Floor Statements

Mr. President, I listened carefully to my friend John Thune, the Republican leader. We have known one another and served together for many years. We have worked on issues together, and I think we will continue to, but we disagree on many political things. I respect him, and I hope he respects me.

He made a plea to the Senate that we have more voice votes, more unanimous consent requests for nominations. He went through the history of this Chamber. And, certainly, it bears repeating, and it is certainly true, that in the past there were many more voice votes than there are today.

What is the difference between a record vote and a voice vote? Time. Time is so precious here. We only meet for a few days each week and a few hours each day. We need more time if there are more rollcall votes. It takes up anywhere from 20 minutes to 2 hours to complete a vote. A voice vote, of course, is instantaneous.

So the Republican leader, Mr. Thune, is asking for more and more voice votes. And he recounts the history in this Chamber to make his case. There is one chapter that he failed to admit and failed to concede; that is, what happened in the last year of the Biden administration.

I was then chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, and I am a member of that committee to this day. One of the most important responsibilities of a President is to fill the 90-plus U.S. attorney spots all across the United States that represent the Department of Justice. These are men and women who are on the firing line in the enforcement of law, and it is critical that these appointments be confirmed as quickly as possible.

Under the administration of President Donald Trump in his first term, all 90-plus U.S. attorneys were approved by voice vote, all of them. There was one that became controversial and was later reconsidered and removed. But all of the 90-plus U.S. attorneys in Trump's first term, voice vote.

What happened when Joe Biden defeated Donald Trump--and he did defeat him--and became President of the United States and tried to do the same thing to fill up the spots of U.S. attorneys? We were doing quite well following the precedent that had been around for years under leaders of both parties, following the precedent of President Trump's first term. We were doing quite well until one Senator objected. In the Senate, that can stop the train.

That Senator was JD Vance of Ohio. He came to the floor and made it clear that he would no longer allow us to have unanimous consent to move to a voice vote on U.S. attorneys. The vacancies and positions for a U.S. attorney had to be filled by a record vote--just what Senator Thune is objecting to these days. He insisted--JD Vance

of Ohio, U.S. Senator, insisted that no voice votes for U.S. attorneys from that point forward would take place.

I went to the floor on six or seven different occasions begging him to reconsider that position, saying to him: A day may come when your party, the Republican Party, has a President who wants to fill U.S. attorney slots by a voice vote and we will have the JD Vance precedent that says you can't do it.

He didn't care. He wouldn't budge. He stuck to that position. As a consequence, almost 30 U.S. attorneys under President Joe Biden were not approved.

So I say to Leader Thune, be honest about the analysis of this situation. If we are going to do something by way of reform, I would like to be at the table--particularly when it applies to U.S. attorneys and judges--but we should do this in a fashion that is fair to both political parties.

I might also say that though the U.S. attorneys are virtually subject to a blue slip, it means that some of them will receive the approval of Democrats. We have that case right now. I can point to States, specific States, where Democratic attorneys have given blue slip approval of U.S. attorney nominees. That, to me, is an important factor that should be brought into this conversation.

I might also say that from the Republican side, if they will sit down and be fair with us in terms of Democratic appointments, we need to be fair back to them. That, I think, would mean turning our back on the JD Vance precedent that we have been living under ever since. So I hope we can do something positive for the good of the Senate.

Trump Administration

Mr. President, back home in Illinois, there is one item of news when it comes to Washington, DC: When or if Donald Trump is going to send in the troops.

In June, President Trump deployed the military against American citizens when he sent National Guard troops and 700 Active-Duty marines to Los Angeles in an attempt to crush protests against his administration's cruel immigration raids.

Last month, the President took the unwarranted step of federalizing Washington, DC's police force and sending thousands of National Guardsmen to patrol our Nation's Capital.

For months now, President Trump has been looking for any excuse to send National Guard troops and Active-Duty Forces into American communities. And over the past few weeks, he has boasted ``Chicago will be'' next.

Let me be clear: This would be yet another dangerous, illegal, and unconstitutional abuse of power by President Donald Trump. The President claims his actions are meant to drive down crime and restore order, but all they have done is created a political spectacle, a political theater.

He ignores the reality that violent crime is down in the District of Columbia and in Chicago. And he ignores the fact that under our Constitution, the part to maintain law and order belongs to the States. That doesn't matter to Donald Trump. The only thing that matters to him are the optics, continuing to push the limits of our Constitution and the rule of law as he abuses his office.

Using the military to ``occupy'' an American city in the absence of an emergency politicizes the institution, erodes civilian control of the Armed Forces, and places unnecessary burdens on the servicemembers, families, and employers.

There are also troubling reports that Federal law enforcement officers could operate out of Naval Station Great Lakes, where the Navy trains thousands of new recruits a year.

We are so proud of the Great Lakes Naval Training Station. Every single member of the U.S. Navy on the enlisted side goes through basic training in our State in the Great Lakes Naval Training Station. My brother who was a volunteer serving in the Navy in the Korean war went through that training in his day. It is a magnificent facility, and over the time I have served in Congress in the House and the Senate, it has been my honor to make sure that it is the very best training center in the world.

Supporting law enforcement is not the core mission of the U.S. Navy or the National Guard, and it distracts our troops from preparing to respond to real threats from our adversaries around the world.

We were just notified recently that there have been secret plans underway for a long period of time. The Pentagon has been developing plans for military deployment for weeks. The plans reportedly include several options, including mobilizing thousands of National Guard troops this month to restore law and order, so to speak, in areas where they are cracking down on crime, homelessness, and undocumented immigration. But in most instances--legal and constitutional instances--the use of federalized troops or the use of Federal troops requires the approval and consent of the Governor of the State. That is not the case, certainly, in Illinois. It also takes a financial toll on our readiness.

We are going to start to consider the National Defense Authorization Act this evening here in the U.S. Senate. It is an important bill--one of the most important--and it has the history of always being passed every single year. And I hope we can maintain that kind of commitment.

But that bill is passed in a popular and bipartisan basis because it does something that is critical. It authorizes the funding for the troops that defend our Nation. We worked long and hard on it.

I am not a member of the committee, but I know they spend hours of debate on each and every provision of the bill, and then it comes to the floor and is subject, many times, to amendments on the floor. It takes a week or sometimes 2 or more to get it done, but it is that important.

Why do we spend so much time? To make sure that our military has the money that they need to keep America safe--our first responsibility. And now we have this prospect that even if we pass this bill, that some other Agencies in this government, for some other political reason--in this case, massive deportation--are going to be using the Department of Defense funds.

I offered an amendment in the Appropriations Committee where I serve that said if any other Agency of government takes money away from the Department of Defense for another purpose, it has to be reimbursed. If we are going to stand by our men and women in uniform and make sure that they are adequately financed, we cannot allow these raids that are being considered by the Trump administration.

For example, the cost of Donald Trump's deployment of troops to Los Angeles was estimated at $134 million, and some experts calculate the mission in the District of Columbia costs the Department of Defense and taxpayers $1 million a day--$1 million a day.

While the National Guard is meant to serve American communities in true emergencies, like pandemics and natural disasters, what is it doing in DC at the President's request? Patrolling neighborhoods for political theater: picking up trash and spreading mulch. Give me a break. These men and women who are being trained to defend our country are being used by this President for political purposes in the District of Columbia.

In Chicago, crime rates may be unacceptably high--and I don't doubt that in some categories--but they have been on a steady decline for years, and we are already pursuing successful community-based strategies to deter crime. We are reaching out to the most vulnerable members of our communities directly and personally, working with trusted and trained leaders who understand the impact that trauma can have on communities.

We can work together, but it doesn't mean that Donald Trump shoves it down our throats. We want to cooperate with him. We have programs that he failed to fund in this budget cycle that we believe are critical for the maintenance of the diminishment of criminal experiences. This is being accomplished through the Community Based Violence Intervention and Prevention Initiative, which represents a historic Federal investment in programs designed to help prevent and reduce violent crime.

But these programs have been cut by the Trump administration. The initiative supports evidence-based violence intervention and prevention programs based on partnerships. It combats crime by collecting data, identifying

trends, developing strategies, and sharing these practices.

Ask professional law enforcement and they will tell you in virtually every conversation on the subject that you can't arrest your way out of a crime wave; you have got to analyze the basic causes of crime and what to do about it. Of course, dangerous people should be arrested and should pay the price for their wrongdoing, but a strategy that reduces violent crime over any long period of time takes more than that.

Replacing these efforts with troops not trained for urban policing risks alienating residents, destabilizing neighborhoods, and harming the National Guard's reputation. And I can tell you, over the years, I have come to be a big fan of the National Guard. They are there when we need them. We shouldn't overuse them. We shouldn't abuse them. We shouldn't put them in jobs they are not trained for. That is exactly what the Trump administration is doing in the District of Columbia and threatening to do in Illinois.

Incidentally, there is one common fact that belies any objectivity in this effort. You would think if the President were setting out to eliminate crime across America, he could find many examples in red States and blue States, States that supported him and States that didn't. All he has found are in the areas that were voting for Joseph Biden in the election of 2020, and those States are the State of California, the State of Illinois, the District of Columbia, and now he is threatening to move into Maryland.

So if he is going after crime, why is he ignoring the States of Louisiana, Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, or Texas? Why? Because they voted for him for President. He doesn't see crime in those States. And there is just as much, if not more, as there is in the State of Illinois. Yet he focuses his attention only on blue States. All of these States that I have mentioned have high violent crime rates. President Trump doesn't target them because they are led by Republican officials. That is it. It is a political decision.

Trump's power grab sets a precedent that any President could invoke to deploy troops anywhere without an actual emergency. He was called to task by a judge in California on that just this week, and I am sure that will be contested. He is reinforcing a pattern of targeting large cities with significant Black and Latino populations, undermining trust between law enforcement and the community.

The Founders of this Nation understood that an unchecked power to turn the military on the American people themselves poses a grave threat to democracy and individual liberty. Trump's decision to deploy the military in American cities is more fitting for an authoritarian regime than the democracy that our Nation's Founding Fathers fought for.

These tactics are all smoke and mirrors to distract from the real issues facing us. Trump is hoping the American people will forget about his so-called ``Big Beautiful'' budget that rips away healthcare and food aid for millions across America--all to give tax breaks to the wealthiest--or forget how his reckless tariff policies are increasing the costs on everyday goods and essentials that working people rely on, or forget about the Epstein coverup being orchestrated by this White House.

Well, America won't forget, and we will continue to hold Donald Trump's feet to the fire where it counts. As the ranking member of the Senate Judiciary and a Senator from the State of Illinois, I will not sit idly by while this President tramples over the Constitution. I will use every tool at my disposal to protect our constitutional system of checks and balances and individual liberties that define us as Americans--from Los Angeles, to Chicago, to the District of Columbia, and everywhere in between. We will continue to put pressure on this administration to explain to the American people why we would waste millions of dollars appropriated for the defense of this country on a political stunt by this President that applies only to blue States that went for Joe Biden in the 2020 election.

The bottom line is the American people want to be safe in their homes and in their neighborhoods and safe as a Nation. This strategy by Donald Trump is not going to achieve that goal.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I announce that the Senator from Illinois (Ms. Duckworth), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Warner), and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Welch), are necessarily absent.

Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Oregon for his leadership on this bill, which I am proud to cosponsor. I want to respond to my friend and colleague from the State of Wyoming and say when he goes back in time looking at the votes on nominees, don't overlook the JD Vance precedent. JD Vance, then-Senator for Ohio, came to the floor of the U.S. Senate and objected to any type of vocal arrangement--oral vote, when it came to the approval of U.S. attorneys. He said that he wanted all of them to go through the regular order. That stopped, under President Biden, the appointment of all U.S. attorneys.

So to argue that they have clean hands in the situation is to ignore the Vice President's former status, establishing the standard that made it impossible to consider U.S. attorneys on a voice vote.

Let me say about the issue before us on Epstein. Two weeks after the Senate confirmed Pam Bondi as Attorney General, she told FOX News--the mother ship--the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients are ``sitting on my desk right now to review.''

Six days later, Bondi released binders of documents related to Epstein to MAGA influencers, but these documents were largely already publicly available. The absence of any client list led to immense blowback.

Attorney General Bondi returned to FOX News and made another startling claim. She said that a whistleblower told her the FBI withheld ``thousands of pages of documents'' and the country would see ``the full Epstein files.''

Over the next 4 months, DOJ and FBI were silent on this issue until an unsigned July 7 memo was issued finding that ``systemic review revealed no incriminating `client list.' ''

So what happened during the 4 months between Attorney General Bondi's blockbuster claims in February and this July 7 memorandum?

My office received a highly credible whistleblower disclosure describing Attorney General Bondi's pressure on the FBI to quickly review and produce more Epstein documents. For 2 weeks in late March, the FBI assigned approximately 1,000 professional personnel in its Information Management Division and hundreds of additional agents from the New York field office to work 24-hour shifts to review and produce more documents. These officials were told to ``flag'' any records which mentioned President Trump.

Essentially, agents were pulled out of the field from their work combating violent crime to review these documents. Other important work was effectively shut down.

Using tens of thousands of personnel hours at the expense of public safety, for no other reason than to try to bolster baseless claims they have made, is reckless.

President Trump has not helped the situation. Despite his administration

continuing to make promises about transparency on Epstein and the existence of records they have not produced, he is currently telling the country it is all a ``scam.''

Last month, President Trump posted on his personal social media that ``my PAST supporters have bought into this `[BS],' hook, line, and sinker. They haven't learned their lesson, and probably never will.''

This is the way the President is talking about his own constituents who are raising concerns about the claims that President Trump's own administration has repeatedly raised.

President Trump and Attorney General Bondi are directly responsible for this confusion and mistrust. They owe Congress and the American people full transparency. Instead, the situation gets more murky when Epstein's girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell is being interviewed by one of the highest ranking members of the administration. We don't know what the conversation is. We sent a letter that said we want full disclosure to both sides of the aisle on what they discussed, and we want to make sure there are no promises of pardon or clemency for her to speak. She is serving a 20-year term for human trafficking and exploitation of children.

The prosecutor said that she was not a credible witness, and we ought to take that into consideration when considering her role.

So I support Senator Merkley's bill. I am sorry there was an objection.

I yield the floor.

I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego) and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Welch) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego) and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Welch) are necessarily absent.

Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Oregon for his statement. I would like to join in the chorus for just a moment and note two or three things that have not been mentioned on the floor by the other side. In fairness, I think they should.

I have listened to several Republican Senators today, with the pie charts, come to the floor and express concern--even outrage--at what is happening in this Chamber. There is some legitimacy to their complaint. There are a lot of things that need to be changed.

I join in with my colleague from Oregon to say we ought to put a group together to try to calmly come up with changes and Senate procedure to bring us back to the stature this Chamber once had. Today, we don't have it, and we should. There are several things I would like to mention briefly.

If you are talking about denying a voice vote or a rollcall to an individual seeking a nomination, I call to mind what happened with our colleague at that time, JD Vance, the U.S. Senator from Ohio, who announced when I was chairman of the Judiciary Committee that he would no longer allow U.S. attorneys to go through the voice vote. At that point, he said they should go through the procedure we are now using for all nominees. He literally stopped the process of choosing U.S. attorneys for President Biden at 63. There are over 90 U.S. attorney positions in the United States.

So he did exactly what is being complained about by Republican Senators, saying that we can no longer use the voice vote or unanimous consent to pick U.S. attorneys.

Let the record reflect, when President Trump was in his first term, every one of his U.S. attorneys was chosen by voice vote, no record votes. Democrats were in control and gave that option to President Trump. And then Vice President Vance had an opportunity to stop it and did. He said at the time he wanted to ``grind the Department of Justice to a halt.'' I quoted that while he was standing on the floor right there. He didn't deny it. He had been quoted in the press.

When you talk about balance and fairness in reforming the Senate, it goes both ways.

Secondly, do you remember when Anton Scalia died on vacation and there was a vacancy at the U.S. Supreme Court? Do you recall what happened? That vacancy was protected by the Republican Senate leader, Senator McConnell, for 10 months so that Obama would not have an opportunity to fill that vacancy. He wanted to make certain that was done by President Trump in his next term. There is another illustration of departure from common practice and precedent for political advantage.

But the last point that I want to make is one that came by as I listened to the Senator from Arkansas come to the floor and talk about the treatment of Republicans under his experience in the Senate.

We have something in the Senate called a hold. What that means, basically, when your name makes it to the Calendar, the Executive Calendar here, which means you have gone through the background investigation at the White House, you have gone through the committee process, you have been chosen by the committee, and you come to the Calendar to be considered for a position in our Federal Government. There is still one last hurdle--not just a vote on the Senate floor, but the possibility of a hold. Individual Senators can put a hold on a nominee indefinitely.

One of the most egregious examples that has happened in modern times relates to the Senator from Arkansas. Let me read from an article by Frank Bruni in the New York Times, June 6, 2016:

In early 2014, after decades of government and nonprofit

work that reflected a passion for public service, Cassandra

Butts got a reward--or so she thought. She was nominated by

President Obama to be the next U.S. Ambassador to the

Bahamas.

It wasn't an especially high-profile gig at the crossroads

of the day's most urgent issues, but it was a longstanding

diplomatic post that needed to be filled, and she had

concrete ideas about how best to do the job.

``She was very excited,'' her sister [Deidra Abbott, told

me] said.

The Senate held a hearing on her nomination on May 2014,

and then . . . nothing. Summer came and went. So did fall. A

new year arrived, then another new year after that.

When I met her last month--

Mr. Bruni wrote--

she'd been waiting more than 820 days on the Senate Calendar

to be confirmed. She died suddenly two weeks later, still

waiting. She was 50 years old.

The delay had nothing to do with her qualifications, which

were impeccable. It had everything to do with Washington.

The woman says:

At another point Senator Tom Cotton, an Arkansas

Republican, put a hold specifically on Butts and on nominees

for ambassadorships to Sweden and Norway. He had a legitimate

gripe with the Obama administration over a Secret Service

leak of private information about a fellow member of

Congress, and he was trying to pressure Obama to take

punitive action. But that issue was unrelated to Butts and

the Bahamas.

Cotton eventually released the two other holds, but not the

one on Butts. She told me that she once went to see him

[personally] about it, and he explained that he knew that she

was a close friend of Obama's--the two first [met] . . . at

Harvard Law School . . . and that blocking her was a way to

inflict special pain on the president.

Cotton's spokeswoman did not dispute Butts'

characterization of that meeting, and stressed, in separate

emails, that Cotton had enormous respect for her and her

career.

That's Washington for you.

A hold of 820 days. A woman who waited on the calendar patiently for this ambassadorship to the Bahamas passed away from leukemia.

So, when we sit down and talk about bringing civility and common sense back to the Senate, let's bring in more than just the topic of the votes as to whether there will be record votes or whether there will be voice votes. That is an important issue, but it is not the only issue. Let us show civility, one to the other--Democrats to Republicans and Republicans to Democrats.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask for the yeas and nays.

I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Kelly), and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Welch) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego) and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Welch) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego) and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Welch) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego) and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Welch) are necessarily absent.

Mr. President, later today, the Senate will vote on the nomination of Jeanine Pirro to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. I urge my colleagues to examine this nominee's record and oppose her nomination.

I have heard some of my Republican colleagues claim that Senate Democrats are blocking U.S. attorney nominees in an unprecedented fashion. That is simply not true.

Two years ago, then-Senator Vance announced he would block all U.S. Attorney nominees in order to ``grind the [the Justice Department] to a halt.''

I went to the floor eight times seeking unanimous consent to quickly confirm the U.S. attorney nominees whom Senator Vance was blocking.

Senator Vance argued it was no problem to take rollcall votes on U.S. attorney nominees, stating that it is ``not too much to ask . . . to vote on cloture and vote on these nominees on the record.''

I have said time and again that there cannot be one set of rules for Republicans and one for Democrats. That said, I am willing to work with my Senate colleagues on a path forward.

However, President Trump is not making it easy to reach an agreement when he insists on installing MAGA loyalists as interim U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation.

U.S. attorneys are supposed to be apolitical law enforcement officials focused on protecting public safety. But shortly after her interim appointment to the District of New Jersey, Alina Habba told a news outlet that she aimed to ``turn New Jersey red.''

And just last year, John Sarcone, the interim U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York said the Democratic Party is ``evil in my opinion.''

District of Nevada interim U.S. attorney Sigal Chattah has a long trail of extreme, hateful comments. To take just a few examples, she called a Black Member of Congress a ``hood rat''; called a Black woman prosecutor ``ghetto''; called a prominent Black entertainer a ``monkey''; and said that Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, who is Black, ``should be hanging from

a f-ing crane.'' And these outrageous comments are just the tip of the iceberg.

Do these sound like apolitical prosecutors who are focused on keeping their communities safe? Notably, the White House has not even bothered to try working with home State Senators in each of these districts to find a consensus U.S. attorney candidates. Instead, the administration is trying to make an end-run around the Senate. This should be deeply troubling to all of us.

Which brings me to Ms. Pirro, the latest Trump loyalist nominated to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. For decades, Ms. Pirro has demonstrated that she prioritizes her relationship with President Trump over almost everything else.

Ms. Pirro repeated falsehoods about the 2020 election to millions of viewers, compelling Fox News to pay nearly $800 million to settle defamation claims brought by Dominion Voting Systems. For example, Ms. Pirro falsely claimed that Dominion ``started in Venezuela with Cuban money'' and that the company had a software backdoor to flip votes.

She has called January 6 rioters ``hostages'' and complained about the 22-year sentence imposed on Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, arguing that he should not be subject to such a long prison term.

Notably, a judge found that Tarrio's actions led to ``two hundred men amped up for battle encircling the Capitol.'' After his release, Tarrio posted a video of himself stalking officers who defended the Capitol on January 6.

Ms. Pirro has argued that prosecutors handling January 6 cases should be criminally prosecuted themselves. And now she is nominated to lead the office where many of these prosecutors still work, if they haven't been fired by Emil Bove already.

When I met with her last month, I asked Ms. Pirro if she always accepted assignments given to her by supervisors when she was an assistant district attorney. Unsurprisingly, she said yes.

But when I asked her whether it was appropriate to terminate prosecutors for their work on January 6 prosecutions, she wouldn't answer. She also claimed that she hadn't fired anybody.

Yet since Ms. Pirro became the interim U.S. attorney, three career prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office, including the leader of the Capitol Siege Section, were fired by DOJ. It is hard to believe that she had no knowledge of these terminations.

I am also concerned that Ms. Pirro continues to justify the Trump administration's unlawful actions.

Just days before she became the interim U.S. attorney, she argued that the administration could deport immigrants without due process, claiming that the Fifth Amendment ``says nothing about illegals, so cut the crap . . . .''

As Ms. Pirro knows full well, the Fifth Amendment applies to everyone present in the United States as it states that ``No person . . . shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.''

Ms. Pirro has proven to be a willing accomplice in weaponizing the justice system to protect President Trump's allies and go after his enemies. I urge my colleagues to oppose this nomination.

I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego) and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Welch) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego) and the Sentor from Vermont (Mr. Welch) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego) and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Welch) are necessarily absent.

I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego) and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Welch) are necessarily absent.