Floor Statements

Mr. President, I appreciate the chance to rise today to talk about a success story in Virginia and the elections last night, but I am going to take a little bit of a different tact than my colleagues, and I am not going to talk about my pride in my friends who won elections; I am instead going to talk about the turnout in the elections.

Virginia has Governor's races every 4 years. We do them in an odd- year cycle, where the Governor's race is the year following the Presidential race. This has been our practice for a very, very long time.

We can look at the turnout--although the State has grown in population, we can look at the total turnout in the Governor's race and get some sense for what is happening and how engaged our electorate is.

Virginia has had a history in the past of significant obstacles to voting.

My father-in-law fought in the submarine corps in the Pacific during World War II. He came back to the State, and the first Governor's race after he got back from World War II was in the late 1940s. He noticed that the total turnout in that race represented almost single digits in terms of the eligible voter population. Virtually nobody voted.

My father-in-law Lin, who later became Governor of Virginia, said: Wait, I was in the Pacific fighting for a democracy, and I come home to my home State, and virtually no one is even voting for Governor?

That led him to start a career in politics that eventually achieved him the distinction of being the first Republican ever popularly elected to be Governor of Virginia in 1969.

What was happening in Virginia in those days was poll taxes and literacy tests and other things that restricted people's ability to vote. We have had a remarkable transformation under both Democratic and Republican leaders that has expanded the franchise and expanded participation.

What I want to stress very clearly is voting turnout, voting participation--making it easier to participate is not a partisan thing; it helps Republicans, and it helps Democrats. You can tell that by looking at the history of gubernatorial elections and seeing what happens when turnout goes up. Sometimes it is great for Democrats; sometimes it is great for Republicans.

I will give you an example. Four years ago, in 2021, we had a race in Virginia, and Republicans swept all three statewide offices. Republicans elected Glenn Youngkin to be our Governor, and he has now served the single 4-year term that Virginia grants to Governors. We are the only State where you can't run for reelection. Virginia elected our first woman Lieutenant Governor, Republican Winsome Earle-Sears. She was also the first woman of color to hold a statewide office. And Virginia elected 4 years ago Jason Miyares--Mr. President, you and I were chatting about him earlier today--who is a Cuban-American, to be our attorney general.

Why do I bring up that election from 4 years ago? I bring it up because it was notable in that the Republicans swept, but it was notable for another reason: The turnout in that race in 2021 was 25 percent higher than the turnout 4 years previously. It was the second largest jump in turnout between any Governor's races in Virginia.

I will say with a matter of pride that the first biggest jump was between my father-in-law's two Governor's races in 1965 and 1969. He ran for Governor as a Republican in 1965 and lost. He ran for Governor as a Republican in 1969 and won. And the turnout jumped by 68 percent. Why? Because the Supreme Court struck down poll taxes and the Voting Rights Act struck down poll taxes in Federal elections. When poll taxes went away, it brought a huge surge of additional participation.

When Governor Youngkin and Winsome Earle-Sears won and Jason Miyares won in 2021, why were they able to get a 25-percent increase in voting participation in Virginia? They did it because Virginia made reforms to guarantee and expand the right to vote. We embraced mail-in voting. We embraced no-excuse absentee voting. We allowed people to vote for 45 days before election day. By doing those three things--some of which President Trump said should be banned at the national level--it helped a Republican ticket sweep all races in Virginia.

We went, by most estimates, from being one of the States that made it harder to vote--traditionally, in the 51 States plus DC, we were usually ranked about 45th in the ease of access to the ballot. We went from the bottom to the top 10, and it was good for a Republican ticket. Governor Youngkin, Lieutenant Governor Sears, and Attorney Governor Miyares won a big election with increased turnout. Expanding access to the ballot is not a partisan thing.

Last night, Democrats had a sweep. My friend Abigail Spanberger, who served in the House with a number of my Senate colleagues, was elected to be Virginia's first woman Governor. My friend Ghazala Hashmi, a State senator--actually, my State senator. She is the one I write cranky letters to when I have to write a cranky letter to an official. She was elected to be Lieutenant Governor of Virginia. And get this-- this is pretty amazing--she is the first Muslim-American woman ever elected to a statewide office anywhere in the United States. My friend Jay Jones, whom I have known since he was 11 years old, was elected to be Virginia's first African-American attorney general.

They also saw a big increase in turnout. The turnout we had last night was about 10 percent higher than the turnout we saw in 2021.

The point I just wanted to make by standing here is that my colleagues have talked about the variety of threats there may be to ballot access, whether it is forced redistrictings or whether it is President Trump saying that we should abandon vote-by-mail or make it harder for people to vote. The history of my State shows that if you make it convenient for people to vote, No. 1, more people will vote, and No. 2, that can be good for Republicans or Democrats, depending upon the political dynamic of the time and the strength of the candidates and their campaigns.

It used to be that voting and voting rights in this Chamber were pretty bipartisan. When the Voting Rights Act was passed in 1965 nationally, it wouldn't have passed without Republican votes. Yes, it was a Democratic President, L.B.J., who put it on the table, but it was Republican Senators disproportionately who carried the torch to victory on the voting rights bill in 1965, as many southern Democrats opposed that bill.

As the voting rights bill has been reauthorized over time, it was always reauthorized significantly with both Democratic and Republican votes. It has only been in the aftermath of the Shelby decision, which happened right as I came into the Senate, that voting rights have started to seem like a partisan issue, where Democrats have tried to restore some of the voting rights provisions--for example, the preclearance provisions in section 5--but have struggled to find any Republican willing to do it.

So the point that I want to make as I conclude is just that I am happy in Virginia because my friends won last night, but I am happy anytime we have elections where people really participate. Where I get really depressed about elections is when turnout is low.

Last night, we had big participation; that benefited Democrats. Four years ago, we had big participation; that benefited Republicans. The kinds of things we have done in Virginia to make elections more accessible to all are commonsense and convenient rules that I embrace at the national level and that are good for democracy--sometimes benefiting one party, sometimes benefiting another, but ultimately good for democracy and good for voters.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I rise to speak, and I thank my colleague, the lead Democratic Senator from the Finance Committee, Ron Wyden, for his passionate advocacy. And I join him in this effort to get colleagues in the Senate to vote for the resolution that will be pending before us to eliminate Donald Trump's global tariff regime announced in April.

This is a regime that, together with the other tariffs that he has announced, is leading to serious harm in Virginia, as I have laid out the last few days: higher prices, fewer jobs, and slower growth.

The IEEPA statute, as I have laid out, allows a President to declare an emergency when there is an extraordinary and unusual event posing a serious threat to American national security, foreign policy, or the economy.

What was that extraordinary and unusual event that Donald Trump used as the justification for this unilateral tax increase affecting consumers and businesses? The threat that he declared was the existence of trade deficits with many nations around the world.

Let me dig into the nonsensical nature of the President's declaration and the use of trade deficits in the way he has calculated them.

First, the President and his team imposed tariffs based upon trade deficits in goods. We don't live in the 19th century anymore. We have an economy that is not just about goods. It is about goods and services. And if you look at the actual trade figures, including both goods and services, the United States looks better positioned in virtually every country when you add in services.

Why doesn't the President be honest with the American public about the extent of these trade deficits, if they are, in fact, such an emergency?

The President has used these tariffs to impose tariffs on nations where we have trade surpluses, like Brazil. He is imposing tariffs on nations that have no trade barriers to the United States, like Israel and Singapore. And he is measuring trade deficits the wrong way, by only including goods, not services.

Second, the President has calculated these trade deficits on goods without calculating the effect of the population of the countries involved.

So let me give you an example.

The President says: If we have a trade deficit with Vietnam, they are ripping us off because they are not buying as much American stuff as we are buying Vietnamese stuff.

That is what the trade deficit in goods basically is. We are buying more of their stuff than they are buying of our stuff.

But hold on a second. Vietnam is a third the size of the United States. Vietnam is a country with per capita income much lower than American per capita income. They don't have the purchasing power that the United States does. So why is it a problem that they aren't purchasing as much American goods as we are purchasing Vietnamese goods? They are a smaller country.

It is the same with Canada, the same with Japan, the same with so many nations around the world. They are dramatically smaller than us, and so, naturally, they don't have the purchasing power that the American consumer has.

Finally, and I will conclude with a word about the House after this, the way that the President has imposed the tariffs is leading to nothing but chaos: announce tariffs on everyone; then announce that they may be suspended or delayed while I work out one-on-one deals with different nations. And I may give an exception to this country or that industry sector or that company. If you come and plead and make nice with me, I will give you an exception.

This has led to a chaotic circumstance. When the President announced the tariff rate with Korea, Toyota's stock--get this. There is going to be a tariff on Korean imports. Toyota's stock went up. Why did it go up? Because the rate that he announced was less than the tariff that is being applied to automobiles coming in from Mexico and Canada, which has a lot of the content of American automobiles.

It is a strange thing when you are cutting deals with other nations that disadvantage American production. That is what this chaotic tariff regime has done, and that is why my businesses around Virginia are telling me: We want to make investments. We want to grow, but we can't grow until we know what the rules are.

And every new announcement of a tariff or a delay or a suspension or an exception or a new deal for some other country that makes our products competitively disadvantaged slows down investment in Virginia.

The last thing I will say is this. I hope this passes as the two previous resolutions did. And if it does, it will be up to the House to take this up.

The House has done something that should really shock people in the public and in this body. This matter is privileged in the House, as it is in the Senate. If it passes, House statutes and rules suggest that it should be taken up for a vote on the floor of the House. The rule in the House was that it would need to be within the committee for 15 days and then be reported and then pending for 3 days on the floor. Action would be taken on these matters within 18 days in the House.

Guess what. The House is so afraid to vote on tariffs, they are so afraid of the effects these tariffs are having on their constituents, but equally afraid of crossing Donald Trump, that they passed a rule that said: For purposes of this and this only--this and this only--the day to day extends through the remainder of Congress.

So with the 15 days plus 3 days, it ripens in 18 days. Action must be taken in 18 days. They have defined today as a day that lasts until the end of Congress. So the matter will never ripen and be privileged in the House.

If they are that afraid of a vote on tariffs that they would resort to that kind of legislative chicanery, that should tell us something.

They need to do a discharge petition in the House, put this matter on the floor, and put every House member on record, as Senators will go on record, as to whether they are for higher prices or lower prices.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to thank my colleague from Minnesota Senator Klobuchar for her hard work on this effort and her work over many years in leading the U.S.-Canada interparliamentary dialogue. That is a dialogue that we have with some nations, nations that are longstanding allies of the United States, and I maintain that the U.S.- Canada relationship is really the model for what a relationship between two neighboring nations should be.

I primarily object to the Canada tariffs because I don't think there is an emergency that should trigger the use of this statute, but there are many other reasons I object to them, and the fracturing of this longstanding, powerful relationship is one of them.

I spoke yesterday with respect to the Brazil tariffs, and I talked about the wrecking ball that Donald Trump is

taking to the American economy. There have been three academic studies of the Virginia economy in recent months, and they were recently summarized by a publication called Cardinal News in Virginia earlier this month. The takeaway line about how Virginia is faring under Donald Trump's economic mismanagement is this: fewer jobs, higher prices, slower growth.

The firing of Federal employees, the cancellation of celebrated economic development projects, the imposition of tariffs in a chaotic on-again, off-again, pause-again, give-you-an-exception, we-will- renegotiate regime--all of these things are deeply hurting the Virginia economy, and I know my colleagues around the country are experiencing the same thing.

That economic wrecking ball composes many elements beyond the tariffs, but the tariffs are really the central item that is causing damage to our economy right now.

The tariffs that have been imposed by President Trump on Canada, like the Brazil tariffs we discussed yesterday or the ``Liberation Day'' tariffs we will talk about tomorrow, are proposed under the statute

Mr. President, I ask permission to display on my colleague's desk my office supply of ground coffee.

Mr. President, I rise to speak about a vote that we will cast in a few hours with respect to President Trump's imposition of a 50-percent tariff on all goods coming from Brazil.

President Trump's tariff regime--global tariffs, Brazilian tariffs, Canadian tariffs, tariff deals announced then paused, tariff deals negotiated, exceptions granted and, in some cases, not granted--has created huge chaos in the national economy.

Three universities looked at the Virginia economy in the last month, and a summary of those three universities' reports was published in a Virginia publication last week titled ``Virginia's GDP Growth Drops 6.2% to 1.7%.''

And the analysis of this precipitous decline--a 75-percent decline, nearly--in the Virginia GDP in the first year of Donald Trump's Presidency cited a number of factors: mass layoffs of Federal employees and contractors, cancelation of highly valued economic development projects, clawback of research funding and other programmatic funding.

But, importantly, a key component affecting the Virginia economy and the national economy right now is the President's chaotic tariff regime.

Tariffs are attacks on American consumers; tariffs are attacks on American businesses; and they are attacks that are imposed by a single person: Donald J. Trump.

In Virginia, we are seeing it nationally. We are seeing the effects of the Trump economy, and it is well-summarized in the reports I referenced: fewer jobs, jobs declining; higher prices, whether it is food, building supplies, energy, healthcare higher prices; and slower growth.

I want to talk about one aspect of this economic malpractice, the imposition of tariffs, and, in particular, the imposition of tariffs on Brazil.

The President has imposed a tariff on Brazil of 50 percent on all the products that the United States imports from Brazil. I want to get to Brazil and the tariffs and the effect it is having on American consumers in a minute, but first, what is the power that the President cites enabling him to put such a sizable tariff on Brazilian products?

What he cites is a statute called IEEPA dealing with international economic emergencies. And that is a statute that was passed by Congress, signed into law decades ago, allowing the President, under some circumstances, to take actions following the declaration of an international emergency.

What is an international emergency?

The IEEPA statute 50 U.S.C. section 1701 says that the emergency that a President must declare is ``any unusual and extraordinary threat, which has its source in whole or substantial part outside the United States''--the threat being to the ``national security foreign policy or economy of the United States, if the President declares a national emergency with respect to such threat.''

So the 50-percent tariff on all products from Brazil is justified by President Trump declaring that Brazil represents a national security threat.

The 50-percent tariff was imposed in two actions: The President imposed global tariffs on most nations in the world in April and imposed a 10-percent tariff on Brazil in that action, but then added an additional 40 percent in a ruling from the White House at the end of July, combining to be a 50-percent tariff.

Now, Mr. President, you have followed President Trump's logic on tariffs. The global tariffs that were imposed were imposed because he claims other nations are ripping America off in trade--other nations are ripping America off in trade.

They are selling us more of their stuff and not buying enough of our stuff, and the President says that is a rip-off.

I disagree with him on whether or not that is a rip-off, but you would have a hard time making a case that Brazil is ripping off the United States in trade. We have a trade surplus with Brazil. Many of the other nations that the President has imposed tariffs on, there is a trade deficit as measured by goods. The President usually doesn't look at the deficit in goods and services. If you look at both, the picture actually looks much better for the United States.

But Brazil, we have a trade surplus with Brazil of nearly $7 billion in goods and nearly $23 billion in services annually. Last year, the trade surplus we had with Brazil was $30 billion. They buy 30 billion more of our stuff than we buy of their stuff.

So that makes Brazil a very unusual--a very unusual--subject or target of a tariff regime designed to stop other nations from ripping us off.

So if that is not the emergency--if we are in trade surplus with Brazil, if that is not the emergency--why is the President declaring that there is an emergency with Brazil that warrants taxing American consumers by raising the price of any goods brought in from Brazil by 50 percent?

This has got to be the most unusual use of IEEPA in American history. It is the most extreme and illogical declaration of an emergency in American history, and that is saying a lot because President Trump declared an energy emergency on day one of his tenure, even though America was producing more energy than at any time in the history of the United States. Oil, gas, wind, solar, battery storage, we are the leaders in the world in energy production, but President Trump declared an energy emergency so he could get an E-ZPass lane around environmental regulations to oil, gas, and coal projects.

So I thought that emergency declaration was pretty extreme, but I have a more extreme one: President Trump is unhappy that Brazil is prosecuting a friend of his.

The former President of Brazil, on his way out the door, inspired a lot of people to try to protest and even overturn the peaceful transfer of power when he lost an election. So Brazil is prosecuting him under Brazilian laws. When the President heard that former President Bolsonaro was being prosecuted, he threatened 50-percent tariffs if you don't stop the Bolsonaro ``witch hunt'' trial.

How is that trial an emergency for the United States? How is that trial a threat to American national security or our economy?

The President is mad that a friend of his is being prosecuted. How is that an emergency?

We went on. As the trial got underway in the middle of July, FOX News: ``Trump calls for immediate end to `unjust' trial of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro.''

``Unjust trial.''

I don't think President Trump is a lawyer, and I know he is not a Brazilian lawyer. I doubt he has an expertise in Brazilian law. By what right would he call that trial unjust? By what right would he claim that the trial of this President for trying to inspire the overturn of power--by what right would he claim that that is an emergency for the United States?

President Trump wasn't done. By making these demands and threatening tariffs, he had his administration take another step--highly unusual: ``US sanctions Brazilian judge for prosecuting Trump ally Bolsonaro'' until the end of July.

I am threatening tariffs; I am claiming that the prosecution is unjust. The United States even used sanctions power that Donald Trump has the unilateral ability to use to sanction the judge presiding over the case.

Go back to the definition that I read you earlier.

How is a prosecution of a potential Brazilian lawbreaker an ``unusual [or] extraordinary threat . . . to the national security, foreign policy, or economy of the United States''?

I would assert, if we allow President Trump to declare this prosecution an emergency, we will have given any President a completely blank check to invent an emergency and do whatever they want and bypass Congress for doing so.

This is not an emergency, and that is why I have filed, with other Senators, a resolution to terminate President Trump's emergency.

But this isn't just about a misuse of Executive power. It has real- life consequences. Let me just bring up one that, I have to admit, I am really biased about, which is coffee.

Like a lot of people in this Chamber, I drink too much coffee. Americans drink just about more coffee per capita than any country in the world, and coffee imports are the most significant agricultural import we bring into the United States.

I lived in a great coffee-producing country when I was a missionary, in Honduras. They produce a lot of coffee. The United States doesn't produce so much. I think the President knows that in the United States the only places where coffee is grown are Hawaii and Puerto Rico. Nowhere else in the United States are there conditions that allow for the growth of coffee.

Sometimes, we put tariffs on products coming in from other nations to grow and inspire a domestic industry. If we make Brazilian steel more expensive, maybe we will make more steel in the United States.

I am here to tell you there is no amount of tariff that would turn the United States into a nation that could produce a lot of coffee. And if every bit of coffee that could be produced in Puerto Rico and Hawaii were produced, it would meet precisely 1 percent of the coffee that Americans drink.

So we bring in coffee, and our single largest source of coffee is Brazil. And 35 percent of American coffee comes from Brazil. The next source is Colombia, at 27 percent, and then other nations. Vietnam produces a good bit of coffee, and other nations in Central America produce a good bit of coffee. But the real powerhouse--and I can be sure that in my office's supply of ground coffee that we use to make coffee every morning, there is a lot of Brazilian coffee in there. The real powerhouse is Brazil.

After the President announced that he was going to do these tariffs, the news started up right away. The prediction: U.S. coffee drinkers and businesses will pay the price for Trump's Brazil tariffs.

Sometimes, the President likes to say that other nations pay them. No, this is a sales tax directly on those that consume the product, and that was the prediction.

And the prediction turned out to be true. The tariffs went into effect at the end of July. By September 12, 6 weeks later, CNN Business reported:

Coffee prices haven't surged this much in decades.

``Haven't surged this much in decades''--and the surging is very, very noticeable.

By the end of July, coffee prices kept surging, and it is likely to get worse. By the end of July--remember, at the end of July, there was only the 10 percent imposed on Brazil in April. The extra 40 percent didn't kick in until the end of July. But coffee had already surged 14 percent at the end of July, from July a year before.

I don't have the chart to show you today. The statistics just came out about September. The price of coffee, a staple in virtually every American household, has increased by 40 percent between September 2024 and September 2025. And every American experiences it at the grocery store when they are buying coffee, and every American experiences it when they are in coffee shops purchasing coffee.

I held a roundtable with small businesses in Northern Virginia, two Fridays ago, at a tea shop out near Reston called Eldon Street Tea Shop. And I had tea shops--they are getting hit by tariffs because tea comes from nations like India, China, and Vietnam. And I had coffee shops, and I had chocolate shops. All of these are products that are being imported, and they are all being dramatically affected.

And these small businesses said: If you have a chance, Senator, please do something. Please do something to stop this tariff madness.

And so that is why I am on the floor today. I have used coffee as an example because I didn't want to bring a side of beef in and put it on the desk. We get a lot of beef from Brazil. Fifty percent tariffs have dramatically driven up the price of ground beef in supermarkets all over this country.

People are paying more for coffee. They are paying more for beef. They are paying more for fruits and vegetables that come from nations that have been socked by Trump tariffs.

People are paying more for building supplies. People are paying more for energy. People are paying more for healthcare.

That is why the economist who looked at the Virginia economy said the Trump economy is one of higher prices, fewer jobs, and slower growth.

It is my hope that my colleagues will stand up for their constituents and say: Enough is enough.

No President, Democrat or Republican, should be able to declare a national emergency, justifying the imposition of 50 percent tariffs, because a friend of theirs is being prosecuted for breaking the law in another country. If this body allows that, this body will be opening the door for untold mischief committed by future Presidents who will decide: I can declare anything an emergency, and the Senate will just lay down and let me walk over them and not speak out against it.

And it also is important for us to acknowledge that this isn't just about an abuse of Presidential power. It is about abuse of Presidential power that people are feeling every time they walk down a grocery store aisle to buy coffee for their families, to buy ground beef for their families.

I hope my colleagues will join me in an effort to reverse the declaration of a national emergency and save everyday people and businesses some money.

I yield the floor.

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

Mr. President, I rise to speak about the Brazilian tariff resolution that is before the body, and I will speak briefly since I spoke about 4:30 about it.

The first point to mention is, this is a Presidential invocation of a very rare emergency power. The IEEPA statute says that it has to be an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security foreign policy or economy of the United States, and the President has to find the existence of such a threat.

What has the President said about the threat posed by Brazil? What is that threat posed to the economy, national security, or foreign policy of the United States?

The President has said it is Brazil's decision to prosecute its former President.

If you surveyed the American public and asked them about the Brazilian prosecution of former President Bolsonaro, 99 percent of the American public wouldn't even know about it.

How can this be a national emergency allowing the President to unilaterally impose a 50-percent tariff on goods from Brazil? We have a trade surplus with Brazil; $7 billion a year in goods; $23 billion in services. We have a trade surplus from Brazil.

This President has said that their prosecution of a disgraced former politician is a national emergency for the United States. How could that be?

If this is a national emergency for the United States, any President of any party could say that anything is a national emergency for the United States. So the first reason that I asked my colleagues to support this resolution is to not allow the President to end-run Congress and create a bogus emergency to unilaterally claim powers--in this case, trade powers--that are given to Congress in the Constitution.

And the second reason that I ask my colleagues to support this is that people are suffering--people are suffering. They are paying more for ground beef. A lot of ground beef comes from Brazil. They are paying more for coffee. Americans are the biggest coffee drinkers in the world. Coffee is the biggest imported product--agricultural--that we bring into this Nation.

Coffee prices have gone up by 40 percent in 1 year from the end of September of 2024 to the end of September of 2025 because of President Trump's tariffs. Thirty-five percent of our coffee comes from Brazil. Twenty-seven percent of our coffee comes from Colombia, being heavily tariffed right now. The third nation that grows coffee that comes to the United States is Vietnam, heavily affected by U.S. tariffs.

People are suffering. They are paying more for food, more for clothes, more for healthcare, more for energy, more for building supplies because of President Trump's tariff policy.

Trade is a power given to Congress in the Constitution that can be delegated to the President, but in statutes like IEEPA, we have retained the right when a President is going the wrong direction and our constituents need someone to stand up for them so they don't pay more than they should for their morning cup of coffee or the hamburger that they are having.

Congress has the power to roll that back and end these tariffs.

So for those two reasons--the fact that this is not an emergency that would have ever been within the contemplation of those who drafted this statute and the second, to save Americans some money, to save them a few bucks when they buy their cup of coffee every day--I ask for support for this resolution.

I yield the floor.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, will the Senator from Oregon yield for a question?

Mr. President, I am going to ask two questions. I am going to tell a story about something that happened recently in Virginia and ask my colleague from Oregon what he thinks about it, and then I am going to hand my colleague from Oregon a picture and ask my colleague what he thinks about it.

To begin with the story--and the story deals with a topic that may not seem that sexy or something but that I think is pretty important: U.S. attorneys and the rule of law. Virginia has two U.S. attorneys, Western District of Virginia and the Eastern District of Virginia.

And those two U.S. attorneys who were put in office by President Trump have both recently been forced out of office--forced out of office because they wouldn't engage in political persecution of Donald Trump's enemies.

Let me describe the situation to my colleague from Oregon. When the Trump administration began, the two U.S. attorneys who had been recommended by President Biden and voted on, confirmed by the Senate, both stepped down, as is the norm.

The Trump administration then elevated in the Eastern District of Virginia an individual by the name of Erik Siebert. First, the Department of Justice appointed him for 120 days, and then that was followed by an appointment by the judges of the court. But his initial appointment into the role was by the Trump administration.

Mr. Siebert began his career as a DC police officer and then served for 15 years as a prosecutor in one of the most important positions in the U.S. Attorney's Offices nationally.

Senator Warner and I interviewed candidates, and we recommended Erik Siebert to the Trump administration. So they had put him in as the interim, and then he had been confirmed as the acting. We recommended him to the Trump administration. The Trump administration nominated him, and the Judiciary Committee--in an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote--reported him to the floor of the Senate.

But before the Senate could act on that bipartisan vote by the Judiciary Committee, Erik Siebert was forced out of office, and he was forced out of office because he refused to prosecute, to indict, former FBI Director Jim Comey and New York attorney general Letitia James. He said there was no evidence to support an indictment in the case, and so this individual who had been put in office by the Trump administration was forced out.

In the Western District of Virginia--which covers more of Virginia's land mass but a smaller portion of the Virginia population--Senator Merkley, we had a process like you do in Oregon, and Senator Warner and I recommended two candidates to the White House, and one was a gentleman named Todd Gilbert. Todd Gilbert was a Republican member of our House of Delegates from Shenandoah County, VA, who was the leader of our Republican caucus in our House of Delegates, a strong supporter of President Trump, and he had even been speaker of the house when the Republicans held the majority of the Virginia General Assembly. A very solid individual, very much with Republican bone fides, and supporting President Trump.

But he applied to be the U.S. attorney. He had been a local prosecutor but also a local defense attorney. President Trump installed him as the interim and nominated him for the position.

Before the Senate Judiciary Committee could take him up, the Trump Department of Justice pressured Todd Gilbert to fire the chief deputy who had been the deputy in that office leading criminal prosecutions during multiple Presidential terms. Todd Gilbert refused to do it, and Todd Gilbert was forced to resign as a result.

Subsequent reporting by the New York Times laid out the facts that we believe to be true; that the Trump administration wanted to push out the assistant because the assistant was unwilling to issue indictments that were political in nature against Trump's political enemies and, for that reason, they pressured Todd Gilbert to fire his assistant.

Todd Gilbert, who had given up his position in the Virginia General Assembly to take this position, within a month, walked out of the U.S. Attorney's Office rather than succumb to a politically motivated firing of a long-time, dedicated prosecutor.

In two instances, the chief Federal law enforcement officials in Virginia, installed in their positions by the Trump administration, were forced to leave because they wouldn't agree to bend the knee and genuflect to a politically motivated persecution campaign.

And so my question to my colleague is, You are talking about creeping authoritarianism. What does it say when the Executive makes moves on law enforcement officials, Republican law enforcement officials, because they won't bend the knee and politically persecute people against whom there is no actionable claim?

Mr. President, might the Senator from Oregon yield for another question?

Thank you. And I will tell a quick story. In fact, I am going to hand you this picture now because my question is going to be for you to describe it. But I will tell a quick story on the authoritarianism front, and this is a very Virginia story, and then I am going to ask my colleague to describe the picture that I just handed him.

So Virginia is an unusual State. Fifty States have mottos; all States have mottos. Almost all States have mottos that are positive: ``Excelsior,'' ``Onward to the Stars Through Adversity.'' My favorite-- because it is so random--positive motto is Michigan's. It is Latin, but the translation is: If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you.

How random. I wasn't looking for a peninsula, but I would rather it be pleasant than unpleasant.

Virginia's is the only motto that is not positive. The Virginia motto was designed by the framers of the Virginia Constitution, who were meeting in Williamsburg when the Framers of the American Constitution-- not the Framers. The Declaration of Independence was being drafted and voted on in Philadelphia.

The Declaration voted on in Philadelphia, July 4, 1776. July 5, 1776, in Williamsburg, the Virginia ``B team'' that weren't in Philadelphia, they did four really cool things: They passed the first Virginia Constitution. They enacted the first Virginia bill of rights, which became a model for the national Bill of Rights. They elected Patrick Henry the first Governor.

But the fourth thing they did was they had a four-member committee appointed that spent 4 days in the library of William and Mary to design a state seal. And the State seal, which I am wearing. I wear this all the time. It is an unusual one. It is a woman amazon, representing virtue, standing atop a deposed Monarch whose crown has fallen off.

And the State motto, the only one that isn't a positive, the Virginia motto is a warning. It is a rebuke. It is Latin: ``Sic Semper Tyrannis''; thus be it always to tyrants.

And the framers picked the future verb tense. They didn't say: Down with tyrants. We don't like tyrants. We have defeated tyrants. They used the future verb tense because they believed that tyranny wasn't a form of government; it was a fact of human of nature. It was a fact of human nature that would not go away, and we would always need virtue to be able to defeat tyranny.

And so as you are talking about authoritarianism and where we are, I am just reminded of the fact that Virginians predicted in 1776 that the Nation would need to always be on guard against tyranny.

And in the formation of the Constitution--and my colleague has done a great job of looking at provisions of the Constitution--we invested a lot of power in the hands of an Executive, but then we put checks-- Congress, the courts, a free press. You shouldn't go to war without a vote of Congress. The appropriations power was for Congress, not the President. We put all these checks in place to stop the reality of tyranny.

And as we round the corner into 250 years of American democracy, we are a nation looking in the mirror and asking ourselves the question of whether we still believe in democracy over tyranny. Do we still believe it?

In 1776, 30 percent of Americans were for monarchy. When we tell the story of the Revolution, it wasn't that 100 percent of Americans believed in democracy. Thirty percent were for tyranny and monarchy. It was what they knew or they had a financial tie or a family tie to England or maybe they were worried that democracy would be too messy. It wasn't a foregone conclusion that democracy would be the choice.

Every generation has to answer the question for itself: Do we still prefer democracy over tyranny?

And as we face the 250th anniversary of the Nation's birth, we are confronted with that.

I have handed my colleague a photo. I had hoped to have it on a poster, but the photo was taken today, and I didn't have time to turn it into a poster. But I want to ask my colleague from Oregon to describe what it is you see in that photograph.

I would love to ask a followup question, if the Senator would allow.

You know what a metaphor is. A metaphor is something that not only stands for itself but it stands for something else.

As you look at that picture of the White House being demolished today, at the very time as you were standing on this floor talking about authoritarianism hurting the institutions that were put in place 250 years ago, what is your feeling about the true significance of this demolition project going on at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue?

Madam President, I would like to ask unanimous consent to just speak for a minute.

Madam President, I want to thank my colleague. Senator Young and I have worked on this for a number of years. As he mentioned, the first Gulf war started in 1991, the second Gulf war in 2002, and it was over in 2011--14 years ago.

Last week, the Pentagon issued a statement about the drawdown of U.S. troops in Iraq, and this was the statement from the Pentagon:

This reduction reflects our combined success in fighting

ISIS and marks an effort to transition to a lasting U.S.-Iraq

security partnership.

An adversary to a partner beating a sword into a plowshare.

Both Houses have voted to repeal this war, and it is time that we take this action. This will be the first congressional repeal of a war authorization since the Gulf of Tonkin in 1971.

I ask for a ``yes'' vote.

Mr. President, I ask the Chair to execute the order of September 17, 2025, with respect to S.J. Res. 71.

Mr. President, I rise to begin a discussion that we will have over the course of the next couple of hours about this Senate joint resolution--a privileged motion pending before the Senate that I filed, together with Senator Heinrich, to terminate a Presidential declaration of an energy emergency that he issued on his first day in office.

The President took a number of actions on his first day in office, and obviously the one that got the most attention was the fact of his inauguration and the celebrations about that. There were other actions that were taken--the pardon of the January 6 criminal convicts and other pardons of individuals, including one notorious drug trafficker.

But there was also an action that was taken that did not get attention immediately, but I started to pay attention to it a few days after the inauguration. That was President Trump's use of the National Emergencies Act and a related statute known as IEEPA to declare national emergencies in the United States. The IEEPA statute is broadly worded. It allows a President to declare an emergency when there is a significant and unusual challenge to the United States that stems primarily from a source outside the United States' shores.

The President has used the NEA to declare an energy emergency. He has used IEEPA to declare tariffs on virtually every nation in the world.

And he has also used the statute in other ways.

I was puzzled by the President's determination that America, in January of 2025, was in an energy emergency because I went back and checked and found that the United States, at the beginning of the Trump administration, was producing more energy than at any time in the history of the United States. Where is the emergency? We were producing more oil, gas, and coal than at any time in the history of the United States. Where is the emergency?

Even more exciting to me because of its tremendous acceleration, we were producing more alternative energy--low-carbon energy, geothermal, wind, solar--than at any time in the history of the United States.

We have seen this in Virginia. To give you an example, when I came into the Senate, Virginia was deep in the bottom half in this country in solar deployment. Now we are in the top 10. Offshore wind was nowhere in the United States. Now we are nearing completion of an offshore wind farm off the shores of Virginia Beach, VA, and we will be the leaders in the Nation and begin producing components that can help us lead in the world when it comes offshore wind.

So where is the emergency? I look through the President's declaration and can see nothing suggesting that the United States was in an energy emergency. But you declare an emergency for a reason, and the emergency was declared not because there was an emergency but because there was something the President wanted to do. As you read down in the emergency declaration, you found what the President wanted to do was allow a bypass of environmental regulations for energy projects. That is what he wanted to do, and he declared a sham emergency in order to do that.

I found it further interesting as I read--well, what is the definition of energy projects that are getting a bypass around environmental regulations? It was not all energy projects. It was oil and gas and coal but not wind, not solar, not hydropower, not geothermal.

Sometimes, I hear folks say they are for an all-of-the-above energy policy. President Trump is embracing an all-of-the-below energy policy. If it is not a fossil fuel under the Earth, it will not be prioritized by this administration.

That was the President's action on day one. There is an energy emergency, and we need an easy-pass lane for fossil fuel projects, but we are going to make it hard for alternative energy projects.

So I dusted off the statute, IEEPA, and found that a single Senator, even in the minority party, can challenge a Presidential declaration of emergency and be guaranteed a privileged vote on the Senate floor within a set period of time, a prompt vote on a simple majority that cannot be filibustered, and that is what we are doing today.

In fact, you can challenge a Presidential emergency every 6 months. I challenged the President's energy emergency with Senator Heinrich in March, and it was a partisan vote.

Democrats said: There is no such emergency; it is a sham.

Republicans said: We are sticking with President Trump.

Senator Heinrich and I issued a warning on the floor in March. We said: You are going to see higher energy costs because of what President Trump is doing, and you are going to see jobs lost because of what President Trump is doing. Energy costs will go up because the cancelation of clean energy projects will constrict the supply of energy at a time when the demand is increasing, and the natural economic reaction when you constrict supply at a time of increasing demand is that people are going to pay more for household energy.

We were not convincing then. Maybe people didn't believe that our prediction would come to pass, but 6 months later, we are renewing the challenge. We are here to say that what we said on the floor last spring has happened, and we are seeing dramatic increases in the price of energy for American consumers and businesses and the slashing of American jobs so that Donald Trump can give an easy pass to the fossil fuel industry.

It took a while for these effects to come to pass, but by the time we got to the debate over the reconciliation bill here in this body in late June and early July, it was pretty clear that the only energy emergency was our President. President Trump is the energy emergency.

We were debating the spending law, the reconciliation bill, and I am just going to go through some of the headlines.

Mr. President, my colleague from Idaho's emotional speech notwithstanding, this is not about hating a President; it is about loving a Constitution. It is about loving a Constitution.

The resolution that my colleague Senator Schiff has filed, which I gladly cosponsored, does not say there cannot be military action against terrorists or cartels or drug traffickers. It just says that the United States should not be at war without a vote of Congress, the United States should not be at war against groups on a secret list prepared by one individual who is unwilling to share it with Congress and with the American public.

My colleague said that we should put a resolution on the floor thanking the President. I have an idea for my Republican colleagues: put a resolution on the floor declaring war against narcotraffickers. Why haven't they done that? That is what the Constitution says they should do. They are so strong in their belief that we should be at war with narcotraffickers, why haven't they put a resolution before this body to say we should be at war with cartels and narcotraffickers?

There are two reasons: They know it would fail, even in a Republican Senate. And second, they are afraid to vote on that resolution because they know their constituents are tired of wars and don't want Congress declaring more wars and treating serious law enforcement problems as challenges for the U.S. military.

I strongly support the resolution my colleague has filed.

When President Trump announced in August that he might undertake this action, Senator Schiff and I conferred with other Senators. And when the first strike was taken on the 4th of September, we wrote a letter to the President, as the article I branch charged with the power of declaring war, asking him a basic series of questions: Give us the evidence that these boats were actually carrying narcotics. Give us the legal rationale for striking them without coming to Congress. If you knew where they were enough to strike them, you could have interdicted them. Why did you choose to strike them and not interdict them? We hear that drugs are now at the bottom of the sea.

If you interdict a ship and you seize drugs, you get evidence, you get individuals that you interrogate, and you build cases against the higher-ups in the narcotrafficking ring. When you destroy a boat, you don't get the evidence; you can't build the case.

And we asked: Why not interdict? Why strike rather than interdict? These were questions that Congress has a right to know the answer and the American public has a right to know the answer. And we asked the President: Give us answers to these questions in 7 days--not unreasonable.

We have yet to get answers to these questions. The administration believes it does not have to justify these actions to Congress, it does not have to tell us the evidence about the narcotics content of these boats, it does not have to give us a clear legal rationale, it does not have to explain the decision to strike rather than to interdict.

When you ask the basic questions and you are not given answers, you get suspicious that the answers are not forthcoming because there aren't good answers to the questions that we asked.

We did have a followup hearing, the Armed Services Committee, in the secure facility last week. And I can't really talk about what was said there, but I can sure talk about what wasn't said there. No answer to the question of ``Why not interdict?'' It was asked over and over and over again, and aside from asserting that ``we have the ability to do what we did,'' they could not provide an answer about interdiction.

They could not provide clear evidence that all of those boats actually had narcotics on them, even though they knew we would be asking that question.

And so, to the legal rationale, all they said was ``the President has an article II ability to undertake these actions.'' Saying ``I can do whatever I want under article II'' is not an answer, and that is no legal rationale, but it is essentially what the President is saying: I can put groups on a list--and we understand it is many groups and their affiliates--and not tell Congress and not tell the American public, and I get to make the decision about whether the Nation goes to war.

That is not what our Constitution says.

My colleague Senator Schiff is talking about the Constitution, so I won't belabor it. But there are a couple of points that I do want to stress because there is nothing more important in the Constitution than the power to declare war.

The Founders who wrote the Constitution in 1787 debated this topic extensively, and they recognized the reality in the world at the time: Decisions about war were made by the Executive, King, Monarch, Emperor, Czar, Pope. It was made by the Executive.

The Framers of the Constitution in 1787 were dealing with leadership that included the first President of the United States, George Washington, the greatest general that has ever been President of the United States. They revered George Washington.

But when they had to make a decision about who declared war, they said: Even George Washington--even George Washington--is not smart enough to carry that sole decision on his shoulders to make war. So they decided to do something almost completely contrary to the whole flow of human history, and they invested the power to declare war in the legislative branch, in Congress.

And my colleague read Madison's exchange as the principal drafter of the provision with Jefferson, many years later, about why they had done it. They wanted, with studied care, to vest the question of war in the legislative branch.

It is not only in the Constitution, it is in the Constitution for a reason. And here is the reason: A decision about war puts troops in harm's way, puts troops in a position where they may be injured or killed; they may see their best friends injured or killed; they could come home with physical injuries or mental injuries that could affect the remainder of their lives.

The Constitution of the United States, in a somewhat unique way, requires congressional approval for war

so that there is a consensus of the Nation, after a full debate in view of the American public and a vote, that the war is in the national interest.

If a President goes off unilaterally without getting Congress on board, then we are asking people to risk their lives with no national consensus that the mission is worth it. Could there be a grosser example of public immorality than to order troops into harm's way where they could be killed and their lives and their families affected for the rest of their lives without a national consensus that this is a mission worth you risking your life?

That is why that provision is so sacred in the article I branch, and that is why even George Washington was not entrusted by the Framers of the Constitution to make a decision like this on his own.

I will finish where I started. This is not about dissatisfaction with President Trump. I filed similar resolutions, as my colleague from Idaho knows, when President Obama was President. I came into the Senate in 2013 with an absolute obsession because of the military nature of my State, because one of my kids is a marine--with an absolute obsession that the Nation should never go to war--never--without a debate in Congress that the American people can see, can learn from, and a political consensus that the war is worth it.

Yes, there is an exception for defense or imminent attack. That has been understood as part of the Presidential power of Commander in Chief since the very first days of this Republic.

But even in that instance, it was foreseen that Congress would come in and have a debate and agree or not with whether they blessed the mission or not. Letting a single individual take us to war based on a secret list that he won't even reveal to the public and to Congress sets such a dangerous precedent.

And if my colleagues, as they have stated, believe we should be at war in the Caribbean or at war with nations in the Americas or with the narcotraffickers, they have had the ability the entire time to bring a resolution before us and have that debate in front of the American public. I have a feeling that debate would produce some positive votes if it were limited enough, but to allow a President to do it by secret without Congress having the guts to have the debate and vote about whether the war is worthwhile is contrary to everything this country stands for, to the oath we take.

I would urge folks to support my colleague's resolution.

Mr. President, I ask consent that we yield back all remaining time.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Shane Reader,

who is a legislative fellow in my office, to be granted floor privileges for the duration of his fellowship.

Mr. President, I rise to talk about the reality of the shutdown that we are in and the efforts underway to find a path out, which I am optimistic we can, particularly after discussions among so many colleagues of both parties today on the floor of the Senate.

This is the third time during my nearly 13 years in the Senate that I have been involved in a shutdown. The first occurred in the fall of 2013. I had been in the Senate for less than a year. Senator Cruz sort of forced us into a shutdown mode over the Affordable Care Act. Interestingly enough, many years later, that Affordable Care Act is still central to this discussion. In late 2018 and 2019, President Trump forced us into a shutdown of part of the government--the part of government dealing with the Department of Justice and other justice- related Agencies--over border wall funding.

The first shutdown lasted for about 2 weeks. The second shutdown-- again, of part of government, not all of government--lasted for about a month. And they are horrible. The consequences for those affected, whether they be Federal workers or the citizens who need services, are horrible.

No one relishes that in this body, and I am completely confident that all 100 Senators feel the same way in that this is not a good thing and that there needs to be a path forward. In Virginia, we feel it pretty strongly. We have the second-most Federal employees of any State in the country, and we have an awful lot of Federal contractors whose livelihoods are affected as well.

We have also seen in the first nearly 9 months of this calendar year other actions taken, whether it is the cancelation of research grants or the backtracking on economic development proposals or the withdrawal of $400 million from the Virginia Department of Health that was critical to our agency's ability to do contact tracing and help stop the spread of infectious disease.

So we have seen since the beginning of January a whole series of actions that have already affected Virginians pretty significantly. We had an unemployment rate that was low by national standards but went up every month for 6, 7 months in a row, largely because of these Federal layoffs. As we reach this moment, it is not a clean break or something new from what was seen earlier in the year; it is sort of a continuation of something that has been a pretty painful chapter in Virginia.

So what are we hoping for or, rather, maybe, not to put words in anybody's mouth, what am I hoping for out of this?

The House prepared a short-term continuing resolution under instructions from the President: Do not deal with Democrats. And the House, with a simple Republican majority, was able to do that and pass a bill that then came to the Senate.

Once we saw that instruction--do not deal with Democrats--Senate Democrats, under the leadership of Senator Murray, the lead Democratic appropriator, said: Well, let's prepare an alternative, not a nonnegotiable demand but an alternative.

We put that alternative on the table on September 18. We didn't wait until the 29th of September or the 30th. We felt like, to be fair to the public, to be fair to our colleagues, let's put an alternative on the table with enough time for us to kick the tires on it and have a negotiation before the deadline that we reached at midnight last night.

What is the Democratic alternative compared to the Republican alternative? Actually, much of it is the same. But I would say the two elements in the Democratic alternative that are different are two: One, protecting people's healthcare; and, second, protecting the simple notion that everybody understands that a deal is a deal.

Let me explain both of these.

On the healthcare side, the reconciliation bill that was passed in June, together with some other actions of the administration-- particularly unilateral actions of Secretary Kennedy and the President in withdrawing healthcare funds from Virginia and unilateral actions thrusting uncertainty into areas like vaccines--they have created a huge healthcare challenge for Virginians and for Americans.

Again, not to speak for anybody other than Virginians, but I did a lot of travel around the State in April as some of these proposals were on the table. I did a lot of travel in July, a lot of travel in August, and I just did a good bit of travel last week around Virginia. And on the healthcare side, here is what my constituents are saying to me about what is now happening:

The effect of the reconciliation bill in Virginia is estimated to cause about 330,000 Virginians to lose their health insurance. Our population is about 8.8 million; 330,000 people losing health insurance is not a small number. This is a big--big--deal. That number of people who lose their health insurance is essentially what I call the top layer of a five-layer cake of consequences to these healthcare bills. That is consequence one, people lose insurance.

Consequence two is people who have insurance see their premiums go up dramatically. Premium notices are coming out from insurance companies in Virginia, and they are suggesting that premiums this year in Virginia will go up by at least 20 percent.

Why does that happen? There are two reasons: The reconciliation bill that was passed by the Republicans in June phased out premium support for low- and middle-income people buying health insurance on the exchanges. The Republican bill extended tax cuts for the wealthiest but phased out premium support for low- and middle-income people buying health insurance. So that causes premiums to go up.

The second thing that causes premiums to go up is when you increase the number of people with no insurance, they go to the emergency room, and they are not able to pay. So providers provide treatment, but then they have to charge that off to somebody, and it tends to get charged off to people who have health insurance.

So the combined effect of ACA premium support going away and a whole lot of free care that has to be paid for by somebody causes insurance rates to increase. This is happening in Virginia, and it is happening around the country.

That is the second layer of the five-layer cake of consequences of what happens when the reconciliation bill passes.

The third layer is this, and this is a really, really troubling one: Providers close down. Hospitals and clinics close down when Medicaid is affected; particularly hospitals, for whom Medicaid is a huge portion of the revenue stream coming into the hospital, find that they can't make it work.

A national organization that looks at hospital fiscal soundness has put about 300 hospitals in the United States on a list of hospitals that are in danger because of the Medicaid cuts. Six of those hospitals are in Virginia, and they are all in rural Virginia. Rural Virginia tends to be a little bit older than the rest of Virginia and tends to have a little bit higher Medicaid population than the rest of Virginia. So the hospitals that are in danger by the reconciliation bill are rural hospitals.

It is not just hospitals that are on the list of potential closure. Within the last month, a prominent health provider in the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia--a rural part of our State--announced that they were closing three primary care clinics in small Virginia communities because of the reconciliation bill. The cuts made to Medicaid in the reconciliation bill made them realize that they could no longer keep these clinics open.

So the third consequence of this reconciliation bill is, we have got people losing insurance; we have got premiums going up; and now we have providers closing.

The fourth consequence is pretty obvious: When providers close, people get fired, so people lose their jobs. Frontline healthcare workers who are doing good work in the communities and having people rely on them, they lose their jobs. That is consequence four.

Then, consequence five is one that I know well as a former mayor and Governor. I kind of call it the loss of your future. It is one thing to lose your health insurance; it is one thing to pay more; it is one thing to lose your provider; it is one thing to lose your job, but if you are a mayor or a chairman of a county board of supervisors or a Governor, for that matter, and you are trying to encourage economic development, a new business to move into a part of the State or a business that is in a part of the State to expand, a question you are going to get asked is: Tell me about the healthcare network in this community. I may be moving executives here. I may be trying to hire people here.

And if you have to look them in the eye and say: We used to have a hospital, but we don't now or we had primary clinics that have closed down and now you have to drive farther to get primary medical care, I can tell you, I have been in economic development discussions with businesses over the course of my 31 years in public life and seen the lights just go out in their eyes: You know, you have just told me something that has convinced me I may not know where I am going, but I know where I am not going.

One the quickest things you can do to turn that light off is to make a prospect worried about whether the employees and executives and their families will have access to good healthcare.

So on the healthcare piece of this, what Democrats are asking for by way of an alternative--not a nonnegotiable but by way of an alternative--is let's go into the changes that were made in the reconciliation bill and fix them.

I have Republican colleagues who say: We don't want to completely reverse them because there are some things about the ACA premium tax subsidy we don't like. We would like to design them differently. We would like to negotiate.

I am completely open to that, but I do think we ought to try to fix them.

I am heartened that a number of Republican colleagues have said: You are right. We should do that.

I have said to my Republican colleagues: Coming up with a fix, even if both sides want a fix, I know this is not going to be a snap decision. There are details. You have to dot the i's. You have to cross the t's. You have to analyze what the downstream consequences of any changes in the fix are. I know that that is a substantive discussion where the details matter. I am not expecting that we would all reach an agreement immediately.

So on the first point, where the Democratic proposal is different than the Republican proposal, I fully expect that this would be a negotiation that would take some time. We needn't wait to open the government until that negotiation is completely done. We should commit to the negotiation and get in the middle of it and sit around the table and figure it out. But we needn't wait, in my view--again, this is me, not the caucus, not anybody else. This is me. We needn't solve the entire problem in order to reach a position where we fund the government and reopen it. We can do it over the course of a time period that I think is being discussed in this body.

The second feature of the Democratic proposal that is important to reach an accord on, I believe, is a simple notion that a deal is a deal. A deal is a deal. If we reach a funding agreement--and some have characterized the Republican proposal as a clean CR, but I would actually say it is not a clean CR unless you are guaranteed that the parties will honor it.

Whatever we do--if we do something for 30 days or if we do something for 45 days--I think it is only fair to ask that a deal be a deal; that Congress fully live up to it but the White House fully live up to it as well.

We have seen, throughout this year already, congressional deals undone by the President unilaterally: tens of thousands of people fired, economic development projects that had been announced and celebrated canceled, funds to public health Agencies taken back. Again and again and again, we have seen, in Virginia, unilateral actions taken by the President that, in our view, undo what Congress and the White House had agreed to in previous budget resolutions. So it is not unreasonable for us to say: Well, if we are going to do a short-term CR to try to find the path for a full-year appropriations bill, we would just want an agreement during that 30 or 45 days--whatever it is--that a deal is a deal; that we not write it, agree to it, celebrate reopening the government, and then have President Trump on day two start to fire a whole lot of people or claw back more money from the Virginia Department of Health or cancel more economic development projects in Virginia. Let's just say a deal is a deal. Congress will live by our piece of it, and the White House would live by its piece of it.

Virginians get this. I was traveling around this weekend, and Virginians do not want the government to be closed. They want it open. They said to me: Keep the government open.

I said: We want to get that deal just like you do. We want to get a deal.

But if I said to Virginians: And on that deal, Congress should live up to it, right?

Right.

And on that deal, the President should live up to it, right?

Right.

People get that a deal is a deal. It is not a complicated theory of government or an argument about democracy; it is just basic fairness that when parties reach an agreement and shake hands, that both parties have to honor it.

So what I am looking for very significantly in these discussions is an agreement from the White House that whatever the short-term period is, they will not take punitive actions against my State, against the State of Indiana, against the city of New York, or against anyone, or against any particular program that is part of a congressional appropriations bill that is already in process; that they will not selectively pick out programs to attack or individuals to fire during the course of that agreement.

I think we have to have that longer discussion about an alternate yearlong appropriations bill, about a deal is a deal, but all I am looking for here and all Virginians are looking for here is that we would reach that agreement during the pendency of some short-term CR as we try to negotiate a full-year agreement.

We can do this. We can do this. We ought to do it.

For a reason of fiscal conservatism, during the last shutdown in 2018-2019, I was able to sort of strategically put a bill on the floor on a day much like today, a Thursday during the shutdown, and get colleagues to unanimously agree with the principle that in the event of any shutdown, Federal employees would get backpay.

It used to be, in the old days, if there was a shutdown, you had to fight about backpay after, but now there is a backpay guarantee. When there is a shutdown, people are guaranteed backpay. So that makes shutdowns really foolish, like, you are going to shut down; you are going to lock people out of their office; you are going to tell them they can't do the work; and then you are going to write them a paycheck anyway.

The fiscally conservative answer, when there is a backpay guarantee, is to end this quickly so people can go back in their office and serve their fellow Americans.

The fact that we, I believe, have narrowed the point of division down to can we find a path forward to negotiate healthcare fixes, even if we don't agree on all the details right now, and can we reach an agreement that a deal is a deal, which is a reasonable request--I believe those are the two issues that are on the table. And they are issues that we are eminently capable of solving and solving very soon. And I am going to do everything I can with my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to make sure we do.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I rise to discuss a vote that the Senate will take later this week on en bloc Executive nominations. The vote will likely come either tomorrow or possibly Friday. There is an en bloc of approximately 100 nominations that we will be considering, and I rise to talk about the nomination of one individual--Bill White to be the U.S. Ambassador to Belgium.

I regret that we are taking up nominations en bloc. I think there are good reasons to reform the nominations process. I think we probably have to have Senate confirmation for too many people. But I didn't believe a few weeks ago in the Senate action that allowed people to be lumped together because my view was that that causes individuals who were in the en bloc not to get the appropriate scrutiny they should get. I viewed the action, bluntly, as a little less about advancing nominations as raising the risk of hiding nominations in large groups where individuals would not get the appropriate scrutiny, and I believe that very strongly to be the case with Mr. White.

Mr. White is President Trump's nominee to be Ambassador to an important U.S. ally, Belgium, the headquarters of NATO. Mr. White has done some good things in his life, and I don't dispute that, and I know he has been a strong supporter of President Trump, as are virtually all of the Trump appointees, many of whom I have voted for. I haven't done this calculation, but I probably have a track record on the Democratic side of voting for as high a percentage of President Trump's nominees, both in term 1 and term 2, as just about anyone because I do believe as a former Governor that your election does carry with it a mandate to be able to assemble a team of like-minded people. Even if I might disagree with you, President Trump was elected, and he should have the ability to assemble a team of like-minded people.

But I do carefully scrutinize the character, judgment, and qualifications of the individuals who are put before us for important positions, and this nomination of this individual for this country at this time I view as so uniquely bad that I wanted to take the time to come to the floor and talk about why.

What I am going to talk about is Mr. White's judgment as evidenced by his social media postings. I have a whole lot of examples I could use, but I am going to just narrow it down to the ones that I think are a true window into this individual's judgment and character and that demonstrate that he is not suitable to represent the United States in a critical ambassadorial position.

On May 16, 2023, he tweeted out about one of our colleagues, Senator Graham of South Carolina:

Graham is a snake.

He has tweeted out many bad things about Democratic colleagues that I am not going to post before you, but someone who says about Lindsey Graham that he is a snake is not demonstrating the judgment you need to be an ambassador representing the United States in Belgium.

Mr. White fell down the rabbit hole of election conspiracy in 2020 and has repeatedly tweeted and posted his belief that the 2020 election was not accurately called and that Donald Trump actually won rather than President Biden. Now, I think any intelligent person recognizes that as a conspiracy theory that most fourth graders wouldn't be gullible enough to fall for, but Mr. White has tweeted it over and over and over again.

He has gone beyond just asserting that Donald Trump won the election in 2020. He has actually gone much, much further than that. In the runup to the election of 2024--so this is now 4 years after the 2020 election--Mr. White was posting material and reposting material about Georgia's secretary of state Brad Raffensperger, a Republican, claiming that he had acted improperly in the 2020 election.

Lock [Georgia's secretary of state]--

And forgive me; this is a quote.

Lock . . . this mother effer up.

That is what he is calling to happen to the Republican secretary of state in

Georgia. And this was recent. This was in August of 2024. This is not years and years and years ago.

Mr. White went on to continue in this extreme rhetoric in the aftermath of President Trump's election in 2024. Within the days to follow, shortly after the election, he basically says Donald Trump won Georgia--that is referring to the 2024 election--and that it is high time now to legitimately prosecute the Georgia secretary of state and Governor Kemp, the Republican Governor of Georgia. Mr. White is calling for them both to be prosecuted, and this was just at the time that Donald Trump won the 2024 election.

OK. Donald Trump was elected President in 2024. Why are you still so focused on a campaign of retribution against Georgia Republicans whom you were urging to be locked up and prosecuted?

To be an ambassador, you need to have some judgment, you need to have some diplomacy. You will deal with tough issues. Belgium is not a big country, but Belgium is a very important country. It has been a U.S. ally for a very long time, and it is the headquarters of NATO, which has a huge importance in the world right now.

Putting somebody into a position like this who puts out negative tweets about Lindsey Graham and who is encouraging Republican officials in Georgia to be prosecuted and locked up--I think those would be disqualifying in and of themselves, but as I was looking at this individual's social media account, I came upon something else that a lot of people didn't notice, because it seemed odd, but I did a little bit of research into it, and I want to focus on it.

Mr. White, in May of 2024--months before President Trump's election-- retweeted a post from an individual named Dries Van Langenhove, with a video from this individual. The video is a lengthy video wherein this individual, Dries Van Langenhove, says:

This Friday, they may send me to prison for years, so this

video is my last chance. They are trying to destroy me, but

with your help, we will destroy them. Free Dries.

Among the other tweets of calling a colleague a snake and calling for people to be locked up, this one seemed odd. Who is Dries Van Langenhove? Who is Dries Van Langenhove? Dries Van Langenhove is a convicted, Holocaust-denying, pro-violence anti-Semite in Belgium. The tweet that Mr. White posted was his video the night before he was sentenced to a year in prison for inciting violence and denying the Holocaust.

This is an article from POLITICO Europe in March of 2024, and it talks about Mr. Van Langenhove. Title: ``Belgium's far-right prodigy gets prison term for inciting violence.''

Dries Van Langenhove, a political activist and leader of a

Flemish-nationalist youth movement called Schild & Vrienden,

was convicted of inciting violence and denying the Holocaust,

the Ghent criminal court [ruled].

[He]"revelled in Nazi ideas that caused much suffering. He

wants to undermine society,'' a judge said when announcing

the ruling.

Why would Mr. White, in March of 2024, even know who Dries Van Langenhove was?

When I saw this, as I was researching this prior to the hearing on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, I had no idea who Dries Van Langenhove was. I wondered, Why is Mr. White platforming this individual I know nothing about? Then, as I read it, I find that he is a notorious violence-promoting, Holocaust-denying anti-Semite criminal convict in Belgium. This is a big deal.

The ADL says that of any nation in Europe, Belgium may have seen the most spike in anti-Semitic behavior since October 7.

Some of you might remember the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris a couple of years ago, pre-October 7. There was a similar attack on the same day in Belgium, an anti-Semitic attack. Belgians have been charged with crimes of vandalism and religious-based violence and attacks on the Holocaust museum in both Belgium, Brussels, and Paris. And the Belgian Government is really working hard to try to deal with this cancer of anti-Semitism in this nation.

As far as I know, Mr. Langenhove is the only individual who has been successfully prosecuted in Belgium for Holocaust-denying, inciting violence, and reveling in pro-Nazi ideas. The material that Bill White posted was Mr. Van Langenhove seeking support in donations to help him avoid accountability for his words and actions.

Mr. White's work in the past might qualify him to serve in some capacities. I am not saying there isn't a position, one that doesn't require diplomacy, where his skills might be necessary, but this particular appointment is an insult to Belgium--a nation that is trying to deal with a deep, deep challenge in anti-Semitism.

For the United States to send as an ambassador to that nation someone who has platformed the far-right prodigy who has received a prison term for inciting anti-Semitic violence is a slap in the face of this important ally.

I started by saying I am worried that the fact that this nomination is being slid into the middle of a big block of nominations means it won't get the attention that it deserves. Traditionally, on a nomination like this, we might get 1 or 2 hours on the floor to focus on this particular individual.

My colleague Senator Merkley, as we were discussing the change that allowed en bloc nominations, proposed an alternative where you could remove a name from the en bloc if you wanted to actually have some ability to focus on it. That effort was unsuccessful. But I want to raise this today.

This is already getting press in Belgium. The hearing itself, where it came to light that Mr. White was platforming Dries Van Langenhove, is getting press in Belgium; it is getting press elsewhere in Europe; and it is being examined as: Wait. How does the United States feel about this country and this relationship? How does the United States feel about qualifications for diplomats if someone who is so intrepid in his speech but also is platforming Belgian Holocaust deniers gets the plum position to be our Ambassador to Belgium?

So my hope--and in life, I have often learned that high hopes are great and so are low expectations. I will say in standing here today, I stand here with high hopes and low expectations. My hope is that some of my Republican colleagues might look at this and say: This is a bridge too far. This is too important a country and anti-Semitism is too important an issue to send, with the imprimatur of U.S. Ambassador and to this ally of the United States, somebody who is platforming and promoting an anti-Semitic, Holocaust-denying convicted criminal.

That is my hope that when we have this vote later in the week, we might decide that the United States can do better by our ally.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Madam President, I rise to discuss the Democratic continuing resolution proposal that was on the floor earlier.

Neither proposal gained sufficient votes, and that means we have work to do to find a compromise that will enable the government to stay open, and I want to make clear why I believe the Democratic proposal has some real strong merit for Virginians and for Members of this body, both Democratic and Republican, and why I think this is such a strong proposal.

My advocacy for the Democratic position is basically focused on two issues: healthcare and the underlying basic notion that we all get-- that a deal should be a deal.

During August, I think, as most of us did, I traveled around my home State of Virginia a lot and talked to many people. The Senate had passed the reconciliation bill--that partisan bill--in July, and during the August recess, I heard a boatload from Virginians about their concerns.

Because of that reconciliation bill, six hospitals in Virginia are at risk of closure. These hospitals are all in the rural parts of the Commonwealth.

There are 302,000-plus Virginians who will likely completely lose their health insurance, 136,000 will lose the health insurance that they are currently able to access through the Affordable Care Act, and another 166,000 will likely lose health insurance because of cuts to the Medicaid Program. Virginia has a population of about 8\1/2\ million; 302,000 people losing their health insurance is pretty significant.

Those who continue to have health insurance will see significant premium increases. According to the State Corporation Commission, which is the body in Virginia that regulates industries like insurance companies, the 10 insurers that participate in the Virginia individual market in 2026 have requested rate increases from their 2025 rates, with most insurers proposing average increases of 20 percent or higher.

What would that mean? The Kaiser Family Foundation says a family of four, with two adults aged 50 and two kids under 21, are likely to pay an additional $311 per month, or $3,729 per year, because of the reconciliation reduction of ACA tax credits.

Virginia hospitals stand to lose up to $26 billion in Medicaid cuts over the course of the next 14 years because of the reconciliation bill. That is the reason why a number of rural hospitals that are sort of on the edge in terms of their financial situation are on the list of concerns about closure.

Just within the last 2 weeks, we actually had the first closures in Virginia. A well-respected healthcare network in the Shenandoah Valley that has a hospital in Augusta County but then has primary care clinics sort of throughout the region that serves patients who can be served there instead of a hospital announced that three of the primary care clinics are closing, and the CEO of the Healthcare Network said they are closing because of the Medicaid cuts made in the reconciliation bill that this body passed in July.

I also heard a lot of stories just from individuals. These are the statistics about what is going to happen in Virginia because of the reconciliation bill, but we talk to constituents all the time.

Mary from Springfield, VA--Northern Virginia--and Kim from Mecklenburg County on the North Carolina border both have children with disabilities who rely on Medicaid for access to care to allow their children to remain in their homes instead of in institutional settings. These moms are very worried that Medicaid cuts won't be available for their children's long-term care.

Brenda is a mother in Salem, VA, near Roanoke. She relies on Medicaid to help her remain in her home and not have to be institutionalized, and she worries that the Medicaid cuts will cost her access to the supports that she needs.

William in Virginia Beach, VA, on our eastern coast, says that his son has Marketplace coverage but is worried that the cuts to the ACA premiums mean that the son will no longer have access to that insurance now that the reconciliation bill has put those premium subsidies on a path to expiration.

Maria works as an employee of an affordable housing community for seniors in Fairfax, right here in the DC area. She said that since the passage of the reconciliation bill, she has seen a growing number of low-income seniors come into her office frightened that their Medicaid coverage will be reduced or terminated.

Sharon lives in Lancaster County, which is in a part of Virginia called the Northern Neck, near the Chesapeake Bay. She has called to ask my office if Rappahannock General Hospital was in jeopardy of closing due to the reconciliation bill. Rappahannock hospital is a facility I know well because my in-laws lived right there in Lancaster before they passed away in the last couple of years. It is one of the six hospitals that is listed on the national list as a hospital in jeopardy as Medicaid cuts phase in.

Then, finally, Caroline from Lynchburg, VA, in Central Virginia, has had coverage through the Virginia Marketplace and is concerned that she will no longer have access to the tax credits and subsidies that have helped her afford health insurance.

These are just seven examples of citizens from all over the Commonwealth whom the reconciliation bill--I read the big statistics about it, but these are individual families who have significant challenges.

What the Democratic CR proposal does is something that many Republicans in this body have said needs to

be done. In the aftermath of the reconciliation bill, we are hearing similar stories from our constituents and that we need to fix especially the ACA premium support so that people do not lose health insurance, and we also need to fix some of the Medicaid cuts that caused the concerns that I expressed from these seven individuals.

My visit around Virginia in August sort of made me see this healthcare concern as sort of a spectrum. When you make cuts to Medicaid or to these premiums, five different things happen:

People lose health insurance.

Those who retain health insurance see their premiums go up often because the folks without insurance go to the emergency rooms. That is more expensive care. It has to be paid for, and that tends to assist in driving up the premium cost of those who retain insurance.

Third, as I have indicated has already happened in Virginia, providers close. And when providers close, there is a fourth effect, which is people lose their jobs.

Then the fifth effect is one that I think we should talk about as well. It is not just people losing health insurance and having their premiums go up and seeing their providers close and seeing healthcare professionals lose their jobs; there is a fifth effect.

I was a mayor, and I was a Governor. I did a lot of economic development work in Virginia. I know that one of the things that businesses really care about, if they are looking for places to locate or expand, is what is the local availability of healthcare? It is really difficult to be in a community and try to pitch an economic development project but have the question asked: ``Tell us about your hospital. Tell us about your healthcare network'' and to explain that ``we had a hospital, but it closed. We have had healthcare clinics that closed.'' That makes it very, very difficult.

This fifth effect is an economic effect. The decline in healthcare clinics and hospitals, actually, is sort of like a theft of a community's future because it makes it very difficult to get people to come.

That is why I think the Democratic proposal is a solid one. And I do recognize that in the aftermath of the passage of the reconciliation bill, many Republican colleagues--both in this Chamber and the House-- have said that it is important to come back and fix particularly the expiration of the ACA premium tax subsidies. I think that would be a very smart thing for us all to do.

Finally, there is a second reason I really like the Democratic proposal, and it is this: A deal should be a deal. The Democratic proposal has some components in it that would ensure that when Democrats and Republicans in the House and Senate reach a deal that goes to the President's desk and he signs it, that the President then can't immediately take the money away unilaterally.

I think everybody around my Commonwealth--Democrat, Republican, Independent, or the vast majority who don't really care that much about politics--they get that a deal should be a deal. When you negotiate and you shake hands, a deal should be a deal.

This actually is related to healthcare as well. In last year's budget, we had a deal about spending on healthcare priorities. Early in this administration, the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., announced that he was clawing back billions of dollars of healthcare funding. To Virginia, it was $400 million--$400 million of healthcare funding that we had planned on using during the worst increase in measles, for example, in recent years. It got clawed back from Virginia, and 500 workers and contractors lost their jobs as we were trying to deal with measles and other health epidemics.

I have communities in Virginia that had had economic development projects announced, and they were counting on them for their future. Often, the announcements were attended with great fanfare by our Governor--Governor Youngkin, who is a Republican, who believed these economic deals were a good thing. They were reliant on funding from the Inflation Reduction Act or from the CHIPS manufacturing bill, but those funds, in many instances, have been clawed back.

A deal should be a deal. When we reach a deal, it should be honored so that communities do not plan for healthcare workers, do not plan for economic development projects and feel the rug pulled out from under them.

So those two features of the Democratic proposal: fixing some of the healthcare cuts in the reconciliation bill that, even by many Republicans' accounts, have gone too far; that have already led to closures of clinics in Virginia and great anxiety among individuals.

We can fix those, and we can establish a principle that should be one that we would all agree on that a deal should be a deal.

I hope as we grapple with the two proposals on the table, neither of which we were able to get 60 votes and be passed, we can take some of the wisdom in these Democratic proposals that would serve Democrats, Republicans, and Independents all over this country and make sure that we include them going forward.

With that, I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that floor privileges be granted to Anel Galvez, Radhika Prabhu, and Jacob Baldus for the duration of their legislative fellowships.

Mr. President, on February 25, 1975, Resolution No. 371 was presented to the City Council of Alexandria, VA, to establish the Alexandria Archaeological Commission. It was the first in the Nation. The commission, composed of Alexandria residents, was tasked with developing goals and priorities relating to the preservation and public interpretation of sites and artifacts that contribute to the history and heritage of the city of Alexandria, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the United States. To this day, the Alexandria Archaeological Commission remains a model for public archaeology in the country.

Over the past 50 years, more than 100 commissioners have served on the Alexandria Archaeological Commission. Working with city officials and staff, developers, homeowners, nonprofit organizations, volunteers, and residents, the commission has unearthed and honored history in many ways, including by:

Advocating for the hiring of the first City Archaeologist

and the creation of the Alexandria Archaeology Museum, which

is today the most visited museum in the city and is

nationally recognized for its pioneering work in urban

archaeology.

Ensuring that the full history of Alexandria is told by

supporting the creation of the African American Heritage Park

and the preservation of the Contrabands and Freedmen Cemetery

Memorial.

Advising on the establishment of the Archaeological

Protection Code that requires developers to adhere to

archaeological preservation measures.

Developing plans for the interpretation of history and

archaeology along Alexandria's waterfront, including the

remnants of four excavated 18th-century ship hulls and tens

of thousands of artifacts that tell the story of commerce

during the colonial era.

I join countless Virginians in recognizing the extraordinary vision of the residents of Alexandria and the city council in 1975 and the commitment today's local leadership maintains to preserve Alexandria's historic and cultural artifacts for future generations.

Mr. President, I will only take 1 minute.

A little over a year ago, the Senate voted for $18 billion in defense aid to Israel. On the Democratic side, the vote was 47 to 4. On the Republican side, the vote was 22 to 27. Democrats support defense aid to Israel.

This is not a vote to retract a single dollar of that $18 billion in aid; it is a vote to say that defense aid to Israel, which Democrats overwhelmingly supported, should be defensive in nature, not offensive weapons that are likely to lead to unnecessary civilian suffering and destabilization in the region.

I support defensive aid to Israel. I will support Senator Sanders' resolutions to not allow the transfer of these offensive weapons.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I rise today to recognize the remarkable legacy and ongoing contributions of Hampden-Sydney College as it celebrates the 250th anniversary of its founding on November 10, 2025.

Founded in 1775 on the eve of the American Revolution, Hampden-Sydney is our Nation's 10th-oldest college and the oldest privately chartered college in the southern United States. Its founding mission, ``to form good men and good citizens,'' has remained steadfast for two and a half centuries, shaping generations of young men who have gone on to serve their communities, the Commonwealth of Virginia, and the Nation with distinction.

Hampden-Sydney College has also played a formative role in the development of other important institutions. Both the Union Theological Seminary and the Medical College of Virginia, now part of Virginia Commonwealth University, trace their roots back to Hampden-Sydney. These connections underscore the college's far-reaching impact on education, health, and public service in the Commonwealth and beyond.

The college's liberal arts curriculum continues to foster critical thinking, moral character, and civil discourse. Through its nationally respected rhetoric program, Hampden-Sydney places a premium on clear communication, thoughtful debate, and lifelong learning--values more vital today than ever. The college also remains home to the Union- Philanthropic Literary Society, the second-oldest college debating society in the United States.

For 250 years, Hampden-Sydney has prepared students for leadership in fields ranging from law and medicine to education, science, religion, business, the arts, and the military. Its alumni include statesmen, scholars, public servants, and countless individuals whose quiet contributions have strengthened the civic and cultural fabric of our society.

As it steps into the next era of its proud tradition, Hampden-Sydney College remains deeply committed to its founding ideals. Its pursuit of excellence in education, its cultivation of civic responsibility and character, and its unwavering defense of free expression ensure that it will continue to play a meaningful role in shaping the leaders of tomorrow.

I extend my heartfelt congratulations to the leadership, faculty, alumni, and students of Hampden-Sydney College on this milestone anniversary. Thank you for your enduring service to the Commonwealth and to our country.