Floor Statements

Mr. President and to all here, I rise today to speak about the breaking news that the President has entered into a memorandum of understanding with Iran to end the war he started on February 28.

The news has included a release from the White House of a memorandum of understanding with Iran about the end to the war. We in the Senate have not been briefed on this. We have received news accounts from journalists that have the terms of the memorandum. But the White House has confirmed that those terms are accurately reported.

So I want to rise today and take some time to analyze the memorandum, what we know about it but also what we don't know about it since there are some agreements that are still needing to be forthcoming in the next 60 days.

First, I want to tell everyone how we got here. The United States and Iran have been engaged in a back-and-forth sort of war attrition against each other since about the 1950s. The sad reality is we were friends; we were allies in World War II. The Iranian people loved the United States because the United States helped guarantee their independent sovereignty and borders at a conference in Tehran that took place in the middle of World War II.

But for some reason that is just so tragic to contemplate, the United States decided to topple the democratic elected Government of Iran in 1953 and install a dictatorship over the Iranian people. That then led to intense resentment of the United States.

When the Iranian people overthrew the dictatorship in 1979, those who took control of Iran were hardliners. They hated the United States because of this 26-year dictatorship that they suffered under. And since that moment in 1979, it has been back and forth between our two nations.

Iran invaded our Embassy, violating international law, and held dozens of Americans hostage for 400-plus days. The United States funded Iraq to wage a war against Iran in which hundreds of thousands of Iranians were killed.

Iran funded proxy terror groups that bombed the U.S. Marine barracks and Embassy in Beirut, killing hundreds of Americans. The United States shot down an Iranian commercial aircraft in 1989, killing nearly 300 Iranian civilians.

The United States invaded both of Iran's next door neighbors to topple their governments. Iran then funded proxy groups to attack U.S. soldiers in their region.

We have been back and forth, the United States and Iran, sadly-- beginning as friends--since the 1953 decision of the United States to topple the Iranian Government. If more war with Iran were the answer, we would have found it a long time ago.

So I took to the floor of the Senate immediately after the President started this war to say the war was illegal because he had not consulted with Congress before waging it, the war was foolish because 25 years of war in the Middle East should have taught us something, and the war was likely to lead to very, very significant negative consequences for the United States. That has, in fact, happened. Fourteen U.S. troops have lost their lives. We have spent probably already in excess of $50 billion in taxpayer money to prosecute this war, and we have a huge bill still to pay, both to reconstitute infrastructure that Iran has attacked in the region and replenish munition stocks that have been depleted. Thousands of civilians in Iran, including schoolchildren, have been killed during this campaign.

I am very thankful that we found an off-ramp to this war. Even though the war was illegal and stupid and foolish and destructive, finding an off-ramp is a good thing. So I am happy that the administration has negotiated an end to the war, and I pray that the negotiation and the end to the war will hold.

But I want to remind everybody who is paying attention to this that there was a different path, and it was a path of diplomacy.

President Obama, in his first term--but it really began more in his second term--determined that 50 years of hostilities between the United States and Iran was just too much and we needed to find a path forward in the relationship.

We don't have a magic wand to wave to make the Iranian Government a good government, a nondictatorial government, we can't affect completely how Iran treats its people, but we can start to find some path to start building some kind of a relationship after war being a constant essentially since 1953.

And so President Obama and his team, especially Secretary of State John Kerry and Secretary of Energy Ernie Moniz, worked over the course of many years to find an Iranian nuclear deal to control Iran's nuclear ambitions.

That deal, the runup to the deal was announced in late 2013, and between 2013 and 2015, when the deal was finalized, the administration briefed us repeatedly--I am on the Foreign Relations Committee, I am on the Armed Services Committee--from the very announcement that ``we are going to try to find a deal'' to the deal being finalized 2 years later, dozens of dozens of briefings with administration officials, visits to the region to talk to nations in the region, allied nations, European nations about the deal and, finally, the deal was done.

And that deal controlled Iran's nuclear ambitions peacefully, without a single bomb being dropped, without a single school being destroyed, without a single schoolchild being killed--the United States in our best tradition. In our best tradition, we are a diplomatic nation.

Teddy Roosevelt won the Nobel Prize for helping broker the end of the Russo-Japanese war, and since then many Nobel Prizes have gone to Americans, American leaders, not just Presidents but diplomats like Ralph Bunche and others for putting the United States forward as a diplomatic nation, and that nuclear deal with Iran, though not perfect--few deals are perfect--and though not covering all aspects of Iranian bad behavior, finally, got the United States and Iran in the same room where they could communicate and hopefully find a path to get out of a state of back-and-forth war that essentially had been constant since 1953.

When Donald Trump became President in 2017, he said he wanted to destroy the Obama nuclear deal. I am convinced the President didn't understand the deal. I am convinced he wanted to destroy the deal for one reason, President Barack Obama, who is opening his Presidential library in Chicago today.

Donald Trump wanted to destroy it because President Barack Obama had done it. That was the only thing he understood about the deal, and that was all he needed to know about the deal.

And so he set out to do what no American President had ever done. The United States has never backed out of

diplomatic deals before. Other nations do, but we lead diplomatic deals; we don't shatter them.

President Trump was told by his first Secretary of Defense Gen. Jim Mattis, courageous Marine general: Don't back out of this deal. Don't back out of the deal. His own Secretary of Defense.

President Trump was told by his first Secretary of State Rex Tillerson: Don't back out of this deal. Don't back out of it. President Trump's top two National Security Advisors told him: Maintain the deal. He ignored them. He ignored them.

I visited allies throughout the region and around the world. They said this deal is working. Iran is complying with it. Iran is not magically transformed into a working democracy or a nation that respects human rights, but we have controlled their nuclear program. And we have other tools to control other aspects of their bad behavior that we are free to use. Don't get out of this deal.

But President Trump tore up the deal. He tore up the deal early into his first-term Presidency, despite all the advice that he shouldn't. Many of us in the Senate said: If you tear up this deal and make diplomacy impossible, you will make war inevitable. American troops are likely to die if you destroy diplomacy.

And that has now proven to be true. We told President Trump something else: If you take a nuclear deal that is working and tear it up, North Korea will back away from the table in nuclear negotiations because why would they agree to enter into a nuclear agreement with the United States if the United States would just walk out of a deal that was working?

And we have essentially been correct in that because there has been no meaningful forward progress on nuclear negotiations with North Korea since Donald Trump made the foolish decision to tear up that deal.

The reasons they asserted for tearing up the deal were very vague at the time: It doesn't go far enough. Obama was a disaster. The deal was a disaster.

His officials would come before the committees, and we would ask them basic questions about the deal. I remember once asking a Trump national security nominee who was trashing the deal: Have you even read the first page of this deal? Tell me what is on the first page of the deal--on the first page. The official could not.

All they knew is we have got to get rid of this because President Obama did it, and this Nation and the region have suffered as a result. And, OK, so now, now we have a new deal announced by President Trump, this memorandum of understanding.

And what I want to do for the next few minutes is compare the deal that Donald Trump tore up with the memorandum of understanding that he has just announced.

Let's start with the most important thing, what I call the forever promise. Both Presidents Obama and Trump wanted a forever promise that Iran would not get nuclear weapons. That was kind of like the headline. Other things are really important details, but both have said Iran cannot get a nuclear weapon.

Let me read from page 1 of the JCPOA, the deal that President Obama and his administration negotiated. Page 1:

Iran reaffirms that under no circumstances will Iran ever

seek, develop, or acquire any nuclear weapons.

That is a forever promise.

``[U]nder no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop, or acquire any nuclear weapons.''

Donald Trump tore up a forever promise. What is the language in the memorandum that has just been announced? It is point 8 of the memorandum.

Iran reaffirms that it shall not procure or develop nuclear

weapons.

Now, you might read these things and say: Well, they are basically the same, but notice the difference in the language.

In the JCPOA, ``[U]nder no circumstances will Iran ever seek, develop, or acquire any nuclear weapons.'' The reference is to today, but it is to the infinite future, ever, under no circumstances, any weapons. All of that language is out in point 8 in the memorandum.

Iran reaffirms it shall not [produce] or develop nuclear

weapons.

An English teacher can tell us whether those two phrases mean the same thing, but the JCPOA language talks about ``forever,'' and the Trump MOU does not.

Why did Donald Trump tear up the forever promise? Why did Donald Trump prefer going to war than getting a forever promise to avoid war and save lives and save taxpayer money?

Now, the deal and the JCPOA have other terms as well, and I want to walk through them with you. I am walking through terms.

On the left, you see the JCPOA. This is the deal that the Obama administration negotiated in 2015. And the MOU refers to the 14-point memorandum that was released yesterday by the Trump administration.

Limitation on centrifuges that used to enrich uranium: The JCPOA had significant limitations on centrifuges; the MOU has none.

Now, to be fair, the MOU says we are going to continue to negotiate for 60 days, and that period can be extended by mutual agreement, but the deal that Donald Trump tore up had limitations on centrifuges and the memorandum that he signed at Versailles yesterday does not.

How about limitations on enrichment? Centrifuges are just machines that are designed to enrich uranium, but what about actual limitations on the enrichment of uranium?

Well, the JCPOA, negotiated over the course of many years, had significant limits on Iran enriching uranium. The memorandum of understanding, who knows? There are no limits in the memorandum. There is an agreement to keep talking for the next 60 days or potentially to extend it, but as of now, this MOU contains no limitations on the enrichment of uranium.

How about limitations on research? Research into nuclear weapons is a key component of any nuclear program, to do the research to know how to convert enriched uranium into a weapon and a weapon that can be delivered via some system to impose damage on military and civilian targets.

The JCPOA that Donald Trump tore up, the forever promise that he tore up, had very significant limitations on Iran doing nuclear research. The memorandum of understanding has no limitations.

Now, it may be that there will be agreements about limitations in the next 60 days, but as of now, there are none.

How about the destruction of uranium? When the JCPOA was done, Iran had a stockpile of enriched uranium, so even if you limit enrichment, well, what do you do with the stockpile? What do you do with the stockpile of uranium that can be used for a nuclear weapon? In the JCPOA, Iran agreed to destroy its stockpile of enriched uranium, and that meant that when Donald Trump became President, Iran had precisely zero kilograms of enriched uranium.

Well, what does the memorandum that Donald Trump has put before us, that he signed at Versailles, what does it say about uranium destruction? It does not compel uranium destruction. It is not even a question mark like we don't know for the next 60 days.

What the MOU says about enriched uranium is that Iran agrees to downblend its enriched uranium. And what that means is, you take uranium that has been enriched to a high percentage of 60 percent or north that is much more able to quickly be converted into weapons grade, and then you dilute it backward, downblending it backward with the addition of nonuranium materials so that the enrichment level is lower, but they haven't agreed to destroy it. And there is a problem with that. Anybody who downblends uranium can then spin it back up to the enriched level.

And so, in this particular area, it is not even a question mark what the MOU does. What the MOU requires is not the destruction of the enriched uranium but a downblending of the uranium that can be reconstituted to weapons grade. Why would we have accepted that?

Finally, one of the most important parts of any agreement with Iran is inspections because just because somebody says they are going to do something, you don't know that they are going to do something. They might lie. And Iran has lied and Iran has cheated and other nations have, too, when it comes to their nuclear programs.

There is a famous example. The United States many, many decades ago got into a nuclear agreement with North Korea, and North Korea hid activities. And so the international agency that monitors nuclear weaponry and material around the world, the International Atomic Energy Agency based in Vienna, they had already developed an inspection protocol that North Korea was following, but they were end running it by hiding stuff. And so the IAEA had to develop something called the additional protocol that means we have to do these additional steps to make sure we catch cheating.

The JCPOA mandated the most intrusive inspections of the world for Iran--the normal protocol of inspections, but Iran also agreed in the JCPOA, as a forever promise, this did not have an expiration date on it, to allow the more intrusive inspections mandated under the additional protocol written by the IAEA, precisely to catch nations that would be prone to cheat.

Well, what about the MOU and inspections? We don't know. We are going to agree to talk for the next 60 days or maybe longer, but the MOU has no guarantee about inspecting the Iranian regime's nuclear activities, a regime that has cheated in the past and will cheat again if we don't have a significant inspection regime.

So the forever deal that Donald Trump tore up had all of these provisions in it. And by tearing up the forever promise, he put us on a path that one day was going to lead to war and the death of American troops.

And what have we gotten in return? We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know. And we will get uranium downblending, not uranium destruction.

All right. Let's keep looking at this comparison.

Sanctions--there are numerous sanctions against Iran, and there are basically three kinds of sanctions. There are sanctions that are imposed by Congress. There are sanctions that are imposed by the Executive--the President. And there are sanctions that are imposed by the United Nations, international sanctions--three kinds of sanctions.

Iran, in giving up any nuclear program, wants relief from sanctions. Those sanctions have punished the Iranian economy. And I give applause to my colleagues on both sides of the aisle. If we had not done sanctions legislation, Iran wouldn't be at the table right now. So this is something that Congress can take some credit in.

What did the JCPOA do with respect to sanctions? Under the JCPOA, Iran was relieved from nuclear sanctions with snapback upon violation. So if Iran violated any of the terms of the nuclear deal, the sanctions were still on the books, and they would snap back.

But get this. On the JCPOA, it specifically said that nonnuclear sanctions remain. They are not frozen. They are not eliminated. They are not waived. They remain in place because the United States and the international community have sanctions against Iran for its ballistic missile program and we have sanctions against Iran for gross human rights violations and we have sanctions against Iran for terrorism and funding proxies in the region.

And the JCPOA that we did in 2015 said: Listen, we will give you relief from nuclear sanctions, but we are not giving you relief from all these other sanctions. We are going to keep using them against you until you correct the other bad behavior that you are engaged in. Pretty good deal. Pretty good deal.

And that was why Secretaries Mattis and Tillerson told President Trump: Don't tear up the deal. Maintain the deal on the nuclear program and keep using--because it is working--and keep using all the sanctions against Iran for all their other bad behavior. So keep the deal and then keep the pressure on. You can do both, and you will improve Iranian behavior.

But Donald Trump tore up the forever deal. And what did we get instead in the memorandum of understanding? The point that deals with sanctions says the United States will move to terminate all sanctions: nuclear, nonnuclear, congressional, executive, international. It will get the U.N. to drop international sanctions. The MOU says the United States will not impose further sanctions, giving up so much more leverage than was given in the JCPOA.

Why would we give relief from sanctions against the missile program or against human rights abuses to get a nuclear deal? Why not just give relief from nuclear sanctions? But the MOU suggests it is complete sanctions relief for Iran.

Let's talk about some things that Iran gets in addition to sanctions relief. In a couple of these areas, the JCPOA and the MOU are somewhat the same.

How about Iranian assets? Iran has a lot of assets around the world in banks and bank accounts, and they have been frozen in connection with the sanctions policy--hundreds of billions of dollars of Iran's money that they cannot use.

Both the JCPOA and the MOU suggest that Iranian assets should be unfrozen with some time and, you know, testing along the way, but there are basically some similarities between the two agreements in the unfreezing of Iranian assets. How about Iranian oil? That is one of the main features of their economy, the sanctions of a blockade of Iran being able to sell oil.

Both the JCPOA and the memorandum have basically said Iran should be able to sell their oil. Again, this could be phased, but both are similar kind of in the concept that Iran should be able to sell oil just like the United States sells oil and other nations sell oil.

How about this little tricky issue: payments to Iran? In addition to releasing assets, which isn't really a payment--it is just letting them use their own money--in addition to oil, which is not really a payment--it is just letting them use their own oil--what about payments to Iran?

The JCPOA had a payment to Iran that many criticized heavily. It was a $1.7 billion payment. Why did the United States pay that money to Iran in the JCPOA? It was the repayment of a debt.

Iran had paid the United States for weapons right before the revolution in 1979, and the United States never delivered the weapons. And so $1.7 billion in the JCPOA was the United States paying in 2015-- repaying the debt that Iran had given us money, and we hadn't given them the weapons--with interest. And so, yes, there was a $1.7 billion repayment of the debt.

How does it compare to the MOU? Well, if you don't like $1.7 billion, I am going to tell you this: You are not going to like $300 billion. The MOU says the United States and regional partners will do a--at least--at least--$300 billion reconstruction fund in Iran to help them rebuild what we bombed since February 27.

I was here on the floor and heard a lot of my colleagues complain about this $1.7 billion repayment of a debt. I am very interested what they think about a guaranteed reparations fund whereby the United States and other nations will work to put $300 billion into rebuilding the Iranian economy.

Getting near the end here. How about this? How about the engagement of other countries in trying to craft a diplomatic deal? The JCPOA was crafted by a group called the P5+1. It was every permanent member--P5-- P for ``permanent''--every permanent member of the U.N. Security Council--and that is--let's see--France, U.K., United States, China, Russia, plus one--Germany. Germany was not a permanent member of the Security Council.

And it was the six nations, and it is an interesting six. We are not around the table much with China and Russia these days. We are often not trying to do something with them; we are often checked off against them. But on this issue, these adversaries had the same interest we had. They did not want Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

Russia borders with Iran. There has been a history of some challenges there. China wants to limit the number of nations in the nuclear club. And so they were glad to join us, and the negotiation took place with all of these allies around the table.

What about the MOU? Who was engaged as allies in the United States in negotiating this agreement? Nobody. The greatest Nation in the world with the greatest set of alliances--NATO and the Quad, AUKUS and all these nations--who did Donald Trump include in negotiating this deal? No one.

He talked to Israel about it. They are furious about the deal. He didn't talk

to our European allies. He started the war and then said: Oh, you got to help us with the strait.

You started this war without even talking to us, and now you expect us to come in?

None of our allies--and the United States is chief in the world in having the best network of alliances. Donald Trump not only wouldn't consult with Congress--and I am used to that--he wouldn't even consult with our allies, and he wouldn't even bring to the table these nations that had been our adversaries who also don't want Iran to have a nuclear weapon.

Look, if you go into a war without a plan, without a rationale, without the support of Congress, without the support of the American people, and without the support of allies, what are the odds that it is not going to go the way you want?

How about a dispute resolution mechanism? Like, you do a deal, and one side thinks the other side is cheating. Well, the JCPOA had one. All the parties to the deal could say Iran is cheating and file a complaint with the International Atomic Energy Agency that was doing the inspections, and there was a mechanism for figuring out who was cheating and who wasn't.

And so, for example, if Iran was found cheating on its nuclear obligation, say, with the destruction of enriched uranium, the sanctions could snap back, or there could be other consequences.

What about a dispute resolution under the MOU? There is none. Donald Trump was asked about this. What about a--well, we will just start dropping bombs on their heads again.

That is not a dispute resolution mechanism. That is just, like: Well, let's just go back to war--maybe more American troops at risk, maybe more damage done to the economy, maybe people paying more at the gas pump.

Hopefully in the discussions over the next 60 days, which could be extended by mutual consent, there will be a dispute resolution mechanism, but there is not one now.

What about the Strait of Hormuz? Critical chokepoint for petroleum and other aspects of the global economy. Under President Obama and under the JCPOA, the strait was never closed. They remained open to global commerce, not only for Iran, but other nations too. President Trump's war led to the closing of the Strait of Hormuz, to enormous economic damage to America and the world.

And, yes, as part of the MOU, Iran has agreed that the strait will be opened. Better that they should never have been closed than that you have to do a deal and give up a lot to get them to reopen.

Let's talk about one other thing about the Strait of Hormuz. This one was an unusual provision of the MOU: future control of the Strait of Hormuz--future control of the Strait of Hormuz.

The MOU says that Iran and Oman will administer traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, will develop a plan to do so, and the plan has to be in accord with international law.

The United States has never said that before, acknowledged the power, acknowledged the right of Iran to be the administrator of the Strait of Hormuz. The JCPOA certainly didn't recognize Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz, but the memorandum of understanding does.

And I believe that poses very, very severe risk of continued chokepoints in the strait in ways that can harm global commerce and ultimately harm American families.

All right. So that is my assessment of the comparison of the JCPOA and the MOU. The JCPOA had an ironclad forever promise about no nuclear weapons ever, not any, under any circumstances ever.

Donald Trump tore that up, and he got a watered-down promise that might also be a forever promise, but it is certainly watered down from what was in the JCPOA.

And then you see in all these areas the limitations that the JCPOA had to cement that forever promise. The MOU doesn't have it.

You see the United States giving up on sanctions for nonnuclear activity--international sanctions, congressional sanctions--and the JCPOA didn't give that up.

And you see the United States agreeing for the first time that Iran and Oman will have the right, the role, to administer traffic in the Strait of Hormuz.

So let's compare. Let's compare the forever deal that Donald Trump tore up, that led us to an illegal and foolish war, to the memorandum that he just announced yesterday.

It ain't hard. It is not hard. Giving a lot more to get a lot less, that is what the MOU is when you compare it to the forever deal that Donald Trump tore up.

One of the 14 servicemembers who died was from Virginia--Robert Marzan--who was a senior warrant officer in the Army. He was in his 50s. He was very close to retirement--Spotsylvania County, which is about an hour south of here, deployed all over the world in his role.

He died early in that attack on the position in Kuwait. Because we didn't really let allies know what we were doing, when Iran started firing at United States' positions in nations like Kuwait, we weren't ready for it. And Robert Marzan was one of the people killed right at the start of this war, right about the same time as all those schoolkids in Iran were killed, when we mistakenly bombed a school.

When you make a mistake in something like this, people lose their lives who shouldn't: troops, children, innocent bystanders. Our military is the best in the world, and when it comes to operations, they perform the best in the world. The only problem they ever get into is when they are subjected to decisions by civilian leaders who are stupid.

Most agree now that the Vietnam war was a huge disaster. It wasn't a disaster because our troops didn't do well. Our troops did great. They served honorably. But for some reason, our civilian leadership decided to take over the failed French colonial project in Southeast Asia and step into France's shoes, when we had never done that before, and inherited a war we had no business being in. I think the number of deaths in the Vietnam war was about 56,000 U.S. troops because civilian leaders made a stupid decision.

In Iraq, our troops performed bravely. They performed heroically. I was the Governor of Virginia, and I went to an awful lot of deployments and a lot of homecomings. I went to the wakes, and I went to the funerals of Virginians who were Active Duty or in the Reserves, and many were in the Virginia National Guard. They performed heroically and ably, but they were undermined by stupid decisions by a national leadership that persuaded Congress in 2002 that we needed to go to war because Iran had weapons of mass destruction when they didn't. All the after studies suggested that that intel was false. We went to war because civilian leaders sent our kids into war under false pretenses, and so many never came home. In Iraq and Afghanistan together, there were 14,000 deaths and more than 60,000 injuries--so many in Iraq. We never should have been there to begin with except leaders made horrible decisions.

I believe the history of this Iran war is going to be written, and the history is going to start with a decision to tear up a forever diplomatic deal; to walk away from diplomacy, which is something the United States never should do; that when we tore up the deal--and Iran said: Fine. We can enrich again. Fine. We can have centrifuges again, and we can have uranium again--that the tearing up of that deal was essentially lighting the spark that led to an unnecessary war and to unnecessary death.

An off ramp to an illegal and stupid war is still something to be applauded. My prayer is that this holds. As weak as it is compared to what we had and as tragic as it is that we have incurred the losses we have incurred because we decided to walk away from diplomacy, I hope it holds. I hope it holds and we put behind us needless U.S. wars in the Middle East and we invest those billions of dollars on our own people and in our own schools and in our own healthcare system instead of foolishly waging unnecessary and illegal wars far from home.

I come from the most, I think, military State in the country. We have Active Duty, Guard, Reserve, DOD civilian, DOD contractor, military families. Virginia's map is a map of American

military history: Appomattox, Yorktown, the Pentagon. We train all marine officers at Quantico. We have the biggest naval base in the world in Norfolk. The biggest military office in the world is the Pentagon in Arlington. I come from the most military State in this country. One of my kids is a marine. We are so pro-military.

But what my military families ask me is: Make sure we have the tools to do the job, but don't ask us to do a stupid job. Don't order our best and brightest--don't order our kids--to do foolish missions based on inadequate deliberation without a clear plan or rationale or without allies or without consulting with Congress and with the American public.

We will hear a lot about this deal, I am sure, in the days to come because under a bill that I authored with some colleagues back in 2015, the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, this memorandum has to be submitted to Congress for a review. So I am sure we will hear a lot more about it on the floor.

I have spent some time digging deeply back into the JCPOA--I was very involved in it at the time--and digging into this MOU, and I will just conclude with this conclusion: We gave an awful lot more to get an awful lot less than what we had and foolishly destroyed when President Trump walked out of the diplomatic deal that was working.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise to speak upon a matter that will be brought to the floor for a vote within the next hour or so. The matter is what is called a 502B resolution filed by my colleague Senator Catherine Cortez Masto, and a 502B resolution directs

the State Department to issue a human rights report on topics voted upon by the Senate.

This particular 502B resolution concerns a most serious human rights and criminal justice matter and one of the worst abuses of the Presidential pardon power in the history of the United States.

I applaud my colleague Senator Cortez Masto for leading on this bill. I am a cosponsor of the bill. I was a missionary in Honduras and lived there in 1980 and 1981, and I have a number of friends still there who feel this issue is definitely one that warrants some additional attention by our government.

And I thank Senator Cortez Masto. She will be the final speaker on this before it is called up for vote. My colleagues might remember that on March 8, 2024, former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez was convicted of three counts of drug trafficking in a case that was brought in the Southern District of New York, also convicted of weapons conspiracy, and on June 26, 2024, he was sentenced to 45 years in prison.

Now, this conviction in March of 2024 followed a long investigatory process. President Hernandez' brother Tony was earlier convicted of serious drug offenses in the United States. That investigation began when Barack Obama was President. Most of the investigation was done during the Presidency of Donald Trump, term one. It continued during the Biden Presidency, and obviously, the conviction was obtained in the last year of the Biden Presidency.

The point is, this was a very intense effort by the Department of Justice over both Democratic and Republican administrations to go after serious narcotrafficking.

What was he convicted of doing? This former Honduran President was convicted of--while he was President, he was engaged in a conspiracy to import more than 400 tons of cocaine into the United States--400 tons.

U.S. prosecutors described Hernandez as a key figure in one of the largest and most dangerous drug trafficking convictions ever prosecuted in the United States court system.

This disgraced former President even bragged about how he and his cartel friends--and this was evidence that was introduced against him at trial:

We're going to shove the drugs right up the noses of the

gringos, and they're never even going to know it.

A serious narcotrafficker who abused the public trust of his nation to flood the United States with drugs used to kill Americans.

On December 1, 2025, after less than a year, a little bit more than a year service of his 45-year sentence, President Orlando Hernandez, this disgraced drug trafficker was released from Federal prison and given a full and complete pardon by Donald Trump, our President.

We have yet to receive any public plausible explanation for the pardon. President Trump said he thought it was a setup job done by the Biden administration, even though much of the investigation was conducted by President Trump's own officials in the Department of Justice in the Southern District of New York.

I have spoken about this matter before when the pardon was undertaken. The former President Hernandez is represented by some pretty high-priced folks. There is virtually no explanation for this that makes any sense, except a corrupt one. Someone got money for this pardon.

I don't know exactly who, and I am sure it is in an account somewhere that we will never be able to find out who, but there would be no reason to pardon this individual for this serious crime unless there was some corrupt motive behind it.

Now, this particular pardon raises serious doubts and questions given that President Trump is currently claiming to be at war against narcotraffickers. We have had much debate in this Chamber about the President's actions to direct the U.S. military to target and bomb boats and kill occupants on those boats in the Caribbean and Eastern Pacific.

And at a hearing that we recently had with the Secretary of State, I asked him questions based upon my review of 46 files of the strikes, the first 46 strikes--now over 200 people have been killed in these strikes--and I asked the question why the administration did not demand evidence of the presence of narcotics on the boats that they are bombing.

That is not one of the targeting criteria. I am not allowed to describe the targeting criteria because they are classified, but I think I can discuss something that is not one of the targeting criteria. And evidence of narcotics on the boats has never been one of the targeting criteria in the strikes that have now killed more than 200 people.

But why would an administration that is bombing boats, even without evidence of narcotics, and claiming it is an effort to stop narcotrafficking--why would that administration pardon this guy--this guy--certainly, one of the most powerful and dangerous narcotraffickers ever convicted in the history of the United States? How does this make any sense?

Why is the President and this administration prioritizing Juan Orlando Hernandez over the American people?

And this is not the only example of a narcotrafficker or a drug trafficker being pardoned by the President. He pardoned a notorious drug trafficker on the first day of his Presidency. But this is the most egregious one.

Granting clemency to this narcotrafficker, after serving only 1 year out of a 45-year sentence, sends a troubling message about justice and accountability and about the fact that there are basically two systems of justice in this country--one for the well-connected, who can hire fancy folks and pay a lot of money to get out of a 45-year sentence, and everybody else.

So I call on my colleagues to stand up for what is right, to push back on this enabling of cartels, to push back on this impunity in releasing a dangerous narcotrafficker.

And I thank my colleague Senator Cortez Masto for filing this resolution and bringing it to the floor of the Senate so that all Members of the Senate can go on the record about whether they believe the law should apply to everybody or whether there are, in fact, two standards of justice for people like Juan Orlando Hernandez.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I thank you and my colleagues for being on the verge of a vote on a matter I placed before the Senate to give Senator Durbin S.J. Res. 190. I think Senator Durbin has already spoken, and I believe Senator Padilla will follow me and then we will move to the vote.

But I just want to explain why I think this is such an important matter. The resolution would repeal a regulation that the Trump administration has put in place concerning the appeal of immigration cases.

So immigration cases, as we all know, that are heard in immigration courts by administrative law judges often involve very, very momentous matters for the applicant. And, traditionally, immigration cases are able to be appealed to an appellate administrative process in case a judge gets something wrong.

And the appellate process is designed in all court systems to enable the correction of error. No judge is infallible. Judges make mistakes. Sometimes judges make mistakes because the quality of the lawyering before the judge is not that good.

But whether it is a civil matter or a criminal matter or an administrative matter, a real hallmark of the American legal system-- and I think it is something we can be proud of--is there is an appeal process to correct mistakes.

The regulation that President Trump's administration has put in place that I challenge in the resolution that will come up is a regulation that dramatically limits immigration appeals. So, for example, prior to the Trump regulation, somebody who got an immigration decision from an immigration court would have 30 days to appeal. The Trump administration regulation that I challenge has shrunk that amount of time to 10 days.

What is the problem with that? Oftentimes, the immigration judge signals a ruling but hasn't even done a written opinion within 10 days that an individual or lawyer could know whether there is a basis for appeal or not.

And so the reduction of the time to appeal to 10 days is certainly going to have the consequence--and I think it is an intentional thing-- to dramatically limit people's ability even to appeal. The absence of a record, the absence of a written decision would severely challenge somebody's ability to appeal.

In some ways, the more serious concern I have about the regulation is it also gives the immigration judges a massive ability to summarily dismiss appeals without any hearing whatsoever. So even if you file your appeal within the 10 days, the new regulation allows the immigration court to summarily dismiss those appeals 10 days later unless a majority of the appellate body wants to hear the case. And so there is almost a default that the appeals will be summarily dismissed.

And, again, if you look at the time deadline: 10 days to file the appeal and then you can summarily dismiss within 10 days. A total of 20 days. Again, you may not even have a transcribed court record from the immigration hearing or a written opinion from the immigration judge by the end of that 20-day period.

And so this is an effort to essentially make the appeals process meaningless by imposing such tight time deadlines on the filing of appeal and encouraging the dismissal of appeals on a summary basis as to render the appeals process completely unworkable.

All right. What does that mean? Let's talk about what this means to immigrants in immigration courts. And I want to use two kinds of cases that are really common in the everyday work of our immigration courts.

The first is asylum cases. The United States has had a practice--and other nations have it as well. And, again, it is a practice that I think we should feel proud of--that we will offer asylum to individuals who are able to prove that they have a well-justified fear of persecution if they return to their country of origin.

And this has been used to protect people from torture, protect people from imprisonment, protect people from death, protect people from all kinds of grievous harms in their countries of origin because they are a political opponent, because they are a member of a religious minority or an ethnic minority, because they have been subjected to domestic violence, because they have been pressed into service in the military as a child soldier in countries that force people into the military at a young age.

And the United States, along with nations around the world, has always allowed someone to come in and make this case: I will be subject to persecution--even to torture and death--if you send me home. And the United States has allowed people to make that case. And my belief is that is a good thing, not a bad thing.

Maybe the standard should be a tough standard; but if you meet that standard, you should be allowed to remain here rather than be sent back to suffer horrible consequences in the country where you come from.

Let me give you a couple of examples of this that are sort of topical and recent examples. President Trump authorized military action in Nigeria on Christmas Day to bomb certain areas and target certain groups that were persecuting Christians.

Christians being persecuted in this part of Nigeria led the President to say: This justifies use of the United States military to try to eliminate the threat whereby people practicing their Christian faith will be targeted for torture and even death.

So the President has acknowledged that this is a serious concern. And so what if somebody from Nigeria seeks asylum status in the United States and says: I am a Christian; I am being targeted because of my religion; President Trump believes this is such a serious thing that he authorized United States military action to target terrorist groups in Nigeria to protect Christians; I would like asylum status in the United States based on President Trump's recognition that I am subject to religious persecution?

If you force essentially the evisceration of an appeals process, you run the risk that individuals who are subject to persecution of this kind would be returned home and thereby face the very persecution that President Trump has spoken out against.

Here is another one: Iran. Iran's regime is one of the grossest violators of human rights on the planet to political opponents, to religious minorities.

There are Iranians in the United States right now who have active asylum cases and are attempting to demonstrate: Please don't send me back there. The work that I have done in Iran against the regime will immediately get me imprisoned or worse, should I be sent home.

And so if you are going to have a protection for asylees, if you are going to say: We don't want to send people back to a place where they are going to be tortured or killed for an illegitimate reason--you shouldn't turn the immigration appeals process into essentially a worthless process that does not provide protection for people who have a high risk of suffering if we make a mistake in an immigration case.

So that is one kind of case, and it is an asylum case. It is a standard, everyday case in our immigration courts. And I think there is a pretty strong motive that we not make mistakes in these cases but we get them right. And an appeals process that is substantive and significant increases the chance that we will make the right decision, and eliminating the appeals process or

dramatically reducing it increases the chance that we will make a mistake.

The second kind of case that is also just the everyday case: whether somebody, because of their immigration status, will be deported. Those cases are happening as we are speaking right now in immigration courts all over the country. Now, the cases tend to turn on a legal question about somebody's immigration status and whether they are subject to deportation because of their status.

At the base of this case there is a legal issue, but in most of these cases the real issue is family separation: Will we separate children who were born in the United States from parents who came here in an undocumented status?

Almost all of these cases about deportation involve families, and almost all of them involve families that have mixed status. Some might be U.S. citizens. Some might be green card holders who are seeking to be citizens. Some might have humanitarian parole. Some might be special immigrant visa status. And some are undocumented.

And so while a case at an immigration court might seem like it is about a code provision, the human issue in the case is whether we maintain a family together or whether we force a family to separate, and there is not a more significant issue ever litigated in any court in this country than that.

My wife Anne--and I talk about her probably too much on the Senate floor because I am so proud of her, but one of the chapters of her professional life was she was a juvenile court judge in the Richmond Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court for 9 years, and for the last 3 years she was the chief judge of the court.

Now, the work--I know the Presiding Officer knows this--of a juvenile court judge is really tough because you are dealing with the worst things that people do to each other. You are dealing with child abuse cases. You are dealing with kids who are the victims of horrible crimes and, sadly, kids who commit horrible crimes. The number of times my wife had to preside over murder cases--again, somebody murdered or a young person who commits a murder--grim, grim stories, and she would come home in a bad mood because of that case.

But the worst cases my wife ever had to preside over were not the murder cases. They were not the child abuse cases. My wife said the hardest cases for a juvenile and domestic relations court are cases involving the termination of parental rights. A parent has had a child. That parent might have been sentenced to prison. The parent might have an addiction issue. The parent might have had neglect issues or might have had serial abuse. Maybe the parent did a whole lot of bad things to this child. And now there is a legal proceeding before the juvenile and domestic relations court: Will the parent's right be terminated forever? I mean, it is a forever decision. It is a decision about family separation.

And my wife would come home from those cases and say: These cases are tougher than the murder cases. They are tougher than the child abuse cases. When you are sitting as a judge and you are looking across the dais at somebody and the question that you have to decide is, Will I terminate this mother, terminate this father's right to be the parent of this child forever, those were the toughest cases--the toughest cases.

That is what these immigration cases are. They are cases about a provision of the Immigration Code, but the consequence is family separation. In the instance of a deportation, it might be family separation forever.

My wife would say, though: I hate these cases, but thank God there is an appeal.

In the Virginia system, a decision about a termination of parental rights could be appealed up to the circuit court.

And she used to say: I am a smart judge. I listen real carefully. I try to decide right. But I am not an infallible one. I might make a mistake. And the fact that there is an appeal that is essentially an appeal of right--that the individual can immediately file an appeal-- and that appeal has to be heard in the circuit court, that gave her a little bit of comfort that, if I make a mistake, there can be somebody who can correct the mistake and not terminate somebody's rights to be a parent for the rest of their life over their own child.

That is what these immigration cases are. In fact, I think even a higher percentage than dealing with asylum status are cases about deportation of people over their legal status. And in almost every one of those cases, it is really a case, at root, about family separation.

And it just strikes me that when the stakes are that high--and if we acknowledge our own fallibility as legislators and as judges--having an appeals process that is meaningful isn't a bad thing. It is not something we should try to eliminate; it is something we should actually celebrate and say it is a hallmark of our system.

And so, for that reason, following my colleague Senator Padilla, who I know is going to come and speak on this matter, I will call up, at the appropriate time, this resolution and ask my colleagues to stand for the broader proposition that our justice system in this country is not perfect, and it is never going to be, but because it is not perfect and because we are not perfect, we have an appellate process that provides some kind of a check against mistakes, and that is something to celebrate, not to eliminate. And that is the purpose for the bill that I will bring before the body following Senator Padilla's comments.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague from Illinois so much, who has been such a great champion on these issues, and I now move to proceed to Calendar item No. 425, S.J. Res. 190.

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

Madam President, I rise to speak, along with my colleagues, on the War Powers Resolution, followed by Senator Warnock, that will be called up soon.

I have spoken on this topic often, about once a week, since the war against Iran began at the end of February, sometimes speaking on behalf of my own resolutions and sometimes speaking on behalf of the resolutions of colleagues. I am very happy that Senator Warnock's resolution will be called up today. I believe he will be the last speaker before we begin voting.

And you have heard from other colleagues. I won't belabor a point that I have made often on the floor, but I do want to talk about this particular moment in time.

I do believe this war is illegal because it has not been authorized by Congress. I believe the war is unwise because we had a diplomatic deal that was controlling Iran's nuclear program that President Trump tore up. And thus, this is a war that was not necessary if the United States had done what we normally do and preferred diplomacy to war.

I believe these 14 troops would not have been killed. I believe we wouldn't have spent tens of billions of dollars pursuing an unnecessary war with an additional pricetag of probably hundreds of billions of dollars to replenish our munitions stock and repair infrastructure that has been damaged.

And I also believe that Americans would not have had to pay more than $50 billion extra at the gas pump since the war began on February 28. Those are arguments I have made often on the floor that I don't intend to repeat today.

But the argument that I want to make today is about why this timing for the War Powers Resolution is sort of propitious, why this timing makes this vote different than the vote that we had 2 weeks or 4 weeks ago or 8 weeks ago.

We are in day 100-plus of this war, but I am happy that President Trump has announced a cease-fire and a potential deal to be signed and revealed on Friday. Now, I don't know exactly what is in the deal, but I believe an off-ramp to a war that never should have been started is a good thing.

We will have the opportunity to debate the deal once we know more details about it, but taking an off-ramp to a war that should never have been started is a positive.

What this off-ramp means is, I would say, we are in an intermission. We don't exactly know what the second

act will be. We don't know if the intermission will hold. We don't know if the parties will comply with their obligations.

We are hearing that the deal may well be a partial deal that would, for example, reopen the Strait of Hormuz and end the blockade on Iranian ports and stop the back-and-forth bombardment between the United States and Iran and other actors in the region.

But we are also being told there will be some components to the deal that will not be done, and then we will enter into a longer term discussion, for example, about all of the important details regarding Iran's nuclear program.

So let's just say we are in an intermission, and we don't know how long the intermission will be. I think the fact that we are in an intermission is the perfect time to vote for a War Powers Resolution, specifying, we should not restart a war against Iran without the consultation with Congress that should have started before the war was begun.

Why restart a war and risk more lives of our kids? Why restart a war and risk more damage to American families and their pocketbooks? Why restart a war and risk more damage to the global economy? Why restart a war and risk more dollars coming out of the U.S. Treasury that will have to be paid by the U.S. taxpayers?

An intermission is a great time to do what we should have done before this war, which is have the consultation with Congress that the Constitution requires. Why restart a war if we haven't done our job?

There is also a second reason that is really related to the first reason that makes this a particularly propitious time to vote yes on Senator Warnock's resolution. We know that the United States and Iran are engaged in a negotiation, and they are trading proposals back and forth.

I would think that my colleagues in the Senate would want to see and understand the details of those proposals and reach their own conclusion about whether a deal is a good deal or a bad deal.

If President Trump reaches an agreement with Iran that touches upon any aspect of the Iranian nuclear program, the President is obligated to submit that to Congress under a bill that I offered many years ago, the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, and Congress would have a chance to look at any deal dealing with Iran's nuclear program in deciding whether it was a good deal or a bad deal.

But what if President Trump decides: I am not entering into a deal because I think it is a bad deal, and we need to go back to war? Should we allow President Trump the unilateral ability to make a decision that a deal is a bad deal, and we need to go back to war?

Under the INARA act, the President has to submit any proposed deal to Congress, but he doesn't have to submit his refusal to enter into a deal to Congress. We might have our own judgment about whether a deal was good enough or insufficient.

I mean, I could foresee a circumstance where President Trump might say: We have had this negotiation. Iran has not made enough commitments. So we are not going to agree, and we are going to end the intermission and go back to war.

But the Senate might have a different opinion. We might look at a deal that the President doesn't find sufficient and say: It is not perfect. We wish it were better. But it is far superior to going back to war and risking the lives of more of our troops or spending tens of billions of dollars.

And the only way that we can guarantee that we would have an opportunity to weigh in on whether a deal--hey, it, actually, though not perfect, is better than going back to war--is if we pass a resolution, saying: You cannot restart this war without getting congressional approval.

I have listened very carefully to my colleagues who have been voting against the War Powers Resolutions. They have all kinds of reasons. I don't question their reasons.

Some believe, for example, that the President has unilateral ability to wage military action for about 60 days pursuant to the War Powers Act. And so, some were voting against War Powers Resolutions during the first 60 days. But I think at least four have joined and now decided to vote for War Powers Resolutions since day 60 passed.

But I have also heard some colleagues say, sincerely: I don't want to vote for a War Powers Resolution while the United States is engaged in military action against Iran because it might be sending a message to troops that they are not being supported. And even though they are troubled by the war and even though they are troubled about being after day 60, they don't want to send a message that would undercut U.S. troops that are engaged in military action at the very moment.

OK. If that is the case--and I understand that argument, I understand it--then this would be a time when we are in the intermission where you could vote for a War Powers Resolution without undercutting any action that is currently underway involving U.S. troops.

So my hope is that my colleagues will take advantage of the fact that we are in this intermission, an intermission of undetermined length, to do what the Constitution demands that we do and insist that we not restart a damaging war against Iran without Congress weighing in and voting on it.

For that reason, I will support Senator Warnock's resolution and encourage my colleagues to do the same.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I oppose S. 2 and believe it reflects profoundly misplaced priorities for America. Accordingly, it is my intention to make the following motions to commit the bill:

A motion to commit the bill to the Committee on the

Judiciary with instructions to report back to the Senate with

provisions that require the Office on Violence Against Women

of the Department of Justice to distribute grant funds from

fiscal year 2025 that have yet to be disbursed.

A motion to commit the bill to the Committee on the

Judiciary with instructions to report back with provisions

that would prohibit officers and agents of U.S. Immigration

and Customs Enforcement and U.S. Customs and Border

Protection from entering any home without a warrant issued by

a court created under article III of the Constitution of the

United States.

A motion to commit the bill to the Committee on Finance

with instructions to report back with changes that would

lower the cost of prescription drugs.

A motion to commit the bill to the Committee on Finance

with instructions to report back with changes that would

require the executive branch to provide automatic and full

refunds of all tariffs held illegal by the Supreme Court on

February 20, 2026.

Mr. President, I rise today to honor the life, legacy, and distinguished military service of 1SG Charlie Bryant, Jr., a 34-year veteran of the U.S. Army and the New York Army National Guard, who passed away on March 18, 2026, at the age of 85.

Charlie was born on December 31, 1940, in Lumpkin, GA, to the late Sarah Rodgers and Charlie Bryant, Sr. At the age of two, he moved with his mother to the Bronx, NY, where he was raised. At Samuel Gompers High School, Charlie was an avid member of the school's swim team, and that love of the water would lead him to serve as a lifeguard at the YMCA. In 1959, at Edgecombe Park in the Sugar Hill neighborhood of Harlem, a chance meeting brought him face to face with Barbara Porter, the love of his life and his partner of the next 63 years.

Answering his Nation's call, Charlie enlisted in the U.S. Army and rose to the rank of specialist. He reenlisted in 1964 and joined the 82nd Airborne Signal Battalion, serving during the Cuban Missile Crisis and seeing combat in the Dominican Republic, for which he earned the Armed Forces Expeditionary Medal. Charlie was honorably discharged from Active Duty in 1965. In 1968, he returned to the uniform as a member of the New York State National Guard's 719th Transportation Unit, assigned to the historic 369th--the legendary ``Harlem Hellfighters''--where he served with distinction as platoon sergeant. In 1991, at the age of 50, Charlie was activated for Operation Desert Storm and served nearly a year in combat operations during the Gulf War. After 34 years of honorable service to our country, he retired in 1992 as first sergeant of the 1569th.

Between tours of duty, Charlie served the people of New York City as a dedicated bus operator for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority from 1967 until 1992--a quiet, daily service to his community that ran in parallel to his service in uniform. He and Barbara were united in marriage on March 10, 1963, and raised three children together: Charlene Lynette, Charles Winford, and Christopher Eric. In 1998, Charlie and Barbara relocated to Suffolk, VA, where they would make their home for the remainder of his life.

A lifelong devotee of Mopar muscle cars--beginning with the 1968 440 Dodge Charger R/T that sparked a decades-long passion--and a loyal companion to his dogs BA, Harley, Max, Smokey, and Bandit, Charlie brought warmth, humor, and a steady presence to every room he entered. Affectionately known as ``Uncle Charlie,'' he was a guiding presence and father figure to countless young people he considered his adopted

children, including his beloved godchildren Letta Porter, Tratia Wilson, and Jasmine Purkett.

Charlie is survived by his beloved wife of 63 years, Barbara; his children Charlene, Charles, and Christopher; his aunt Dorothy Wilson; his devoted godchildren; and a host of relatives, neighbors, fellow servicemembers, and friends whose lives he shaped.

First Sergeant Charlie Bryant, Jr., leaves behind a legacy of service, strength, love, and dedication to his country, to his family, and to every young person fortunate enough to have been welcomed into his orbit. I ask my colleagues to join me in honoring his memory and in extending our deepest condolences to his wife Barbara, to his children, and to all who loved him. May he rest in peace.

Mr. President, as we celebrate our Nation's 250th anniversary, I would like to recognize the Virginia American Revolution 250th Commission, which was formed to celebrate the Commonwealth's contribution to the Nation upon the 250th anniversary of its independence from Great Britain, and the VA 250 Car Project, which is part of a national motorsports celebration in honor of the United States of America's semiquincentennial.

The Virginia American Revolution 250th Commission is chaired by Delegate Terry Austin of Botetourt County, VA. Danny Turner, former mayor of Martinsville, VA, Joey Arrington of Henry County, VA, and former Congressman Virgil Goode of Rocky Mounty, VA, devised the VA 250 Car Project.

Additionally, on March 23, 2026, the car known as the ``Martinsville Missile'' broke the land speed record for stock cars at the Launch and Land facility in Cape Canaveral, FL. The top was 253.1 mph, breaking the former record of 244.9 mph set back in 2007. The ``Martinsville Missile'' is a 1969 Dodge Daytona Charger with a 358-cubic-inch engine generating over 1,000 horsepower at 9,500 rpm. The car and engine were built by Joey Arrington in Martinsville, VA. The car was driven by Tommy Hurley of Ridgeway, VA.

I salute this thrilling record, the driver who set it, the long tradition of motorsports in Virginia, and the deep contributions of Virginia to America's history.

Mr. President, I am so pleased to be with my colleague Senator Warner to talk about Gerry Connolly prior to offering a unanimous consent motion on this bill.

If you met Gerry once, you would remember a very, very fun and colorful guy. He studied for the priesthood to be a Maryknoll priest and then left the priesthood to marry his wife ``Smitty'' who studied to be a nun and then left her order.

His first job after he left the seminary was a staffer on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and then he went onto this wonderful career, as Mark described, on the Fairfax Board of Supervisors before eventually becoming chairman of that board and then coming to Congress.

Gerry personified a pride in Irish Catholicism. As Mark said, his St. Patrick's Day parties were absolutely legendary in Virginia, and he was a tireless advocate for so many.

The point that Mark made about esophageal cancer and its effect and its growing effect in this country is important to underline. This was the condition that claimed Gerry's life, but how powerful not even 2 days before died, he was trying to advance our understanding of this.

Esophageal cancer is the fastest growing cancer among men in the United States. We are not exactly sure why, but we can get more data and do more analysis of this and then provide options for care should this resolution pass.

That is why I am so glad to stand with my friend Senator Warner to honor a great public servant, a great American Gerry Connolly.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I rise to discuss a CRA resolution that we will be voting on soon, and it is a CRA resolution to challenge a regulation of the Trump administration concerning the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program.

The Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program is a venerable and bipartisan program that was first included in the College Cost Reduction Act of 2007, supported in a very bipartisan way during the Presidency of President George W. Bush.

The conference report including this program passed the Senate with a 79-to-12 vote, and many of my Republican colleagues, for example, who were there at the time--Senators Grassley, Barrasso, Collins, Murkowski--are still here in the Chamber strongly supporting this program. It has been very bipartisan.

The program is pretty straightforward. It does what it says. It provides loan forgiveness for college and even some graduate loans for students who decide to go into public service careers. The longer you stay in that career, the more you get your loan forgiven. So it was bipartisan recognition that we want people to pursue public service careers.

The administration of public service loan forgiveness was put in the Department of Education, and during the first Trump administration, his first Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, and officials at the Department dramatically reduced the number of public service loans they would forgive. At one point, Secretary DeVos made a comment along the lines of, why is it important to go into public service rather than go into the private sector? They were not approving the forgiveness of loans for those who had gone into public service careers because they didn't fundamentally believe in the program that Congress had in a bipartisan way put into law.

President Biden restored the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program to what it was intended and forgave the loans of many people who are pursuing public service careers.

Just, you know, doing what Senators do, what the Presiding Officer and I do, traveling around the State, it has been pretty heartening to meet people and be told, the forgiveness of my student loan at age 35 or at age 45 after a long career as a teacher or another public service or healthcare professional has meant so much to my family and so much to my ability to move ahead.

So that is what the program is--an important one, a bipartisan one, still in law.

The Trump administration has decided--in the midst of dismantling the Department of Education--Secretary McMahon and the President have said they want to dismantle the entire Department. And they are taking pieces of it--career and technical education, for example--and trying to give it to the Department of Labor, which doesn't even want it and isn't really suited to managing it.

Or they are taking the administration of student loans and trying to hand it first to the Small Business Administration, who didn't want to administer it, and then maybe to the Department of Treasury.

In the midst of dismantling or handing off or divesting many programs, the Department has also decided it wants to go after Public Service Loan Forgiveness. But they are doing it in a fairly pernicious way that has earned the objection, not only of folks on my side of the aisle but also the objection of groups like the Cato Institute that are traditionally conservative policy organizations.

What is the regulation that we are challenging? The Trump administration proposes to allow the Secretary--in this case, Secretary McMahon--to individually determine whether or not an individual's job is, in fact, public service and to make that determination based on the Secretary's view of the political viewpoint of the organization for which the individual works and whether that organization is doing something that the administration doesn't like.

Now, this is a pretty dramatic and radical power to put in the hands of the Secretary of Education. Imagine if there was a Democratic President and we said we would give to the Democratic Secretary of Education the ability to determine whether or not a particular student or particular public service worker would receive loan forgiveness after they have chosen their profession to go into.

Now the administration has sort of marketed this as: We don't want to consider for public service jobs that may be doing things that are illegal.

So they said, for example: We would not want to forgive the loan of a person working for an organization that aids and abets people who are here without legal immigration status.

Well, I will give you an example. Public school systems in the United States are required to serve all who register, regardless of immigration status, pursuant to a Supreme Court decision that is about 50 years old. A teacher who works in one of those schools is assisting an undocumented person, a young student who is required by law to serve.

Is that teacher, because the teacher teaches English as a second language or the teacher teaches in a school and offers services to students who do not have lawful immigration status--is that abetting illegal immigration?

The Trump-era regulation would allow the Secretary of Education to say: Yeah, you don't get your loan forgiven because of the particular students you work with because of the particular class you teach-- English is a second language class--because of the percentage of your students who might be here without legal documentation.

So get this. The teacher is required to offer services to those students by a binding Supreme Court precedent, but the Trump-era regulation could allow the Secretary of Education to take that teacher, who has been in that classroom for 10 years or 20 years, and suddenly say: But you don't get Public Service Loan Forgiveness, and the regulation vests that sole decisionmaking authority in the hands of the Secretary of Education.

Give you another example. Part of the healthcare safety net in this country is free clinics. Free clinics provide medical services through physicians and other allied health professionals to all comers, and they generally don't inquire about someone's immigration status.

We need healthcare workers, nurses, doctors, and others to work in free clinics. Someone could say to one of these healthcare professionals, who don't make great salaries in these institutions: Wait a minute. Your clinic provides services to people who are not here with legal documented status. Therefore, we are not going to forgive your loan.

After you have chosen a path and done a job and done it for years and now you feel like you are entitled to have your loans forgiven, suddenly the Secretary of Education could just say: We don't want to forgive your loan.

There is another provision in the regulation that I found challenging. It said loans could not be forgiven for any

organization that illegally discriminates. Now, I am against illegal discrimination, and I know every Member of this body is against illegal discrimination.

But the Trump administration has been pushing universities and threatening to cut off their funding if they have diversity programs, arguing that those programs are illegal discrimination, without any court ruling saying that they are illegal discrimination, without other legal justification for their illegal discrimination.

And they have even gone so far as to pressure the president of my flagship university, the University of Virginia, to resign because of diversity programming on the campus. And they threatened to force out the president of another university in Virginia, George Mason University--that president refused to resign--because of the completely unsubstantiated allegation that diversity programming on campus is illegal discrimination.

Now the Trump administration has not been able to get a court to say this is illegal discrimination, but they are forcing universities to even push for the firing of the presidents on their view that diversity programming is illegal discrimination.

So say you have worked and now you are a faculty member or say you have worked and now you work at the university health clinic or say you have worked and now you work for a university custodial service or the university campus police--and you are providing a public service in that way--but the Secretary of Education says: Yeah, but I don't like George Mason's diversity programming. I don't like UVA's diversity programming. So because I don't like the institution you work for, I am going to deny you Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

The administration says it wants to go against those who might be working for sanctuary jurisdictions. This is not a label that I have a lot of firsthand experience with in Virginia because I don't believe there are any sanctuary jurisdictions in Virginia, but there are communities in the United States that have declared themselves sanctuary jurisdictions. There are cities and counties. I don't believe any States have.

So what if you are a hardworking police officer and you had a career for a community and after a city council election, there is a new city council that suddenly says we want to be a sanctuary jurisdiction?

The Secretary of Education could say to the hardworking police officer, the hardworking firefighter, the hardworking teacher in the public school system: I don't like what your city council did. Therefore, you are not entitled to Public Service Loan Forgiveness.

I think the idea of politicizing this and giving the Secretary the power to deprive individuals of something they should be entitled to by statute is very, very dangerous.

Let me read some concerns that we have heard expressed. Here was a comment that was made against the Trump regulation from someone in Pennsylvania: My husband's military service is qualifying employment for Public Service Loan Forgiveness. The promise of PSLF was, and continues to be, a significant factor in our family's long-term financial planning, helping to make the sacrifices inherent in military service more manageable. We planned our financial future with the understanding that this program exists. To have the rules change significantly or become even more complex would feel like having the rug pulled out from under us. Military life already presents unique challenges for tracking payments and certifications through the frequent moves and deployments.

Streamlining must mean making PSLF more transparent, reliable, and truly manageable for servicemembers and their families with clear communication and accurate tracking. Putting the rules about PSLF up to the determination in each individual case of the Secretary worries a family like this.

Here is another comment submitted for the Record in response to this regulation: PSLF is a critical background to current military readiness directly because of medical services. We are only able to partially fund training of required doctors. We only pay them 20 to 50 percent of what they can make in the private sector. We retain them because of their deep patriotism and the ability to make it make sense by having PSLF after 10 years of public service.

All of these medical specialists and their families give up many other things in service of our troops, dependents, and country. They are not seeking to rob an education from a high-dollar school. They are accepting the lowest-paid medical job because of their passion for the military.

Taking away PSLF for military members or those providers who serve them just makes the sacrifices they make so much more difficult.

And here is a submission from a citizen in Alabama who commented on the proposed regulation: As a physician in Birmingham, AL, I am writing to urge you to protect the PSLF program and income-driven repayment plans. We have many poor and underserved patients in America, and many of these patients are treated by nonprofits who help cover the cost of their care. Without PSLF, physicians are incentivized to, instead, find the highest-paying job or even leave direct patient care in order to find more lucrative positions in the insurance industry or consulting.

PSLF has helped me maintain my values and seek out a job in a nonprofit, serving patients who need them most. Please maintain this program to allow physicians like me to serve their patients.

These are the kinds of concerns people have--hardworking public servants--who would be entitled to loan forgiveness under the bipartisan program that was enacted in 2007.

And my argument to my colleagues is giving this Secretary of Education--or any Secretary of Education, including under a Democratic administration--the ability to cherry-pick this person and that person and say: No, I don't consider you worthy of loan forgiveness because I don't like the politics of the city you live in, the State you live in, or the organization you work for, is a very serious danger.

And I will conclude and just give a related example that is very, very recent of how giving a Cabinet Secretary this power is likely to lead to abuses, and it is related to education. It is not Public Service Loan Forgiveness, but it is related.

In early March, Secretary Hegseth the Secretary of the Department of Defense said that 13 universities in the United States would no longer be eligible to have senior service corps fellowships, and that is senior members of the military assigned to fellowships at the university.

One of the universities was William & Mary in Virginia, the College of William & Mary. And the reason cited for removing the eligibility of these 13 universities was the Secretary decided on his own--as this regulation would allow Secretary McMahon to make this decision on her own--Secretary Hegseth said that William & Mary and the other 13 universities were woke and weak. Because of wokeness and weakness, no longer will we allow senior military service to get fellowships at these universities.

Woke and weak.

We just had an Armed Services Committee hearing. I got to ask the key Pentagon official at the Pentagon: What is woke and weak about the College of William & Mary? It is the Nation's oldest public university. It educated Thomas Jefferson. Its most--one of its most recent chancellors--who is kind of the titular head of the university--was Bob Gates, who was Secretary of Defense under Republican administration. But according to Pete Hegseth, it is woke and weak.

Three weeks after this declaration was made that William & Mary was woke and weak and, thus, could not sponsor senior service corps fellowships, militaryfriendly.com ruled--awarded William & Mary the label as the most military- and veteran-friendly university in the United States. And that was based on data--1,600 students at William & Mary who are active or a veteran--an active ROTC program in the Army; an active ROTC program in the Navy; a clinic at the law school, the Lewis Puller clinic, where law students help veterans access VA benefits; a unique program in the school of education at William & Mary that--it might be unique in the country--that trains individuals to provide counseling to members of the military and their families.

The same publication militaryfriendly.com said that the MBA program at the College of William & Mary was the best MBA program in the country for military members and veterans. And yet a Cabinet member said that is woke and weak.

And so you could easily imagine people who are serving veterans at William & Mary in the veterans clinic, people who are providing counseling training in the counseling center, working other programs, who themselves might feel like they qualified for Public Service Loan Forgiveness--but now the Secretary of Defense has said the whole institution is woke and weak--you could easily see them because of that capricious and arbitrary label, which is against all evidence, you could see them deprived of the opportunity to have their loans forgiven.

This regulation just puts too much power in the unaccountable hands of a single person. We should not allow it to happen under either a Democratic or a Republican administration. For that reason, I will bring this motion to the floor presently.

Mr. President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 402, S.J. Res. 182.

Mr. President, I rise to talk about the next vote the Senate will have on a War Powers Resolution, and this will be the eighth such vote. I want to dig into the topic for a minute why this vote is different than the earlier seven. Before I do, let me just kind of dig into the procedural nature of this vote.

War Powers Resolutions, like other Senate legislation, get referred to a committee--in this case, the committee of jurisdiction is the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which I am a member.

The committee does not have to take up legislation, and it is often the case--and I have often filed legislation that has never been taken up, not just by SFRC but other committees as well. If there is not a critical mass, it may not be taken up.

In matters of war, the drafters of the War Powers Resolution deemed the topic so important that they created a proceeding by which a single Senator could ask that the committee be discharged from consideration of the bill and the bill be reported out of the committee without a recommendation for actual consideration on the floor.

And so War Powers Resolutions in the instance of hostilities that have not been authorized by Congress, a Senator can file a resolution, a certain number of days elapse, and then we can come to the floor and ask for the committee to be discharged.

We have had seven earlier votes--all unsuccessful--asking that this war, which is now, I believe, on day 81, be--if a committee is not going to take it up, let's at least have the debate on the floor of the Senate that the Constitution intends.

And so the formal vote that we will have later is not a vote on the resolution itself, which says no war in Iran absent a vote of Congress, but it is a vote to discharge that resolution from the committee and allow it to be debated on the Senate floor. That is what we are voting on.

Should a matter that is in committee, that has been held in committee with no action for now 80 days during the midst of a pending war in which 14 American troops have been killed, hundreds have been injured, and we have spent north of $29 billion--if we are not going to have committee action on the bill, can we not take it up on the floor of the Senate and debate it in front of the American public?

So now to my question: Why is this vote different than the vote we had last week? And I would argue there are a couple of reasons that make this vote different and the stakes higher that should suggest a need to finally take this matter up on the Senate floor.

First, we are now well past the 60-day deadline in the War Powers Resolution that, under the view of some, provides a President the ability to unilaterally take the Nation to war without a vote of Congress. I don't read the statute that way, but a number do, and we can have a good-faith disagreement about what the statute means.

But last week was the first time we had a vote after the 60-day deadline. The clock keeps running. We are now, I believe, at day 81. We are well past the statutory time that might give a President an argument that ``I don't need to come to Congress to get a war approved.''

The fact that we are now well past that deadline--a deadline that many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle say should be an important milestone in terms of congressional review--is important.

The second thing that is important is we are in a cease-fire, but kind of a particular cease-fire right now. We are in a cease-fire where there is no active bombing, but there are still hostilities--the blockade of Iranian ports by the United States, the significant closing of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran's military action--action taken against both military ships and commercial ships. We are in a cease-fire, but we have not ended hostilities, but the cease-fire entered a new phase just within the last day or two.

As you know, President Trump indicated that he was within an hour of ordering the restart of the bombing campaign but decided that it would be a good idea to engage in discussion with regional nations about: Could there be a path forward to find a diplomatic end to the war?

And my argument, Mr. President, to you and to all of my colleagues and to the American public is this: If we are in a cease-fire where we are trying to find a diplomatic path forward, rather than precipitously start a bombing campaign again, this is exactly the time where Congress should be having a debate about the rationale for the war, the status of the war, the plans to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, what a likely diplomatic off-ramp would look like, what the costs of the war are, how much U.S. munitions have been depleted, how much U.S. military facilities have been damaged.

When we are in this cease-fire period trying to find a diplomatic off-ramp, this seems, to me, to be the perfect time for the Senate to have the deliberate discussion about the need for a war that we should have had before the war began on February 28. Let's take advantage of this moment.

One issue in particular that is important right now is that Iran is transmitting to the President of the United States proposals for a diplomatic solution. As all know, Iran presented a proposal to the United States--to President Trump that he immediately dismissed as garbage. Guess what. No one in this body or in the House has been shown what that proposal is. None of us know what was in the proposal that the President dismissed as garbage.

This body contains many Members who have served in the military. This body contains many Members who have been on the committees of jurisdiction--the Armed Services Committee, the Foreign Relations Committee, the Intel Committee--not just for years, but in some instances for decades.

I assert that in the Senate and in the House, there are many people who would have some significant expertise about analyzing a proposal from Iran and determining whether or not it had merit.

Maybe it is a hundred percent garbage. Maybe it is a good offer. Maybe it is somewhere in the middle where there are pieces of it that are good but more needs to be done. But thus far, not a single Member of the 535 public servants serving in the House or the Senate know anything about the deal that the President has thrown out, and that is a very important fact.

Do we want to let--we have let one President take us to a war that has

caused the injury and death of American troops, the spiking of gas prices, the spending of $30 billion. We have let him do that on his own. Do we want to also give him the sole ability to review a peace proposal, a diplomacy proposal, an end to the war and to make the decision on his own without any examination by this deliberative legislative body about whether the proposal is something that we can work with?

Are we so willing to let this President tell our sons and daughters: You are going back to war because I have determined that the peace proposal, the diplomacy proposal, is garbage without letting anyone in the article I branch even review it?

I think the fact that there have been peace proposals presented to the President that we have not seen is also something that is extremely important as we contemplate this War Powers Resolution.

Let's have the discussion, including analyzing proposals that have been made, so we can offer our advice to the President about whether diplomacy seems like it is realistic or doable and not have him dismiss deals out of hand without sharing the contents.

And, finally, there is one additional matter that puts this in a different light than last week. It was only last week right before the vote that some of us were informed by the White House that the White House refused to share with Congress the legal rationale for this war. Any administration that takes the Nation to war does so bound to follow the law, and any administration that takes us to war does so on the basis of a legal opinion developed by the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. And that has been the case during all of the administrations that I have served under including President Trump term 2.

The boat strikes that President Trump's administration were carrying out in the Pacific and Caribbean, the military operation in Venezuela-- they were both justified by a legal opinion.

Now, I was disappointed that the President was unwilling to make that legal opinion available to the public, but the White House did allow us--the Members of the Senate and House--to read it in a classified setting so we could at least read what the legal rationale was and reach our own conclusion about whether we thought the legal rationale made sense.

To my knowledge, in my now nearly 13 years in the Senate, this is the first instance of a President taking us into military action and refusing to show the House or Senate the legal opinion. There is a legal opinion that has been drafted to justify this war, but the administration will not let any of us--I thought it might just be me-- they turned down my request to look at the legal opinion--but I have gone to the leadership of the Armed Services Committee and the other key committees, and they haven't seen it either.

Are we really willing to go to war on the basis of a legal opinion that the administration is unwilling to even show to us who are Members of the U.S. Senate? I mean, it sort of raises the question: What are they hiding? If they feel confident about their legal rationale or about the factual assertions they would make in the legal rationale, they would be willing to show it to us--as they have with respect to other military actions as recently as the attack of Venezuela to depose the Maduro government.

So I would argue that one important feature of this motion at this time to discharge the committee would be it would force the administration to come forward and finally show us the legal rationale upon which they base this, in my view, illegal and unwise war.

So those are at least four or five reasons why this vote this week to discharge this matter from the committee and finally bring it to the floor of the Senate is different than any of the seven votes we have had before. We are well beyond day 60. We are in this fragile cease- fire. That is the perfect time to have a discussion before we start up the war again.

The President is receiving peace and diplomatic proposals that he is throwing into the trash can without sharing them with us. We might have some ideas about the merit and validity of those proposals, and we ought to be able to decide whether they have merit enough that that is the path we should take instead of sending our sons and daughters back into harm's way by reengaging in the bombing campaign.

Finally, if the administration is unwilling to share with us the legal rationale for the war, that should be a flashing red light to every Member of this body.

So, Mr. President, within a short period of time, I will come to the floor and make the motion, and we will have this vote on an eighth motion to discharge. It is my hope that it is successful and we finally move to having a debate about this most consequential war in full view of the American public.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, pursuant to 50 U.S.C. 1546a and in accordance with section 601(b) of the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act, I move to discharge the Committee on Foreign Relations from further consideration of S.J. Res. 185.

Mr. President, I know of no further debate.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I rise today to recognize the Prince William County Crisis Receiving Center Complex.

The crisis receiving center complex, CRC, and colocated community services outpatient and community-based programs opened in October 2025. The CRC supports adults and youth who are experiencing behavioral health crises and helps to reduce reliance on inpatient psychiatric hospitalization.

Referred to as the model for mental health services, the CRC is operated by Connections Health Solutions under contract with Prince William Community Services. The center utilizes a 23-hour observation model and includes an on-site crisis stabilization unit for individuals--adults and youth--requiring more intensive, short-term care. This colocation of crisis, outpatient, and community-based services in one location offers capabilities which support people when intervention is most vital, including collaboration around connections for ongoing service needs, medical assessments, withdrawal management, and the ability to safely serve individuals under temporary detention orders. It operates 24/7, every day of the year, providing responsive care and interventions.

The CRC was designed with the purpose of helping people in crisis in their most difficult and vulnerable moments and to guide them toward healing; and it is working. According to the CRC, since the complex opened, emergency department wait times in the region have decreased by 66 percent; police officer hours spent on mental health calls decreased by 900 hours after the first month; out of area transport for temporary detention orders decreased from 43 percent to 8 percent; and State hospital admissions from Prince William County have declined significantly.

I am grateful for the vision of the board of county supervisors in Prince William County. I am also grateful for those who work in the CRC and provide timely, compassionate, evidence-based behavioral health support to people in mental health crisis. I applaud their dedication to the health and well-being of their fellow Virginians.

Mr. President, I first ask unanimous consent that my legislative fellow Patrick McCormick be granted floor privileges for duration of his legislative fellowship with my office.