Floor Statements

Mr. President, I want to just, first, comment on how much I appreciated the comments of my colleague from Maine, Senator King-- both in your elucidation of the deep challenges of the Robert Kennedy, Jr., nomination but also your close look at what the difference is between the legislative branch and the executive branch, and the role that we have in this body to provide advice and consent.

And I appreciated what you were saying about kind of what your North Star is when you look at these nominations.

I would say I agree with you that I do believe that incoming Presidents should be able to surround themselves with people whom they trust, and that, of course, we may strongly disagree with the President; however, he has the right to have people around him who agree with him.

But I think that there is something that you said, Senator King, that was extremely important. I also look at these nominations in terms of whether I believe they have the base-level qualifications to do the job. And then the second thing I ask myself is, Can I trust these individuals? Can I trust Robert Kennedy to follow the law?

I mean, that is fundamentally what their responsibility is--to, certainly, be loyal to the person who put them in that role, but also, at a base level, that they are going to follow the law.

So, Mr. President, I rise today to highlight what I consider to be the threat of Robert F. Kennedy, the threat that he poses to Americans' health and safety and well-being.

In fact, I have concluded--I have talked with him. I have listened to him. I have asked him questions, both in a private setting and also in committee. And I have read his words and his history. I can only conclude that he cannot be trusted with this important job; that I cannot trust him to follow the laws of this land.

I believe that Mr. Kennedy is wholly unqualified for the position of Secretary of Health and Human Services,

and that he is unprepared to lead. And I think that he cannot be trusted with the health and the well-being of Americans, particularly in this moment.

Now, if you are listening to this, and you don't really know that much about the Department of Health and Human Services, you have got a busy life, you are trying to figure out how to afford your life and how to kind of hold it together in what is a very busy and complicated world, I want to just be clear about what I think Mr. Kennedy's confirmation would mean for Minnesota families. If he is allowed to become Secretary, I have concluded that your family will be less safe, that your loved ones will be more likely to get sick, and that you and the people you care about will be less likely to get the care you need.

As I have thought about this, what I find most disqualifying about Mr. Kennedy is how he has basically made his career--he has built a career around saying what he needs to say in order to get attention, and by getting attention, he is making money. I think it is just important to understand this. This is whether he is talking about vaccines or infectious diseases, whether he is talking about anything.

So you walk away from talking with this individual not entirely sure what it is that he believes because he does seem willing to say nearly anything to nearly everybody without actually considering what impact his words have on the lives of real people, whether he is talking about reproductive freedom, whether he is talking about mental health care, whether he is talking about infectious diseases, whether he is talking about vaccines.

So let's focus a bit on the question of vaccines because I think this is the thing that has gotten the most attention--and rightly so.

In decades of public appearances, as well as in our one-on-one meeting--the one-on-one meetings that I had with him--as well as when he talked about this in front of the Finance Committee, Mr. Kennedy has continued to promote harmful and dangerous information--information that if people followed and they paid attention to him and they did what he suggested, it could do real harm to their families; it could hurt them.

If you think about vaccines, this is his long and very public record of denying the safety and the efficacy of vaccines. In fact, he has spent almost the last two decades of his life promoting these harmful and false theories that vaccines will cause autism and that they are otherwise unsafe.

As an example, in 2021, he proudly described stopping strangers out on hikes and telling them not to vaccinate their babies. Can you imagine that? You are out walking around, and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., comes up to you--a man of stature and power--and says: Don't vaccinate your children.

Those words have impact.

During a podcast interview in July of 2023, Mr. Kennedy said--and I believe Senator King quoted this as well:

There's no vaccine that is safe and effective.

So, OK, just think about that. He is saying: Don't pay any attention to the science. Don't pay any attention to the experts. I am going to tell you that there is no vaccine that is safe and effective.

Those words have consequences.

The online store is another example. Mr. Kennedy's organization, the Children's Health Defense--there is an online store. You can all go on and check it out. You will find there that they are still selling little baby onesies and T-shirts for little children that have messages on them like ``Unvaccinated, Unafraid.''

Now, of course, here we are on the verge of a vote to decide whether the U.S. Senate is going to confirm Mr. Kennedy, and, of course, now he is denying all of that. He is distancing himself from all of these past statements. But you can't run away from your words, certainly in this day and age--and, I would argue, in any day and age. Those words are out there. You said them. They are on the record. They are on video. And it matters what the Secretary of Health and Human Services says, what he says about these things, and, of course, it matters what he doesn't say as well. Words have real consequences.

Just the mere fact of his presence being as the head of this Agency, just the fact that he sits there is going to be a factor that will cause some people not to know whether they can trust vaccines. He is in a position of power and authority. He has a high and loud bully pulpit--an individual who has told Americans, both when he was out on hikes, stopping them as they are walking by, and on every media megaphone that he could find, that vaccines are neither safe nor effective. Yet here he is about to assume, unless my colleagues come to their senses, this most highest, you could argue, public health job that affects the health of all of our families. This is an unbelievable and an unacceptable risk to the health and safety of Americans.

I also wanted to highlight for my colleagues an exchange that I had with Mr. Kennedy when he came before the Finance Committee, where I serve. I wanted to ask him about a statement that he had made about Americans and antidepressants. When I probed him on this, I confronted him with some things he had said in the past about antidepressants. Basically, he attributed a connection between people who are using antidepressants and school shootings. I asked him about that, and I asked him whether he thought that folks who take antidepressants are dangerous or not. He refused to even say that Americans who take antidepressants are not dangerous. He could not even get those words out of his mouth. In fact, he doubled down on his claims that antidepressants do cause school shootings, and he claimed that this is an area that needs to be studied and that he knows people who have had ``a much worse time getting off of SSRIs than they have getting off heroin.''

Now, this is a typical strategy that I saw Mr. Kennedy take with many of our colleagues both on the HELP Committee and on the Finance Committee. When confronted with the facts and asked whether he believed the science and the facts, he would always say some version of ``Show me the data; show me the information'' even when the research is settled, the data is settled.

Here, let me come to this question about whether or not antidepressants are dangerous and are somehow a contributor to school shootings, which is an outrageous thing to say.

There is a study in 2019 that was published in the Journal of Behavioral Science and Law, and it says it appears that ``most school shooters weren't treated with psychotropic medication before their attacks. Even when they were, no direct or causal association was found.''

I was stunned when Mr. Kennedy again sort of said ``Well, I don't believe that research'' or ``I need to see other data; we need to look at this.'' Of course, he is not willing to accept the facts and the science. He is not willing to do that.

I am simply not willing to trust Mr. Kennedy when it comes to ensuring that your children, your loved ones, the folks that you care about in your lives, are going to actually have access to the mental health treatments they need to live their lives as productively as they possibly can.

It also, I think, is worth noting that these comments that Mr. Kennedy is making linking antidepressants to school shootings--what it does, of course, is it perpetuates the stigma that so many Americans who struggle with mental illness, mental health--so many of those Americans struggle with the stigma, and they already feel that, and yet here is potentially the next head of Health and Human Services who is perpetuating this stigma in a very real way.

I have seen this in my own life. I have seen people who have been bowed down by this feeling that they can't talk about their challenges with their mental health because people are going to think less of them. It is a stigma that I have spent my time in the Senate working in a bipartisan way to try to break down. So to see it perpetuated in this way by Mr. Kennedy is just such a clear reason why he cannot be trusted.

The rigorous, peer-reviewed research on SSRIs--a common form of antidepressant--is the science Mr. Kennedy has willingly chosen to ignore, but it is not the only science he has willfully chosen to ignore. Mr. Kennedy said during his confirmation hearings

that if President Trump directed him to go after mifepristone--one of the key drugs that is used in medication abortion--he would do whatever the President ordered, even though this is a medication that has been proven safe and effective for more than two decades. Yet Mr. Kennedy said that he would follow the guidance of the President and not the law when it comes to the safety of mifepristone.

In fact, as my colleague Senator Hassan made so abundantly clear in the committee, over 40 safety studies have demonstrated what Mr. Kennedy was not willing to see, which is that there is clear evidence that this medication is safe.

On reproductive freedom, Mr. Kennedy has proven himself wholly untrustworthy, repeatedly flip-flopping on his position depending on whom he is talking to. Now, this is something that many of us have seen in our lives--a person who will say one thing to one person and another thing to another person, all with the goal, it seems, of winning friends and influencing people, but this is not the kind of character you want to see in this most important job at the Federal Government, leading the Department of Health and Human Services.

Here is just a bit of an example of how this has played out with Mr. Kennedy on the issue of reproductive freedom and abortion rights. On the morning of August 13, 2023, Mr. Kennedy said:

I believe a decision to abort a child should be up to the

woman during the first three months of life.

Now, people may agree or disagree with this view, but it is clear what he is saying here.

The very same day, his campaign followed up by saying that his position on abortion is that it is always the woman's right to choose and that he does not support legislation banning abortion.

So on the same day, two different positions.

Then, on May 19, 2024, a few months later, in a podcast interview, he said:

I wouldn't leave it up to the States--

This is a quote.

I wouldn't leave it up to the States. I believe that we

should leave it up to the woman--

We shouldn't have government involved.

--even if it's full-term.

OK. So there is a completely different view.

Then the very next day, he tweeted:

Abortion should be legal up to a certain number of weeks,

and restricted thereafter.

Mr. Kennedy seems to change his mind so often that we don't know what he actually thinks, what he actually stands for. But when you are the Secretary of Health and Human Services, you have to stand up for something. You have to stand up for the laws of the land.

What is clear through all of this back-and-forth--it is clear to me-- is that the Trump administration and Mr. Kennedy are more than willing to restrict or even ban access to medication abortion despite the fact that they have been determined to be safe and effective and that Mr. Kennedy and President Trump are, in fact, dangerous to a woman's access to medication abortion.

I want people just to think about this for a minute. If you live in a State like mine, in Minnesota, where the State has determined that abortion should be accessible, that this is a decision that is up for people to be able to make on their own without government interference--and roughly 60 percent, maybe a bit more now, of abortions are done through medication abortion. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., and Donald Trump are going to affect your rights in Minnesota if they take away the right to mifepristone just as much as they affect the rights of somebody who is living in Texas or any of our States.

Mr. President, I want to change the topic to discuss a bit the question of infectious diseases and how Mr. Kennedy has taken similarly unfounded positions--positions that are not based on the science at all.

On infectious diseases, he has taken a position that I think could put Minnesota families at risk. Here is an example of that. At a Children's Health Defense conference in November of 2023--this is the anti-vax organization that Mr. Kennedy led for the last 7 years--Mr. Kennedy said that he is ``gonna say to the NIH scientists, God bless you all. Thank you for public service. We're going to give infectious disease a break for about eight years.''

Now, Mr. Kennedy and President Trump may want to give infectious diseases a break for the next 8 years, but I am pretty sure that infectious diseases are not going to give the United States of America a break for the next 8 years.

Here is a classic example of that. Across the country, we are facing a very real public health threat from avian flu. In Minnesota, farmers and producers know this better than anywhere, although it is certainly not affecting only Minnesota; it is affecting many of our States. This is an infectious disease that is infecting flocks of wild birds and also domesticated poultry. Nearly 150 million chickens across the United States have had to be culled, had to be euthanized, to prevent the spread of the virus. In the last year, bird flu has jumped from poultry to livestock, often to dairy cows, and then from livestock to humans--often, the individuals that are working in livestock operations. So this is something we have to take seriously.

This is important for us to pay attention to. We need surveillance. We need to be working on treatments. We need to be evaluating whether we need to be finding a pathway potentially to some sort of a vaccine.

Avian flu is not going to take an 8-year break. It is already infecting chickens and livestock, and it is already infecting Americans.

And I know that in Minnesota, people want somebody leading the Department of Health and Human Services who is paying attention to this and wants to be on top of this.

You know, one of the things that is sort of incredible, when you dive into the things that Mr. Kennedy has written, is that it is not even really clear if Mr. Kennedy believes that germs cause disease.

I mean, if you read his words on this, you come away with a very concerning perspective. For six pages in one of his recent books, just as an example, he extols the virtue of something called the miasma theory while simultaneously casting doubt on the basic and well- accepted scientific evidence that germs cause disease.

You know, Mr. Kennedy doesn't even really describe this miasma theory correctly, but he most certainly doesn't accurately represent germ theory, which is the basic understandable concept that medical students are introduced to at the very beginning of their medical education that germs, viruses, bacteria are the cause of many, many human illnesses.

You know, and this is the kind of stuff that if it were coming from the Secretary of Health and Human Services, people are going to listen to this. And I just, like, think about the chilling effects that this could have on the healthcare that people are able to seek and receive, particularly if Mr. Kennedy is going to be dialing back or stopping the research on infectious diseases that is the lifeblood of the United States public health work that we do.

At the Finance Committee and then the next day at the HELP Committee, my colleagues and I gave Mr. Kennedy opportunity after opportunity to dispel the false and misleading claim he has spread for decades and to distance himself from these past positions. And we gave him the chance to tell Americans that he would keep them and their children safe and that he wouldn't threaten their access to treatments or to cures or to care and that he believed the research that is out there and accessible to anybody and everybody who wants to see it--the research that is taught at medical schools, the research that is followed by National Institutes of Health, and he couldn't do it. He couldn't just say that vaccines don't cause autism. He couldn't just tell us that antidepressants don't cause school shootings.

He couldn't just tell us that he will make sure that America's health insurance is protected. I mean, he could barely--in his conversations and the questions that he was asked, he could barely articulate that he understood the difference between Medicare and Medicaid. Instead, what happened is that Mr. Kennedy repeatedly talked about following the good science, the science that is good. But the science that he relies on is not good.

And in so many circumstances, he quotes science or studies that have been disproven. The studies that he has referenced have been withdrawn, or they don't say what he claims or purports to say that they do.

Most of all, what happens is that this has the potential to hold our researchers and our scientific community back from making the real progress that we need to make when it comes to medicine and disease and treating ailments.

Think about the progress that we could one day make to help cure cancer, to prevent Alzheimer's. If we have to revisit the history, the record of science, because Mr. Kennedy says that he doesn't think it shows what everybody else thinks it shows, think about how that is going to set us back, how that is going to keep us from moving forward to address the real health challenges of today and tomorrow.

Think about what it might have meant if Mr. Kennedy had led the Department of Health and Human Services when we were in the midst of Operation Warp Speed and we were doing everything that we possibly could to get a vaccine out to Americans and the world to stop the millions of deaths that were happening because of the COVID-19 virus.

What would have happened if Mr. Kennedy, sitting in that position of authority, had said: I don't believe the science; I think we need to do more. I don't think any vaccine is safe and effective; and, therefore, I want to call this vaccine back.

And, in fact, that is what Mr. Kennedy did. He submitted a call to the Department of Health and Human Services in the early days of the vaccine saying that he thought that it should be pulled back from the market.

Think about what impact that could have had on all of our families if he had been in a position of authority and had been able to accomplish that. Over and over again, when he is faced with the actual science-- for example, on the science that proves that SSRIs are not associated with school shootings, that vaccines do not cause autism, that germs do cause illnesses--he has refused to accept it, and he has doubled down on his dangerous beliefs.

So this is concerning when it is an individual who is speaking on a podcast, but it could be a matter of life or death when it is the Secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. As I think about what I said at the beginning of my remarks about my strong belief that my job as Senator is to assess whether I can trust somebody in this role, can I trust them to follow the law? Can I trust this individual to protect the health and well-being of the people in my State and the people around the country? The answer is clearly, no, this is an individual who cannot be trusted.

At the heart of this nomination, of course--the heart of the work of the Department of Health and Human Services--is America's health and healthcare. And it is clear to me that Mr. Kennedy has made it clear that he will enable the Trump and Musk agenda of chaos, that he will enable what they are doing not to execute the laws of this country, which is their constitutional responsibility, but to attempt to make the laws of this country.

And, you know, we can see this during his confirmation hearings. Repeatedly during his confirmation hearings, Mr. Kennedy said that he would follow Mr. Trump's directives.

Now, I am going to be clear about this, I understand that it is the job of any Cabinet official to follow the policies of the individual who has put them there, but not if those policies break the laws of the United States of America.

Department heads, Cabinet heads, the head of the Department of Health and Human Services is required to execute the law, not to execute the will of the President--because the President is a President; he is not a king.

What I am convinced of at this stage is as we see what, I believe, is a massive power grab by Donald Trump and Elon Musk to not just execute the laws but to make the laws, that Mr. Kennedy would be a part of that process, that he would be an enabler of that power grab that we see happening all over the country. And that is another reason why I cannot trust him.

I want to take a look for a minute at the directives that President Trump has put out already. Let's take a look at these--these directives of stopping lawfully executed payments to healthcare organizations that have been made following the will of Congress, the people who are supposed to be making the laws in this country.

I heard a lot about this from Minnesota, huge amounts of concern reflected back to me in my office about what is actually happening with the President's directives, basically directing to withhold funding that Congress has authorized.

I heard from Minnesota's community health centers that they were going to begin doing layoffs because of this Federal funding freeze-- basically, a massive cut that they are experiencing. You know, community health centers are all over the country, and in my home State of Minnesota, they are the place that individuals can go to get basic, preventative healthcare. It is a very important part of our healthcare network, and yet many of these have come to me and said that they are basically going to be laying off providers and other folks who are providing direct care to patients.

One community health center's CEO in greater Minnesota, outside of the metro area, said that it was the worst day in his 38-year career when he got word of this freeze.

Now, I understand that this freeze has been unfrozen for now, at least in some cases--though, in other cases it seems like it is back on again. In fact, I hear repeatedly that it is off and on and off and on in this sort of chaotic and confusing dance that they have started.

But these clinics are still facing real challenges about getting access to their Federal funding, and this is threatening their operations. Imagine if you were running a--like a small bootstrap and, you know, small little health center and every day you are just trying to make payroll. You don't have millions of dollars sitting in your bank account waiting for a rainy day. Every day is a rainy day, and every day you are just trying to make it work. And very suddenly, one of your most important ways of paying to provide healthcare to an individual has just evaporated overnight.

So then what happens--because people still get sick, people still need healthcare, even if they are unable to get it at a community health center. So what do they do?

Think about this, right now, in Minnesota--it is probably the same in West Virginia and other parts of the country--Minnesota emergency rooms are packed full of people who have the flu or RSV or norovirus. They go to the emergency rooms. You want to go to the emergency room when you really, really need emergency care. You go to a community health center when you need to be able to get access to urgent care but the care that you need right now. And what is happening is that because there are a lot of illnesses, people are getting sick in the wintertime, it is like 20 below in Minnesota right now, if they can't get their primary care in a doctor's office, in a clinic, they are going to end up in the ER.

And then what happens to all the rest of us who really might need emergency care? The ER is jammed to overflowing. There is no space. You have to wait 5 hours to get the care that you need. That is what is happening with this funding that is being put in jeopardy. That means that community health centers might not be able to help the patients that they typically help. And I am not talking about a small number of people here. That is 170,000 people in Minnesota who rely on community health centers.

And what is going to happen, those folks are going to end up in emergency rooms, and that is going to increase wait times, and it is going to stress the capacity of hospitals to provide care that people need.

President Trump did this. Robert F. Kennedy, if he were head of Health and Human Services, I have no reason to trust that he would stop this. In fact, I believe the opposite, I believe he would enable it. And this is why I think his nomination will end up making all of us less healthy and less safe and less secure.

President Trump, in another example, unlawfully cut National Institutes of Health grant funding earlier this week. This amounts to millions of dollars that support lifesaving research

into Alzheimer's and cancer and Parkinson's disease, and I am just talking about in Minnesota there.

This was retroactive; it happened overnight. Hospitals are left struggling. Big research hospitals like the University of Minnesota and the Mayo Clinic are suddenly looking at massive cuts to their research.

They have trials for important, you know, treatments and cures for serious diseases that are suddenly thrown into chaos, and you have individuals who are part of those trials who are hopeful that they are going to be getting--they are hopeful that, in some way, that this is going to help them to find a cure for what disease is ailing them.

And with this cut to NIH funding, overnight massive cuts, what does that mean for people's health and safety and security? It means people are less well-off. National Institutes of Health is under the umbrella of the Department of Health and Human Services, the organization that Mr. Kennedy is asking Congress to provide advice and consent on.

Again, I have no confidence. In fact, I am sure that Mr. Kennedy would be an enabler to President Trump's power grab here and his undermining, along with Elon Musk, his undermining of this extremely important research that helps us be healthy, helps us find the treatments and the cures for the diseases that are a threat to all of us.

So I see my colleague from Massachusetts is here. I know she has an important perspective on this, with Massachusetts being another--as is Minnesota--another center of research and education and medical education, and I suspect that we agree with one another when it comes to the threat that Robert F. Kennedy poses to all of our health and well-being.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the following fellows in my office be granted floor privileges for the remainder of the 1st session of the 119th Congress: Mary Fernandes, Sarah Goldman, Adam Hasz, and Alyssa Rudelis.

Mr. President, I rise today--I just want to thank my colleague Senator Schatz for his clear-eyed description of what is happening right now and how that connects to this nomination that is before the Senate right now, the nomination for Mr. Vought.

So I rise today to join my colleagues in calling out the threat that Russell Vought poses to our system of government. As Senator Schatz says, this is not about liking or not liking what Mr. Vought has written, what he stands for, what he has tried to do, what his policy positions are, although I clearly

disagree with those; this is about whether or not we are going to abide by the systems of law in this country that say that we have a separation of powers and that the power of the Senate and Congress, the power of the purse that rests in the Senate and the Congress--that we keep that power.

That is an institutional prerogative that I think is on the line today with this vote, and that is why my colleagues and I are going to be using the full 30 hours of debate in order to really make this point clearer to the American people.

But I will tell you, Mr. President, that Minnesotans are waking up to this, and they are not happy. In the last week, thousands of Minnesotans have called or written my office about the unprecedented chaos that is occurring at Federal Agencies and programs in Minnesota-- and they can see it as well across the country--which has come from Elon Musk and from President Trump but is rooted in Russell Vought's dangerous Project 2025--Donald Trump and Russell Vought's dangerous Project 2025. These ideas are dangerous, they are unconstitutional, and they are already hurting real people.

The funding freeze that was announced last week is straight from Russell Vought's 2025 plans, and that is one of the many reasons I am going to be opposing him when we vote on this ultimately tomorrow.

Whether this freeze is frozen, whether it is temporarily blocked in court, or whether it is still in effect is in some ways beside the point because I think that the point here is to create chaos. The real point right now is that people are feeling this pain. They are concerned. They are scared. And for what? Why is this happening? It is to test out Russell Vought's extreme and dangerous ideas and see how far they can take it.

That is what we will be voting on. We are going to be voting on the man who is behind all of this chaos.

I know my colleague Senator Schumer is going to be speaking in just a couple of minutes, but let me just go for a second about what this means for Minnesotans.

For Minnesotans, a Federal funding freeze means life or death, seriously. The administration's list of frozen programs covers people's most basic needs--food, shelter, medicine, safe drinking water.

I have heard from thousands of Minnesotans who are terrified of what this means for their families. The Senate phone lines--colleagues, I think we all know this--have been overwhelmed to a breaking point this week because of people who have been so outraged by Elon Musk and Trump's actions. This is creating torment and real concern and real pain for real families and leaving them wondering what this is all going to mean for them tomorrow.

The scope of Vought's Project 2025 and the funding freeze that it inspired is so broad that I don't think there is a single person in this country who won't be impacted in some way, direct or indirect. This is not going to be good for anyone. Americans, it is true to say, are less safe today than they were last Monday before this funding freeze.

The freeze has put our most fundamental and essential services in this country in limbo. What does this look like in Minnesota? It means that counterterrorism programs, programs to combat human and drug trafficking, programs to fight child sex trafficking--all of those were covered by this freeze. LIHEAP, which is a program that helps keep heat on for low-income families in Minnesota, that is what has been at stake. It was minus 12 degrees in International Falls last night, to give you an idea what this means in the whole North Country of Minnesota.

I also want to just acknowledge that what it means for food assistance and clean water projects is also a real and specific impact and pain that people in Minnesota are feeling.

I have a few letters I am ready to receive, but I am going to yield to the Senate minority leader, Senator Schumer from New York, so he can tell us what this means for the people of New York and the whole country.

Mr. President, I would like to thank my colleague from Oregon for his remarks. As he serves as ranking member of the Finance Committee, I know that he is always thinking about how our tax system is working for regular people in this country and how we make sure that it is fair, that it is funding the critical services that we have, and that we are not putting the burden on regular people and letting billionaires and big corporations off the hook.

So I just want to thank you for your words. I was listening closely to what you were saying, and I think it is very important in this moment that we hear this.

Colleagues, we have been up all night long. It is a quarter to 9, I think, in Washington, DC. It is 7:30 or a quarter to 8 in Minnesota, where my family is. My grandchildren are just about getting up and getting ready for school. I think we are going to get some snow in Minnesota this morning. And in New Mexico, where my 95-year-old father lives, it is only about 6:45 in the morning, and he is probably thinking about getting up.

Senator Wyden, in your home State of Oregon, it is only about a quarter to 6.

Every place around this country, people are getting up, and they may be noticing that we have kept the Senate in session all night long. They may be wondering what this is all about and why we are doing this and what impact this has on their lives.

Because, after all, we are talking about the nomination of a man-- Russell Vought--to lead something called the OMB. I would guess that a lot of people in this country don't even really know what the OMB is.

The Office of Management and Budget oversees Federal Agencies' performance and administers the Federal budget. It sounds pretty innocuous, right? It is not anything that you should be too worried about. It seems like the role of this Agency would be to make sure that the laws that are passed by Congress are implemented; that the Federal budget, which is the purview of Congress, is implemented in a way that reflects what the representatives of the people of this country asked and expected.

So, colleagues and those who are listening, we are here today because what is happening with this nomination of Russell Vought, this confirmation that we are going to be taking up at some point, later today, kind of masked in this innocuous OMB, is actually one of the biggest power grabs that I think we have ever seen in the history of our country--a massive power grab by the executive to seize power that rightly, as described in the Constitution, belongs to Congress, because what Mr. Vought and Donald Trump and Elon Musk have proposed is that, with Russell Vought leading the Office of Management and Budget, they can just pretty much ignore what Congress has said we should do with the Federal budget.

So I want to just spend a little bit of time talking about what that means and talking about what it means for you if you are here on the east coast or if you are in the Midwest, where my family is, or in the Southwest, where my father is, or any place in this country. What does that mean to you as you are getting up this morning? Because

we have seen--we don't have to hypothesize what this means with Russell Vought leading the OMB, with Elon Musk running rampant throughout the Federal Government, what this nomination means and why we need to oppose it. Because we can see it--it is right there in front of our eyes because they have already started to implement their plans, the plans that are laid out in Project 2025.

I say this to my colleague from Oregon, I was just looking at the latest news just to give us an idea of what this really means. Here is a quote from a lawyer in the Washington Post. This is part of a Washington Post story that posted this morning. This is not some radical, progressive lawyer who said this. This is Ty Cobb, who served in the first Trump administration. He says what is going on here today with this vote nomination, especially with Elon Musk, he says:

It's a naked power grab consistent with what Trump's

advisers have persuaded him to do, which is to flood the zone

with as much unconstitutional activity as possible, with the

hope that they get away with some or all of it.

Now, this is Ty Cobb, who has served as White House lawyer during Trump's first term.

I offer that up as sort of a preamble to my remarks because I think it shows that even Republican lawyers can identify that what is happening here with the Trump administration and with this nomination of Russell Vought is a naked power grab, to seize power from the representatives elected by the people of this country and Congress and to concentrate it in the White House in the hands of Elon Musk and Russell Vought in order for them just to run rampant over our constitutional system.

As I said, you don't have to just believe me when you hear what I am telling you because we can see them already start this process.

Last week, in the Trump administration, we could see that they hurt real people in my State, in the State of Oregon, in the State of Florida, by creating this unprecedented chaos in Federal Agencies and programs, all based on the blueprint of Project 2025. And Russell Vought, whose nomination the Senate is considering today, is the architect of that blueprint.

I think you could see that his ideas are dangerous; they are unconstitutional; and they are already causing real harm to people.

In just the 2 weeks since President Trump has been in office--I guess it is 2\1/2\ weeks at this point--what he has done is he has attempted to freeze Federal funding that was authorized and appropriated by Congress. That is our job.

Whether this freeze right now--whether it is still frozen, whether it has been enjoined or temporarily blocked by the courts, whether the administration has turned on the funding spigots in some places and not in others, as my colleague from Oregon has said, it has created massive confusion.

I know in Minnesota, some people say the money is coming again, as it should be, constitutionally. Others are saying it isn't. None of that really matters in this moment, as we consider this nomination, because I do believe, as Ty Cobb said, that the chaos is the point--creating the chaos is the point. Hurting people right now, that is the impact of that.

So what we are doing is we are seeing what Russell Vought's extreme and dangerous ideas mean and how far they are willing to take this.

Think about this for a minute. In Minnesota, my home State, where a Federal funding freeze is truly life or death, the administration's list of programs that they have frozen or want to freeze covers most basic needs for a lot of people: food, shelter, medicine, and safe drinking water.

I have heard from thousands of Minnesotans who are terrified about what this means. The Senate phone lines, the phone lines into my office, over this last week--and I suspect that this has been the case for many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle--have been overwhelmed by people calling in and basically saying: What is happening here? How could this be happening? I am worried that I am not going to get my Social Security check. I am worried that the organization that I run to provide domestic shelter for women who are the victims of domestic violence is going to have to shut down. I am worried that the services that we provide to people who are resettling in Minnesota--often, this is done by faith organizations in my home State--I am worried that we are not going to be able to do those things.

Our phone lines have been overwhelmed with stories like that.

I would have to say, colleagues, there is just a level of outrage and just furiousness that I haven't seen for a long time because people can see that this is having an impact.

People call my office who voted for Vice President Harris. People call my office who voted for Donald Trump. But I am not seeing here a distinction. What I am seeing is even people who voted for President Trump are saying: This is not what I voted for. This is not the vision that I had for my country. This is not the campaign that I voted for to lower the cost of groceries--or, you know, even many of the things that I completely disagree with with the President.

This is actually having an impact on real families and people and hurting them. And where is this going to lead from here?

I think the scope of the Trump and Vought Project 2025 and the funding freeze that it has inspired is so broad that I don't think there is a single person in this country who wouldn't be impacted in some way, either directly or indirectly, and I don't think it will be good for anyone.

I also just detect, colleagues--from the calls that I am getting in, it is easy to see--easy to see from all the calls coming into my office that Americans are feeling a lot less safe and a lot less secure than they did last Monday before this all unfolded, before this funding freeze that was described and is now being implemented--was described by Project 2025 and Russell Vought and now is being implemented, is happening. People do not feel as safe today. And they know the reason why is that this freeze has put our most fundamental and essential services in limbo.

In Minnesota, cities have been notified that their Federal funds to help pay law enforcement salaries are subject to the freeze. To give you an idea of what impact this has, counterterrorism coordination programs, programs to combat human and sex and drug trafficking, and programs to fight child sex trafficking have all been covered by this-- it is really a funding cut, to be honest. It is like suddenly you had the money, and now you don't have the money anymore to do these things. That feels like a cut if you are looking at your organization and what you are trying to accomplish.

So what does that mean if you are the victim of a violent crime? The Federal program that helps you to recover from that, to get restitution--those services have been frozen. If you are the survivor of sexual violence or domestic violence, you don't have the same access to a safe place to be. You are less safe because of Russell Vought and Donald Trump and Elon Musk. This should be worrying to every single one of us Americans, whether or not you are in that specific situation or whether you just have some compassion and care for folks that are in that terrible situation.

Vought and Trump's funding freeze has also endangered, as I said, the survivors of domestic and sexual violence. Without these services, which are supported by Federal tax dollars, survivors will have no place to go. Domestic violence shelters truly save lives, and any delay or freeze in Federal grant funding means that those services--provided, for example, by Alexandra House or the Southern Valley Alliance in Minnesota--will have huge impacts. The survivors who count on those places to go--sometimes with their children--to be safe will be much, much less safe.

Colleagues, I have heard from one domestic violence organization in Minnesota which gets 70 percent of their funding from Federal grants. Think about that organization. Even a short delay in reimbursements will mean that they have to lay off their counselors and other folks that work there and stop services. These are not organizations that have millions of dollars in their bank account; they live hand to mouth. They are providing services as they are able to get the funds to do it.

If we allow Russell Vought and Donald Trump and Elon Musk to continue

this, it is not just these organizations that suffer; it is the individuals that count on them. I think--I know that many folks would find themselves in life-threatening situations as a result.

I can see from what is happening in Minnesota that the freeze is also creating serious strain on our healthcare system. Even if you don't use a community health center yourself, the freeze of their funding could make it harder for you to get access to timely care.

Throughout the country, there is an incredible network of community health centers that provide primary care to moms and children. Many of these facilities are providing not only physical healthcare but mental health care, which I think we all know is lifesaving.

People count on this network of community health centers to get their basic care. That might be you or it might be somebody who lives in your community or it might be--you never may know somebody who goes there. But here is why this affects you if you are waking up in Minneapolis or New Mexico, where my dad is, or Oregon, where Senator Wyden is from, or New Jersey, where Senator Booker is from. If folks don't have those community health centers to go to, where are they going to go when they get sick? The funding freeze is not going to freeze sickness. A funding freeze is not going to freeze injury. It only freezes the places where people who are experiencing those things can go to get help. So what are they going to do instead? They are going to go to emergency rooms. Right now in Minnesota, emergency rooms are packed full of people who have the flu, who have RSV, who have norovirus.

Community health centers are a source of huge relief to emergency rooms because it creates a place for people to go who need urgent care. If they are not there, what is going to happen is that those individuals are going to do the only thing they can do, which is to flood emergency rooms.

So if you get your primary health insurance through Medicaid, for example--just remember, colleagues, that is about 45 percent of all moms who are delivering babies; it is maybe roughly 40 percent of all children in this country who get their health insurance through Medicaid. If you can't go to one of those community health centers, then you are going to end up in the ER.

In Minnesota, there are 170,000 people who could lose, with these funding freezes, their access to healthcare. That means 170,000 people who are going to end up in emergency rooms, and that is going to affect all of us. That is going to affect the health and safety of all of us. It is going to put huge stress on hospitals and be, again, another example of how Russell Vought and Donald Trump and Elon Musk are actually, in their actions, right now, today, making all of us less safe, less secure.

Last Tuesday, I heard from community health centers that were preparing to furlough workers by the end of the day as these funding freezes were sifting through the news and getting to them directly.

I think it is important to understand that, yes, the courts did issue sort of a short-term reprieve or rescission to stop that, but those organizations are still trying to decide in real time what they can do and how they can move forward.

This morning, I was listening on the radio to organizations that said they had to furlough people when those freezes came into place and even when they were temporarily lifted. Now they are in the process of trying to figure out how to bring those people back, and every minute that goes by, that is wasted energy and effort and time.

I think about my Republican colleagues who say that they want to see efficiency, that they want to see government run like a business. Yet these kinds of just outrageous, unpredictable, chaotic funding freezes and then unfrozen and back and forth are the epitome of inefficiency. And who bears the price of that? Who bears the price of this Russell Vought strategy to try to do this big power grab away from Congress and not following the laws that Congress passed? The organizations that are serving Minnesotans and Americans are paying the price, and ultimately Americans are paying the price for that every single day. Every minute that goes by in which the threat of rescinded or withheld funding is still out there, there are real consequences for people.

Across the country, we are facing a very real health threat, public health threat, when it comes to avian flu. This is another example of how Russell Vought and Donald Trump and Elon Musk are, in real time, hurting the health and safety of Minnesotans and Americans.

In Minnesota, farmers and producers understand the impacts of avian flu better than anyone else. Minnesota is the largest Turkey producer in the State. We also have large dairy herds, big food processing facilities. It is very important to our economy, important to tens and tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of economic activity in Minnesota.

Right now, Minnesota farmers and producers are grappling with the avian influenza. Last year, the bird flu jumped from poultry to livestock, and then it jumped from livestock to humans. So this is something we have to pay a lot of attention to. It is something that could be extremely concerning. This is something that the Federal Government has to take seriously to prevent a real crisis--an economic crisis and a public health crisis.

By the way, colleagues, if you are wondering why the price of eggs has gone up so much in the last month or so, several months or so, this is why. It is because over 100 million birds have been culled from flocks all across the country because of avian influenza. Yet what has Russell Vought done? What would Russell Vought do? What has Donald Trump done? What is Elon Musk doing to address this problem? Well, the programs that support my State's and your States' public health infrastructure, those programs were included in this freeze.

On top of that, the communications blackout that also happened in the very early days of the Trump administration as part of this Russell Vought-Project 2025 agenda--there was a communications blackout from all Federal health Agencies, which also applies, by the way, to their communications with Congress. All of the work that was happening-- nonpartisan work, nonpolitical work, all of that work that was happening--communications about this really concerning public health threat of avian influenza, that was all stopped.

Now what I am hearing reports of from my friends and colleagues back home in Minnesota is that they are seeing this public health data, which is very important to fighting the avian flu--some of that data has been removed from government websites. It is like they are trying to erase it. Who knows why this is. Maybe there was some mention of the word ``inclusion'' in what was in those public health reports, and so they got scrubbed. Who knows. Who knows why that is. But that is another example, colleagues, of how this sort of strategy of Russell Vought and Project 2025 and Donald Trump is hurting our health, because, I can tell you, we would all be better off if we had access to that public health data so that we could understand what was going on and what is happening.

We are supposed to be doing surveillance on the avian flu so that we know where it is going, what other flocks it might be infecting, whether we are seeing additional jumps to humans, what humans are infected. Yet Russell Vought's plans are putting all of us at risk. He is making all of us less safe in this circumstance.

I know my colleague from New Jersey is going to be ready to speak in just a few minutes, and so I will just touch on maybe one or two other examples of what is happening in Minnesota as a result of the Project 2025 plan, Donald Trump's plans, and why opposing Russell Vought's nomination is so important.

Minnesota is in the far north part of this country, as many of you know. It can get cold in Minnesota, and yesterday it got down to minus 12 degrees in International Falls. We are in the dead of winter in Minnesota.

There is a great effort that we have long had--often has had bipartisan support--which helps keep the heat on for low-income families when it gets really cold outside. The idea, which is so obvious to me, is that if it is in the wintertime and you are having trouble paying your heating bill, you ought to be able

to get a bridge, working with your utility, so that the heat doesn't get turned off, so that your kids aren't cold in the dead of winter, so that you can stay in your home rather than moving to a shelter, so that you are able to have a safe place to call home.

This program is called LIHEAP. I won't tell you what the acronyms are because I never remember the acronyms myself. But it is a very important way to make sure that people can stay in their homes and can stay warm when it gets really cold outside in places like International Falls in Minnesota. Yet this program, LIHEAP, was subject to the funding freeze that was put into place a couple of weeks ago by Donald Trump, part of Russell Vought's Project 2025 plan.

I will close with this. This funding freeze also has put Minnesotans at risk of going hungry. Food is already expensive. I was talking about the price of eggs and the avian flu and the dangers to our public safety with the funding freeze getting at putting out public health information. But what about bringing down the price of groceries, which, I think, if you voted for Donald Trump, that might have been what was in your mind as you decided you were going to vote for him.

Well, in this country today, more than 47 million people experience hunger. They don't always know where their next meal is going to come from. They are not sure how they are going to be able to feed their children dinner as well as breakfast. One in five children live in families where that is their circumstance.

And some of the most, you know--the people that we care about the most, seniors, children, folks that are working hard and working in low-income--have low-wage jobs, so they depend on Federal nutrition assistance to meet their basic needs. And, of course, these programs don't just provide food, they are a real lifeline for families as they are working to get ahead, to work their way up, to get to where they want to be.

A great example of this is Meals on Wheels, which is about making sure that seniors have a warm meal, but it also is about more than that. It is about social connection and dealing with issues of loneliness and isolation, which so sadly afflicts so many of our elders in our country.

And this is something that works really well; it has been in place for a long time. It is not a red issue or a blue issue; it is not a rural issue or an urban issue. It is something that makes a huge, huge difference.

And so what is happening, Colleagues, is that every community in this country has members who need help, have people who need help feeding their families, and Russell Vought is working to take that help away.

So I started out by talking about how people in this country are waking up in the morning and wondering why they should care about who runs the Office of Management and Budget, the somewhat innocuous- sounding Agency which oversees Federal Agency performance and administers the Federal budget.

And I hope that in these comments, I have laid out just a few of the ways that this nomination of Russell Vought could have a clear impact on your life, on your safety, on your security, because his extreme agenda is anathema to how we should be running this country, and it is anathema to the basic belief that this country is founded on, the basic structure that we have, which is that Congress, the elected representatives of the people of this country, make decisions about how we are going to spend your precious tax dollars. And then it is the job of the office of OMB to make sure that those intentions are followed through in the Federal Government.

And what Russell Vought wants to do is to turn that on its head. He says: I don't care what Congress said. I don't care what your representatives voted for in Congress. I am going to do it my way.

And that is the most blatant power grab counter to your interests that I have ever seen.

And this is why, Colleagues, it is so important that we oppose the nomination of Russell Vought.

I yield the floor.

For the Minnesotans who depend on Meals on Wheels, I vote no.

Mr. President, I rise today with my colleagues Senator Murray and Senator Schumer and Senator Durbin and my close colleague from Minnesota Senator Klobuchar and others to stand up for women and for doctors in my home State of Minnesota and around the country.

And I just want to appreciate Senator Durbin for raising Cecile Richards, who was a dear friend of mine and someone who I worked with closely when I worked at Planned Parenthood. And I was thinking about something that Cecile often pointed to. She would quote the great American poet, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and this poet would say: It is not one damn thing after another. It is the same damn thing over and over again.

And here we have that being shown on the Senate floor. Once again Republicans are here introducing this bill--not to talk about what we can do to lower prices for Americans, not to talk about how we can lower the cost of housing, or how to help people's lives become more affordable.

Instead, one of the very first bills that they are putting forward is for a vote in service of a national abortion ban that, I can tell you, the people in Minnesota do not want, the people in America have made it abundantly clear that they do not want. And I guess the nicest thing you could say about this is that it is out of touch with where Americans are.

But let's talk about it a little bit more because I think it is important that we fight some of the myths and the disinformation that this legislation promotes.

What this bill would do, it would put Congress and politicians in the middle of personal medical decisions that patients and doctors should be able to make together without political interference. It would override physicians' professional judgments about what is best for their patients, and it would put physicians in the position of facing criminal penalties if their judgment about what is best for their patients goes against what is described in this bill.

So, colleagues, let's be clear. At the core of the debate here is whether or not we trust women to make the very best decisions for themselves and their families. And in difficult medical, challenging, often tragic, medical situations, should women and their physicians be making decisions about their lives and their health--often their very lives--or is this about politics?

And I think Americans say this is not about politics. Politics should stay out of it.

I know that everybody on this floor has talked to their own constituents who have experienced what really happens for women who are needing abortion care later in their pregnancy. These stories are inevitably heartbreaking and tragic, and they each are individual and unique. Every situation is different. But they always are about women and families that are thrilled to be pregnant. In some cases, as my colleagues have said, they have already picked out a name. They have decorated the nursery. They have planned a baby shower. But it becomes clear, as the pregnancy progresses, the devastating news that this child is not going to survive. And in some cases, the mother's life is also at risk; her health, her ability to have children in the future are at risk.

And as I said, every situation is going to be unique because everyone is going to have a different diagnosis, different personal histories, different family circumstances, and that means everybody is going to need to have their own individual care. But what every single one of these women have in common is that each one of them deserves the dignity and the autonomy and the freedom to be able to make those decisions, make their own medical decisions, without a bunch of politicians getting in the way.

But let's be really clear here. Women are not waking up in the last weeks of their pregnancy just to change their mind about that pregnancy. I mean, how disrespectful of women is that attitude? Because these are terrible situations where something has gone catastrophically wrong. They are not just changing their minds. They are doing everything they can to take care of themselves and their families.

You know, I know that in this country, we don't tell oncologists how to treat their patients. We don't tell emergency room doctors what they need to do in any specific circumstances to save lives, and we shouldn't be telling women's doctors how to take care of their patients.

But, colleagues, that is what this bill does. It would give politicians in this room a seat in the doctor's offices and in the ERs with women all over this

country. And that has an intimidating impact on providers who are already desperately trying to keep their head down and do their jobs while operating under the chaos that has erupted after the Supreme Court overturned Roe.

So, colleagues, this should be about treating women with respect. We should be all in agreement that decisions about women's healthcare aren't different from decisions about men's healthcare or anyone's healthcare. So why would we be treating women differently?

Colleagues, let's get out of the business of dictating medical care for women. Let's trust women and their doctors.

I urge my colleagues to oppose this legislation.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to enter the following letter into the Congressional Record, on behalf of Ms. Klobuchar and myself. The material follows:

To the Family and Friends of Kari Dziedzic: Our thoughts

are with you and everyone who knew and loved Kari. As we are

in Washington this week, we will be submitting this letter to

the Congressional Record in Kari's honor.

Like all of you, we were both lucky enough to call Kari a

friend and saw firsthand how she met people where they are to

get big things done for our state. She governed with

strength, calm, and grace, always seeking solutions over

soundbites.

Serving others came naturally to Kari--you could say it was

in her blood. Her dad, the late Walt Dziedzic, was a

Minneapolis legend in his own right who taught her the

importance of public service. She carried those lessons with

her, emerging from the rough-and-tumble world of old-school

Northeast Minneapolis politics and carving out her own path

as a leader who earned the respect of leaders from both sides

of the aisle.

It was because of her ability to listen to others, bridge

divides, and focus on results that her colleagues chose her

to serve as Majority Leader. Her leadership improved lives

across the state. And although her tragic cancer diagnosis

forced her to step down from her position last year, her

impact will be felt for generations to come:

Every new parent who takes paid leave to care for their

child can thank Kari Dziedzic.

Every worker who has taken earned sick and safe time can

thank Kari Dziedzic.

And every kid who no longer has to go hungry at school can

thank Kari Dziedzic.

In describing her approach to public service, Kari quoted

her former boss the late Senator Paul Wellstone in saying,

``we all do better when we all do better.'' That principle

was clear in everything she did, and there is no question

that we are all better off for having had her in our lives.

Our state is better because of Kari Dziedzic. As you come

together today to celebrate her life, know that our prayers

are with you at this difficult time.

Sincerely,

Amy Klobuchar,

United States Senator.

Tina Smith,

United States Senator.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to enter the following letter into the Congressional Record, on behalf of Ms. Klobuchar and myself. The material follows:

To the Family and Friends of Mary Murphy: Our thoughts are

with you and everyone who knew and loved Mary. As we are in

Washington this week, we will be submitting this letter to

the Congressional Record in Mary's honor.

Mary was a beloved daughter of Northern Minnesota who went

from her childhood home in Hermantown all the way to the

State Capitol, where she would go on to become the longest-

serving woman in the history of the Minnesota House.

Before that, though, she was a social studies and history

teacher, and she carried that spirit with her to the state

legislature. Her work was proof that history is not only a

record of what has been, but a roadmap for what can be.

Having grown up under the New Deal during the Great

Depression, she saw firsthand that public service had the

power to lift people up. Throughout her nearly half a century

in the state legislature, Mary fought to do exactly that.

They may not know it, but countless Minnesotans have felt

her impact in one way or another:

Every barber, waiter, and bartender who earns the full

state minimum wage can thank Mary Murphy.

Every student at Fond du Lac Tribal College can thank Mary

Murphy.

And every kid who participates in Head Start, ECFE, or

Youthworks can thank Mary Murphy.

That's barely scratching the surface. Mary improved the

lives of Minnesotans from all walks of life--and for years,

she did it while often being one of the only women at the

table in Northern Minnesota. Because of her leadership, that

has changed, but in so many ways, she was ahead of her time.

As her friend and colleague Erin Murphy has said, Mary ``was

a trailblazer in every way that you could imagine.''

Our state is better because of Mary. As you come together

today to celebrate her life, know that our prayers are with

you at this difficult time.

Sincerely,

Amy Klobuchar,

United States Senator.

Tina Smith,

United States Senator.

Mr. President, I rise today to honor Robin Philips, who is retiring after over two decades of leadership at the Advocates For Human Rights.

Robin was on the organization's delegation to document violence against women in Romania in 1994. She then founded the Advocates' Women's Human Rights Program, one of the first in the United States. Robin's work has been revolutionary in ensuring recognition for women's human rights as human rights and developing a partner-based methodology.

The Advocates is committed to human rights work built on partnerships with, and led by, individuals impacted by human rights violations. Volunteers are at the heart of the Advocates' work, with thousands of supporters contributing their time to legal services, fact-finding, advocacy, outreach, and operational support.

Under Robin's leadership, the Advocates has provided pro bono legal counsel to more than 7,000 noncitizen victims of persecution, torture, trafficking, prolonged detention, and family violence. She has made Minnesota a leader in anti-human trafficking efforts by advocating for our Safe Harbor For Sexually Exploited Youth Act and for expanding the State's criminal statute to protect more people from labor trafficking and provide permanent State funding for victims.

As executive director, Robin has also greenlit transitional justice projects in Peru, Sierra Leone, and Liberia. She supervised work with partners worldwide to abolish the death penalty. More than two-thirds of countries in the world have now abolished the death penalty in law or in practice. Robin has also been deeply committed to the Advocates' Nepal School Project, which has provided education as an alternative to child labor, serving over 1,000 low-income Nepali students. These achievements are highlights of Robin's impact on our State and world.

Congratulations on your well-earned retirement, Robin, and best of luck in your next chapter.

Madam President, northern Minnesota is home to some of the most beautiful and valuable forestlands in the Nation.

As a Minnesota Senator, my job is to make sure that northern Minnesota communities are treated fairly when it comes to taxes, and that is what this bill is about that I am here to speak about today. It is a very particular Minnesota issue that doesn't affect any other State, but it is extremely important to us.

For decades, the bipartisan Thye-Blatnik Act has ensured that Lake County, Cook County, and St. Louis County in Minnesota receive a vital source of revenue in exchange for hosting Federal wilderness lands. Thye-Blatnik is unique from other similar laws around the country in that the Federal Government makes payments to counties depending on appraisals that are conducted every 10 years by the U.S. Forest Service. And for decades, everything has worked just great.

But then, in 2018, because of unusual circumstances, the regular appraisal led to almost a 50-percent cut in the Thye-Blatnik payments to the counties, and this created a big hardship for the residents in these small-population rural counties that do not have a big tax base because so much of their land is tied up in national forestland and wilderness areas.

Many of my colleagues on this floor represent counties like this and understand the challenges of providing essential services like road maintenance and public safety in these communities. So without the action in my bill today, communities in northern Minnesota would face a serious budget crunch.

Since 2018, I went to work with Senator Klobuchar and Republican Congressman Pete Stauber, from Minnesota's Eighth District, to figure out how to fix the problem. We worked with the Biden administration and the Trump administration to find a fix. And while everyone agrees that the problem needs to be fixed, no one can figure out how to do this administratively. That is why we need this bill. It is a technical fix that will go a long way toward helping rural Minnesota counties.

This bill would make sure that future Thye-Blatnik payments don't go down because of the vagaries of appraisals that no one has any control over. It is a simple bill. It is not controversial. It is bipartisan. And, as I said, it doesn't affect any other State or county in the country. But, of course, to these three counties in Minnesota, it is a real lifeline.

Without action, this vital source of revenue, which supports services like emergency management and road maintenance, will decrease. So I am asking for Congress to get this done.

So, Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 5595, which was introduced earlier today.

I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read three times and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

Madam President, I now rise in support of my friend Patrice Kunesh, who was nominated to serve as Chair of the National Indian Gaming Commission.

Patrice is a descendant of the Standing Rock Lakota and is currently commissioner of the Administration for Native Americans at the Department of Health and Human Services and a distinguished and highly qualified public servant. Her current role at the Administration for Native Americans is just the latest role in her lifetime of service to Indian Country.

In addition to Federal service at the Departments of the Interior, Agriculture, Justice, and the Minneapolis Federal Reserve, she has worked for the Native American Rights Fund, in-house for the Mashantucket Pequot Tribe, and in academia.

The last time she was nominated for a Senate-concerned position, she received strong bipartisan support.

Madam President, I have been hearing from Tribal leaders in Minnesota and around the country about the importance of confirming Patrice Kunesh to be the NIGC Chair. To them, her confirmation isn't a partisan issue, nor should it be; it is about securing strong leadership at a body created to advance Tribe sovereignty and economic self- determination.

NIGC is responsible for regulating Tribal gaming, and it has been without a Chair since February. Patrice is eminently qualified, she is experienced, and she is ready to serve Indian Country.

So therefore, Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that, as in executive session, the Senate consider the following nomination: Calendar 841, Patrice H. Kunesh, of Minnesota, to be Chairman of the National Indian Gaming Commission for the term of three years; that the Senate vote on the nomination without intervening action or debate; that, if confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, I want to say that I understand that Senator Heinrich from New Mexico has concerns about the Pilot Butte Power Plant Conveyance Act, and I share his concerns.

The Eastern Shoshone and the Northern Arapahoe Tribes are rightfully concerned about the lack of official Federal Government to Tribal consultation on this proposal which would directly impact their reservation. I know that one of our most fundamental responsibilities as a body is to honor our trust and treaty obligations to Tribal nations and to uphold that government-to-government relationship.

I want to say that I appreciate Senator Barrasso's work with my colleagues on these land bills, and I am not objecting to any others of them. However, I urge that we have the Tribal consultation that should be appropriately conducted on this bill; therefore, I object to the passage of H.R. 3415.

Mr. President, I have a little bit of a beef here with Senator Brown because right before he spoke, I admonished him to try not to choke up during his speech, and, of course, this was a fool's errand. It was like asking the Sun not to shine; and, of course, it was highly predictable that what would cause that gravelly voice of his to get even more of a catch in it was when he was talking about his family and also about his staff--his work family.

The very first time I met Sherrod, I could see that this was a man with a huge heart and tons of energy.

I recognized in you, Sherrod, the Midwest populism that I come from, from the Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party.

I sit in the seat that was once held by Paul Wellstone, as you know, who famously said, ``When we all do better, we all do better.'' I know that has been the guiding light of your service.

There are plenty of people here in Washington watching out for the rich people, the powerful people, and the big corporations, but you have always been our guide in watching out for everybody else, the people who actually make this country work.

I saw this firsthand when you and I worked together on one piece of legislation--the Butch Lewis Act--to basically say that hard-working folks who earned their pensions, who lost their pensions through no fault of their own, deserve to be able to retire with dignity. This is, of course, one of the most important promises of organized labor--a fair wage, safe working conditions, and to be able to retire with dignity. Because of your work, I had a chance to see what that really meant for people.

I will never forget one of the first meetings I did when I first was a U.S. Senator. I went up to Duluth, MN, an old industrial community on the shores of Lake Superior. It is a beautiful community--probably not unlike Mansfield--that in some ways had seen better days, as the shipping out of jobs happened and affected them. I talked to some of those hard-working teamsters, retired teamsters, about the importance of their pension and what we were doing, what I was doing with Sherrod Brown to help to protect their pensions.

I will never forget this one woman. She described to me what it meant that she had paid in, she had done everything right, and now she was running the risk of losing that. She said to me: Tina, that is my plan A, B, and C. I don't have another plan. My other plan is to live under a bridge.

That work, just that one piece of work that you did, that you led us on to make sure those pensions were there for folks, is a legacy that all of us can aspire to.

Throughout your career, you always made sure that, while so many others were watching out for the folks who already had it pretty good, the people who make this country work had a voice.

I, too, am wearing my canary pin today, and I think that your legacy in this body will be all of us who don't forget your work but continue it.

You know, the hope that we can do better, that there is more work ahead of us, and that we have the energy for fight--I mean, hope is an act of will; it is not an article of faith. It takes the will of all of us. I know that you have inspired in all of us in this Chamber--at least many of us--the will to continue to fight with hope and optimism that we will make this country live up to its full promise.

I can't wait to see what you do next. As you have famously said--and I will leave out some of the adjectives--you are not dying here, you are just going on to the next thing. I know those of us who have heard this story are grateful that on the floor of the Senate, I am only giving an abbreviated version.

I know I am one of many who love you very much and can't wait to see what you do next.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, on behalf of the majority leader, at 3:45 p.m. today, I ask the Chair to execute the order of November 20 with respect to the Dixon nomination.

Mr. President, I will wait for my colleague to receive her hugs of gratitude, and I have a few words I would like to say.

Mr. President, I wanted to just take a moment to add my thanks and congratulations to our colleague Senator Laphonza Butler.

You know, I look around this Chamber, and this is a Chamber that is filled with people who were once lawyers or Members of Congress, Governors or Lieutenant Governors--all incredibly fine and honorable professions--but there are not that many people in this room who came here because they were organizers. This is something that Senator Butler and I talked about when she first came to the Senate.

Now, organizers are different because we understand that the power of accomplishing important things comes certainly from our leadership and the work that we do, but fundamentally it comes from the people we work with every single day, the folks that are out there on the ground, living the lives and doing the work. If you understand that your power to do good work comes from those people, then you approach everything, every problem, from a different perspective.

I know this is where Senator Butler comes from as an organizer at SCIU and in her life, and I want to pay tribute to that because I think that kind of approach to problem-solving is something we can all learn from.

I have watched you in the short time you have been in the Senate-- only 14 months, which, in the life of many Senators, is barely a blink of an eye--and I watched you figure out how to organize in this Chamber for the good of the people you represent.

I noticed, Senator Butler, as you were preparing to give your opening remarks, that Senator Roger Wicker from Mississippi came up and gave you a big hug. This is our Senator who was born in Magnolia, MS. And I saw you start your building of a relationship with him on one of your very first days in the elevator when I was standing with you. That, I think, is a message and a lesson for all of us; that as you leave to go on to whatever you do next--and we can't wait to see what you do next-- we should all keep in mind the power of those relationships and building power to actually make a difference--make a difference in this world.

The last thing I want to say, as we say farewell to you--only in this Chamber but not in our lives--is that your constant reminding us and using your platform to lift up the voices, as you say, of ``now leaders''--we have a tendency sometimes--those of us who are 50, 60, 70, 80--to talk about the next generation of leaders and that ``Your time will come, and we will need you.''

You always speak of our young leaders in the present tense because they are the leaders that we need now.

So as I think about your service here in the Senate and the work that you have done, those are the two lessons that I will carry forward in my work in this Chamber. I offer this with much gratitude for your leadership both here in this Chamber, the work that you have done before, and the work I know you will continue to do. Thank you.

I yield the floor.

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