a sinking feeling every time their kid logs on to a phone, tablet, or video game console.

They know that the internet has become a dangerous opportunity for predators looking to exploit the young and vulnerable. This is not a problem of the future; it is the crisis now. And Congress must act now.

In 2014, the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children known as NCMEC, received approximately 1.1 million CyberTips about child sexual abuse material known as CSAM. That was in 2014, 1.1 million received tips.

By 2023, less than 10 years later, the number of CyberTips had exploded from 1.1 million to 36.2 million. Over 36 million reports in a single year. Each one of these reports represents a child being harmed, exploited, or degraded. It is sickening and shows the sheer magnitude of the crisis.

As I have learned more about the horrors of online child sexual exploitation, I have made it my mission in the Senate Judiciary Committee to do something about it. I will never forget the heartbreaking testimony of witnesses, parents who came and told the story of what happened to their sons and daughters as a result of exploitation on the internet.

I want to thank Senator Josh Hawley, Republican of Missouri, for being the Republican lead on this bill, and my colleagues in the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democrats and Republicans alike, who voted unanimously to advance the bill out of committee earlier this year.

Let me pause for a moment and make sure you caught that word-- unanimously. Every Member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Democrat and Republican alike, voted for this legislation to move forward. Senator Hawley, who was in the minority at the time, voted for it; now he is in the majority, he is the lead sponsor of my bill, which is entirely appropriate, and it is a bipartisan effort.

We heard the frustration of my colleague from Hawaii about the lack of bipartisanship in the Senate. This is a notable exception. I want to recognize the extraordinary survivors and advocates who fought to make this legislation possible. Your heartbreaking stories, your testimony have made the difference.

The STOP CSAM Act takes a comprehensive approach to stemming the tide of online child exploitation. Most significantly, it establishes accountability by piercing the broad immunity granted to Big Tech by something known as section 230 of the Communications Decency Act.

The average American would flunk this quiz if you asked them what section 230 is. The advocates that come to us to support the STOP CSAM Act know exactly what it is--it lets social media off the hook for their wrongdoing.

For too long, courts have read section 230 so broadly that it has allowed companies hosting, promoting, even profiting from CSAM to be shielded from any responsibility or accountability.

That is right. They can do the wrong thing and never pay a price because of section 230. The Stop CSAM Act changes it. It opens the courthouse doors to survivors and families. I can think of no other single thing that we can do which would be more effective.

If these social media platforms can ignore parents and ignore the exploited young people and go about their business, they will have a second thought on the subject if they face the possibility of going to court. It would allow victims to sue tech platforms and app stores that promote or aid or abet online child sexual exploitation or that host, store, or make CSAM available. It puts teeth in the law.

In addition to accountability, Stop CSAM forces transparency on Big Tech. For years, Big Tech has operated in secrecy, telling parents, policymakers, and even their own users: Just trust us. But, as whistleblowers and lawsuits have shown, that trust is misplaced.

The Stop CSAM Act requires the largest technology companies to submit annual reports describing their efforts to combat child sexual exploitation on their platforms. Is that too much to ask? I don't think so.

We have all seen the headlines. Meta's own internal research showed harm to children on Instagram and in virtual reality spaces. AI and platforms like ChatGPT, Character.AI, and OpenAI are facing lawsuits for failing to prevent harmful, even deadly, conversations with minors.

This is a serious matter. The new school year is starting. In some States, in many school districts, they have drawn the line and told the kids: You don't bring your phones to school. You are going to be students here, and you are going to talk to one another instead of texting. You are going to look at the teacher and the board and what is before you as opposed to your phone night in and night out.

The Stop CSAM act also includes critical protections for survivors of child sexual exploitation. The bill bolsters privacy protections for certain child victims and witnesses in Federal court and gives judges the tools to enforce those protections.

Altogether, these reforms hold tech companies accountable, bring transparency to their practices, strengthen law enforcement tools, and put survivors and their families at the center of our bipartisan response.

The Senate Judiciary Committee has worked together on this matter unanimously, Democrats and Republicans, to advance meaningful child safety legislation. As I said earlier, the Stop CSAM Act passed unanimously out of committee. That unanimity is no accident; it reflects a shared understanding that when it comes to protecting our kids, partisanship has no place.

We have shown that Democrats and Republicans can work together to write, strengthen, and advance legislation that takes on Big Tech and prioritizes children's safety.

To my colleagues who have not yet signed on to the bill: Welcome aboard. We need you. Join us. Become a sponsor of the Stop CSAM Act.

There are advocates from all over the United States who are on Capitol Hill today knocking on the doors of Senate offices and asking colleagues to take a moment to consider cosponsoring this bill. I salute them. That is what democracy is all about, and that is what protecting our kids is all about.

The Judiciary Committee has done its job. The families in our States are watching. Survivors are waiting. Advocates are working day and night to protect kids at home and worldwide. It is time for the Senate to act.

During the course of my career in the House and the Senate, I have taken on some issues that have dealt with the security and safety of children. Years and years ago, I took on tobacco usage by kids. When I took on that particular crusade, about 25 percent of the kids in grade school across America were using tobacco products--cigarettes and chewing tobacco and that sort of thing--25 percent. Today, that figure is below 5 percent.

It is a lot of hard work and a lot of people stepping forward and saying: You can do what you want when it comes to adults, but for God's sake, protect our kids. Isn't that what this is all about, too-- protecting our kids from the most insidious, destructive, and threatening element when it comes to their future and safety?

I encourage my colleagues, join us in this bipartisan effort. This is something we all should agree on.

I yield the floor.

I want to thank the member of the Rules Committee for organizing this floor block of speeches. He has been a valued partner of mine on the Senate Judiciary Committee for several years and has taken on his ranking member position in the Rules Committee seriously.

Leader Thune has set in motion a rules change that will fundamentally undermine the ability of the Senate to fulfill its constitutional duty of advice and consent.

I hope my Republican friends--I use that term specifically--I hope my friends will pause for a moment and think of a way we might solve this problem and do it in bipartisan fashion.

Before the recess, Senate Democrats worked in good faith with Senate Republicans to negotiate a package of nominations to break the deadlock and move these nominations through the Chamber in an expedited, professional, bipartisan fashion. At the very last minute, however, President Trump blew up the negotiations. Rather than stand up to him, Senate Republicans are now willing to give away the Senate's authority when it comes to advice and consent.

Senate Republicans claim they are violating Senate rules just for this set of nominees. But I am afraid this is going to open the door to rushing through more extreme nominations whose only qualifications seem to be loyalty to the Chief.

Look no further than President Trump's nominees who have been considered by the Judiciary Committee. After President Trump fired his first FBI Director, he nominated Kash Patel. As a private citizen, Mr. Patel directed the purge of honorable career public servants at the FBI and then lied about it under oath at his confirmation hearing.

Mr. Patel auditioned for the FBI job by trying to whitewash January 6, calling the rioters who stormed the Capitol harassing and beating on the local police ``political prisoners.'' The head of the FBI, Mr. Patel, produced a choir of singers, including those who were prosecuted for wrongdoing on that day and some who violently assaulted police officers. This was considered to be cute, I guess, by some of Mr. Patel's followers. But the very same men and women who would beat on the police, Capitol Police and DC police who were protecting this building, were somehow supposed to be entertaining as a choir--only in the eyes of someone like Mr. Patel.

I warned my colleagues that confirming Mr. Patel would risk our national security and public safety. The head of the FBI used to be as apolitical a position as possible for a long tenure to take it out of politics. Mr. Patel has dived headfirst into politics where we stand today. Instead, my colleagues gave a green light to use the FBI's vast surveillance and investigative party to go after President Trump's critics. That is exactly what happened.

Is this the kind of nomination that should be debated on the floor of the U.S. Senate? I don't doubt for a moment that it should. It is a powerful position and will be misused.

What about Aaron Reitz, nominated to be Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Policy? In his confirmation hearing, I asked Mr. Reitz a very simple question: Can an elected official defy a Federal court order? Mr. Reitz refused to commit that an elected official must follow a court order.

He also holds extreme views, including that the Supreme Court opinion upholding marriage equality was a ``low point'' in the history of the Supreme Court and that ``'birthright citizenship' is not a thing'' despite what the Constitution says explicitly.

Senate Republicans dutifully confirmed Mr. Reitz with no questions asked, but he resigned after 3 months on the job to run for attorney general of Texas.

Senate Republicans also confirmed Jeanine Pirro as U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Ms. Pirro is a talented person. She has been an elected official, and she has done many interesting things, but she is another nominee who auditioned for the role in the administration by declaring her blind loyalty to the President on TV for over a decade.

Ms. Pirro's repeated lies to millions of viewers on FOX about the 2020 election forced FOX News to pay nearly $800 million to settle defamation claims brought by Dominion Voting Systems.

Like Mr. Patel, Ms. Pirro has claimed that January 6 rioters were ``hostages''--people who assaulted the Capitol, broke down the doors, defecated in the hallways, beat up the Capitol Police and the DC police, and ransacked our desks here on the floor of the Senate. In the eyes of Ms. Pirro, these people were hostages, and she argued that the prosecutors handling these cases themselves should be criminally prosecuted.

Like Mr. Reitz, Ms. Pirro reads the Constitution through a MAGA lens, wrongfully arguing that the administration can deport immigrants without due process.

I have been in this Chamber for a number of years. It has been my honor and responsibility to vote on many nominees as part of the advice and consent section of the Constitution.

Let me give you some facts about filling vacancies. As chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, we filled the vacancies--before I was chairman of the committee, we filled the vacancies for U.S. attorneys. In President Donald Trump's first term, all 93 spots were filled without a single record vote. All were done by unanimous consent--all of them.

Then what happened under the Biden administration? Unfortunately, it is something that we are still living with today, and we are seeing it manifest in this procedural action.

There was a decision made by one Senator, Senator Vance of Ohio, now our Vice President, to stop the nominations on the floor for Biden's U.S. attorneys by voice vote. He stood up and objected. He said--and quite plainly said--I want to do this to grind the Department of Justice to a halt--to grind the Department of Justice to a halt. He didn't deny that.

I came to the floor on many occasions, pleading with him to stop his effort to stop these nominations. In fact, I came to the floor on eight different occasions, asking Senator Vance and then Republican Senators: Could you give us the same courtesy under President Biden we gave you under President Trump? And the answer was: No. We are stopping any appointments of U.S. attorneys by the Biden administration at 63.

So another 30 U.S. attorneys were not determined on the floor. It was stopped. The process was stopped.

I said at the time that this was going to come back to affect this Chamber under the next President, whoever it might be, pleading with Senator Vance. He wouldn't change his position on this.

So we find ourselves where we are today--at a standoff when it comes to U.S. attorneys and other nominees because of this history.

There is a way out of this mess. There is a bipartisan solution to this. I plead with Senator Lankford of Oklahoma, who is involved in this, and with the other Republican Senators to take advantage of that opportunity to solve this problem when it comes to nominations in a bipartisan way. It is the best thing you can do not just for the Republican Party but for the Democratic Party and for both parties that serve in the U.S. Senate.

We have the right and a responsibility to ask hard questions of people who are accepting major responsibility in the Federal Government. There should never be an automatic approval. Questions should be asked, and they will be. If the questioning process is professionally done and honorably handled, we can use that to determine those rare cases where we need to have more time and an actual specific vote on a nominee. But to lump these nominees together into groups of 30, 40, and 50 and say to the Members of the Senate ``Take it or leave it'' is a dereliction of duty and an abdication of our constitutional responsibility.

There is a way to do this that is going to help this Chamber, and there is a way to do it which will be destructive. What has been proposed by the Republicans is destructive, but it can be improved, and I want to work with them in a good-faith effort to do just that.

So I thank my friend from California, the ranking member of the Rules Committee, for bringing this together and addressing an issue which goes to the heart of our responsibility in the Senate.

I yield the floor.

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 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, it has been my honor and one of the highlights of my Senate career to watch the restoration of democracy in the Baltic States: Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. I have said on the floor many times with real pride, my mother was born in Lithuania, and she was an immigrant to this country at the age of 2. And she never made it back to her home country where she was born, but I did, even to the town where she was baptized and raised before she came to the United States.

It has been quite a journey. In 1978 or 1979, I visited what was then the Soviet Socialist Republic of Lithuania. I am still struck by the images which were so common there: the gray Soviet approach to things both physical and otherwise and the belief that these poor people were under the subjugation of Moscow at a time when they deserved independence.

And then to have served in the House of Representatives and, again, in the Senate and to watch the evolution of Lithuania as well as Latvia and Estonia as democratic countries and the amazing development where they became part of NATO and part of the European Union and became Western-viewing nations and equal partners with other countries in Europe when it came to security and democracy--it is remarkable.

And yet I am not naive, I know these are smaller countries, and they will be easily overwhelmed by Russia if that were the Russian ambition.

So I have tried over the years to maintain the strong relationship between the Baltic States and NATO and also the strong relationship with the United States and these three Baltic nations.

One of the things I worked on for a number of years is known as the Baltic Security Initiative. It is an investment by the United States of several million dollars in the training of troops in the Baltic States so that they are prepared if they are brought into enemy conflict. It is a modest investment. They have shown their good faith on their side by maintaining strong support from NATO and contributions to it. But the Baltic Security Initiative is an incentive for them to continue along those lines.

As I have said, I am not naive about this situation. Being part of NATO means that our alliance will stand by them if they are ever invaded by another country. I hope that never happens, but if it does, it means that NATO is there. They cannot go it alone, but they have certainly shown they are prepared to do their part to demonstrate their commitment to democracy and the values the United States shares.

We are now considering the National Defense Authorization bill. It is an important piece of legislation, which we, every year, take seriously and pass, and I hope we do this time as well.

I have offered amendments that would strengthen our alliances in my bipartisan amendment to authorize the Baltic Security Initiative. Since I created the program by including it in the fiscal year 2021 appropriations bill, this initiative has provided millions of dollars in dedicated security assistance to Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

These important NATO allies are on the frontlines against Russian aggression. They have a long history of experiencing Russian tyranny, and I firmly believe they have also been targets of Putin if they were not members of NATO. They are some of the top NATO members in terms of military expenditures and percentage of GDP, something President Trump has rightfully urged. I have visited bases in Lithuania where American and other NATO allies are working closely to deter Russian aggression.

Yet, despite the clear success of this program, we recently learned that the Trump administration announced last week that it intends to suspend the European security programs, including the Baltic Security Initiative. That would be music to the ears of Vladimir Putin, and it sends a dangerous signal as Putin continues to attack Ukraine despite assurances from President Trump that he wanted to end the war on Ukraine on his first day in office.

As I mentioned, I am the son of a Lithuanian immigrant. My mother's family knew she could depend on the United States and all it stood for when they gave up their home in Lithuania and came to this country.

We should not allow the President to unilaterally threaten our alliance that has been carefully threaded over decades and decades.

I am grateful to the senior Senator from Iowa, Senator Grassley, for joining me on the amendment which I am going to offer on the Baltic Security Initiative. I urge my colleagues to join us.

I am reaching out to colleagues on both sides of the aisle and asking them to stand with me for the Baltics to make it clear to Putin this is not going to be easy picking for him in the future.

They are part of the NATO alliance and a worthy part as well. We should continue our support, and I hope the Baltic Security Initiative is an indication of that.

I urge colleagues on both sides of the aisle to join us in this bipartisan effort to support Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, today, the Senate will vote on the nomination of Maria Lanahan to the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri. I will oppose her nomination.

As the principal deputy solicitor general in the Missouri Attorney General's Office, Ms. Lanahan has been at the forefront of litigating cases on politically charged issues, including restricting access to reproductive rights.

For example, she served as counsel of record for Missouri in an effort to restrict access to mifepristone, one of two drugs used for medication abortions, despite the fact that decades of peer-reviewed research has found mifepristone to be safe.

Ms. Lanahan argued in briefs that abortion medication are ``dangerous drugs,'' and she claimed in responses to written questions that she was unaware of more than 60 studies supporting the FDA's approval expanding the use of mifepristone.

It is notable that she argued that Missouri has standing to bring this case because access to abortion medication is ``depressing expected birth rates for teenaged mothers in Plaintiff States.'' She also claimed that Missouri would be injured because a loss of potential population would lead to ``diminishment of political representation'' and ``loss of federal funds.''

Ms. Lanahan also served as counsel of record to Missouri in its challenge to the CHNV Parole Program, which grants a pathway for parole in the United States from Cuba, Haiti, Nicaragua, and Venezuela. In the Missouri Attorney General's Office, she has demonstrated hostility to humanitarian parole, a critical component of our country's commitment to aiding people who are in the midst of a humanitarian crisis.

I urge my colleagues to oppose Ms. Lanahan's nomination.

I announce that the Senator from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen) and the Senator from Oregon (Mr. Wyden) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Illinois (Ms. Duckworth), the Senator from Maryland (Mr. Van Hollen), and the Senator from Oregon (Mr. Wyden) are necessarily absent.