Floor Statements

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate resume legislative session and be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

Mr. President, I have five requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 3 p.m. on Monday, September 15; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, morning business be closed, and the Senate proceed to executive session and resume consideration of Executive Calendar No. 1, S. Res. 377; and notwithstanding rule XXII, at 5:30 p.m., all postcloture time be expired and the Senate vote on adoption of the resolution; and, further, following disposition of the resolution, the Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on Executive Calendar No. 366, Stephan Miran.

For the information of all Senators, Senators should expect two votes at 5:30 p.m. and further votes at approximately 8 p.m.

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order, following the remarks of Senator Cantwell.

Mr. President, when a criminal is convicted of a crime and locked away in prison, you would think that would put a stop to their illicit activity, but sadly, in too many tragic cases, criminals just continue their wicked ways behind bars. That is because tens of thousands of contraband cell phones are smuggled into and throughout prisons, enabling convicted criminals to carry on with their criminal business as usual from behind bars.

Contraband cell phones in prisons pose a severe threat to public safety. After all, these convicted criminals aren't using cell phones to order takeout, to check the weather, or to watch NFL highlights--no. They use contraband cell phones to order hits on criminal rivals, to traffic drugs, and to run extortion schemes.

Convicted criminals who are sitting in a prison cell shouldn't be able to endanger correctional officers, members of law enforcement, and innocent Americans outside of prisons by using contraband cell phones. If we opt to stand idly by, we might as well hand these criminals the keys to their prison cells.

That is why I have introduced again the Cellphone Jamming Reform Act--to allow State and Federal correctional facilities to use targeted cell phone jamming equipment in prison housing facilities. The key word here is ``targeted.'' The technology is so precise that it does not interrupt with the regular communications of law enforcement or emergency first responders in the vicinity.

However, there is more than one way to skin a cat, and at the end of the day, I simply care about delivering results for every Arkansan. That is why I am proud to support President Trump in his efforts to bring back law and order to neighborhoods and communities across our country. I applaud the Trump administration's efforts to crack down on crime and specifically Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr's announcement that the FCC will vote on a proposal allowing prisons to jam contraband cell phones for the first time. As I am sure many of my Republican colleagues and friends would agree, this action is both a welcome step forward and a long-overdue development.

For years, I have repeatedly urged Democrats to take action, but they didn't--instead, prioritizing and coddling criminals as usual. Consider that in the final hours of the Biden Presidency, Joe Biden commuted the sentences of nearly 1,500 convicted criminals, robbing hundreds of thousands of victims of the closure and justice they deserved. To be clear, these were not sympathetic figures; these were criminals, such as a drug dealer responsible for killing a relapsing addict; a fraudster who stole millions of dollars intended for hungry Arkansas kids and low-income families; and the so-called ``kids-for-cash'' judge, who accepted kickbacks in exchange for his role in sending thousands of children to private detention centers.

Sadly, that is not all. Last year, just 2 days before Christmas, Joe Biden announced he was commuting the death sentences of 37 depraved rapists and murderers. While we still don't know how many of these pardons were signed by Joe Biden and how many were signed by his radical aides using his autopen, this is a reminder that, unfortunately, the Democratic Party is the party of soft-on-crime.

As further evidence of this, consider the so-called George Floyd Justice in Policing Act, which would have handcuffed law enforcement instead of dangerous criminals. Further, consider that every single Soros prosecutor is a Democrat. Finally, consider that the jurisdictions with the worst crimes at the local level are all controlled by Democrats.

Now, you may have heard some Democrats argue that cities with the highest homicide rates are in Republican States, but look a little closer. In almost every case, those cities--like Jackson, MS; Birmingham, AL; and St. Louis, MO, are run by Democrats.

Look at Democrat-led Charlotte, NC. Just last month, an innocent, 23- year-old Ukrainian refugee was heinously murdered by a crazed career criminal while riding a light-rail train. Thanks, in part, to the soft- on-crime policies of the liberal former Governor, Roy Cooper, this deranged murderer had been arrested 14 times, had been convicted of crimes, including robbery with a dangerous weapon, and had assaulted his own sister. Yet he was still allowed to walk free and take the life of Iryna Zarutska.

I want to extend my condolences to her family and loved ones and assure them that we will pursue justice in her tragic case. President Trump and Republicans are working on behalf of innocent individuals like Iryna, who have a right to be safe and secure in their homes, neighborhoods, and communities.

Compare Charlotte to Washington, DC, where more than 1,900 arrests have been made and more than 200 illegal guns have been seized since President Trump deployed the National Guard and Federal law enforcement last month. While the Democratic DC Mayor admitted that President Trump's strategy is working, other Democratic leaders in places like Chicago and Baltimore are resisting assistance and putting up a big stink.

But let me remind everyone that Chicago mayor Brandon Johnson and Baltimore mayor Brandon Scott aren't the

ones riding public transportation alone after a long day at work like Iryna Zarutska. They aren't the ones clutching a bottle of pepper spray in their pocket as they wait for a bus to arrive at a stop on an empty street. They don't have to worry that their briefcase or purse will be ripped away from them as they walk to their car in a parking garage.

I would bet that many of the 81 percent of Americans who see crime as a major problem in large cities worry about some of these very real threats in their day-to-day lives. So I would invite the Democrats to wise up and join us on the right side of this issue: fighting crime and standing up for innocent Americans. I am pleased to stand with President Trump and my Republican colleagues to crack down on crime and ensure that every law-abiding American can live in safety, security, and freedom.

I object.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to waive the mandatory quorum call with respect to the Burch nomination.

I know of no further debate on the nominee.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, it is 2:20 on Saturday afternoon, not a usual time for the Senate to be in business, especially leading into the August State work period when Senators are home meeting with their constituents, hearing their concerns, sharing news about what was worked on. So you can say it is unusual, for sure, that we are here.

I want to take a brief trip down memory lane to explain why we are here for the benefit of Senators, especially Senators who haven't been here until recently, and for the benefit of our friends who are visiting in the Gallery.

We are here for one reason. We are here because of the actions of one man: Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader. We are here voting, as you have probably seen and wondered about, on a series of nominees. These are not household names. For some of you, you may not even have known the job existed. No offense. I am sure it is important to them and their parents.

But for over 200 years, these kind of nominees didn't get a vote on a procedural question and then 2 hours of debate and then another vote on confirmation; they were voice-voted or they were adopted by what is called unanimous consent of the Senate--for over 200 years.

You can see the evidence here in front of me on this chart. This is the percentage of civilian nominees who have been confirmed by voice vote or by unanimous consent going back to George Bush 41 and to the day of President Trump's second term, through about the first 6 months of the administration.

George Bush 41: 98 percent. Bill Clinton. Some people thought Bill Clinton's Presidency started at a more polarized time of politics. Nope. Ninety-eight percent for Bill Clinton as well. George W. Bush, Bush 43: Well, it is a 5X increase in the number of record votes we needed but still 90 percent.

I would note that Senator Schumer was elected in 1998. So he showed up here about 2 years before George W. Bush did.

Obama--despite the treatment of George W. Bush by the Democratic Senators--stayed steady, 90 percent. Ninety percent of all of Barack Obama's nominees through his first 6 months were confirmed by voice vote or unanimous consent.

Look at this huge drop here--from 90 percent with Barack Obama to not even two-thirds for Donald Trump in his first term.

And yes, it does decline by another 8 percent to Joe Biden. As is often said, what goes around comes around. The shoe will be on the other foot, and you might not like how it feels.

But look now at the unprecedented break from the customs of the Senate under these Senate Democrats and Chuck Schumer: from 57 percent to zero--zero--not a single one. Not a single nominee of Donald Trump's has been confirmed by voice vote or by unanimous consent in the first 6-plus months of his administration--a totally unprecedented blockade.

And we are not talking about the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of the Treasury. Again, we are talking about jobs like the Chief Counsel for Advocacy at the SBA. I would bet most of you didn't even know that job existed. They do important work, but does the Senate really need to spend 2 hours and two votes on it? I would suggest not, based on historical customs.

So when did this all start? Did it happen when TV cameras got in the Senate and Senators could come down here and perform for the TV camera? No. In fact, there are ample examples and precedent of highly controversial nominations not even requiring a 60-vote threshold.

Think about Clarence Thomas, maybe the best example--Clarence Thomas in 1991: The most consequential nomination we consider, a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States. One of the most, if not the most, controversial nominees in history because of the lies and calumnies that Democratic Senators made against him, I would add-- he was confirmed on a record vote of 52 to 48.

Now, you may say: Well, how did he get confirmed? He didn't have 60 votes. And that is because, as late as 1991, it was considered unprecedented for a Senator to require what we call a cloture motion--a motion to end debate at a 60-vote threshold on a nominee--on any nominee, to include a Supreme Court Justice.

Think about some of the Senators who were here in 1991 who could have, on their own accord, irrespective of the wishes of another 99 Senators, demanded that Clarence Thomas get 60 votes before he be confirmed: Teddy Kennedy, Robert Byrd, Joe Biden, John Kerry--lions of the Democratic Senate. Not a single one of them came down here and said: I want to demand a 60-vote threshold for Clarence Thomas.

Maybe there were conversations about it, but maybe people like Teddy Kennedy and Robert Byrd said: We don't do that. That is not the way things are done here--until 1999 when

Chuck Schumer shows up, and he and other liberals in the Senate and a bunch of liberal law professors begin circulating the idea: No, we should require 60-vote thresholds for nominees.

And then, a couple of years into the Bush administration, they began to demand it, most notably on nominees to the court of appeals for the DC Circuit and, most notably of all those, on Miguel Estrada, a young Latino lawyer that they were afraid George Bush was going to later elevate to be the first Latino on the Supreme Court.

They took unprecedented actions. And that, led by Chuck Schumer, is what brought us to this moment today. That is one reason why this says 90 percent and not 98 percent.

By 2013, Harry Reid, then-majority leader of the Senate, voted to change the rules of the Senate and said there will no longer be 60-vote thresholds on any office other than the Supreme Court. He did it right there at that desk. Mitch McConnell stood at that desk, then the Republican leader, and said: What goes around comes around. The shoe may be on the other foot, and it may be sooner than you might think. And sure enough, 4 years later, in 2017, Republicans used the Harry Reid precedent and extended it to the Supreme Court. So now Supreme Court nominees, as was the case throughout history, only require a simple majority vote.

And then the Democrats engaged in the dilatory practices that they are using now, which is why this number was at 65, to demand 30 hours of debate. And I say ``30 hours of debate'' in air quotes because nobody comes down here in those times and debates the nominee pending on the floor. They talk about climate change or they recognize someone celebrating their 100th birthday back home, but nobody comes down here and has a serious debate on the merits of a nominee.

So, in 2019, Republicans used the Harry Reid precedent again to cut time for debate for most offices in the sub-Cabinet--not for courts of appeal, not for Cabinet members, not for the Supreme Court--from 30 hours to 2 hours. And that is why we spend 2 hours in between each one of these votes.

But Democrats, having lost again last year in the White House and the Senate, have brought us to this point: zero nominees confirmed by voice vote or by unanimous consent, an unprecedented blockade, all traced back to Chuck Schumer's decision when he got into the Senate to break the norms, the practices, the traditions of the U.S. Senate.

Well, this is not going to stand for much longer. It is up to our Democratic friends to decide how they would like to proceed. Do they want to follow Chuck Schumer off the cliff? Because, if so, we will be happy to use the Harry Reid precedent again. We will eliminate 2 hours of debate time. We will eliminate motions to go in and out of executive session. We will eliminate cloture motions entirely for nominees that currently take 2 hours of debate.

For today, maybe we will make a motion to adjourn. And when the House returns and votes on that motion, then Donald Trump can appoint this backlog of more than 150 nominees in a recess appointment.

It is the Democrats' choice. They have a third choice. They could return to historical precedent. They could agree to voice vote today in the next few minutes--more than 150 nominees at this point, most of whom came out of our committee on a bipartisan basis, many of whom are nominated to offices that have literally never had a recorded vote on the floor of the U.S. Senate.

The question is up to the Democrats. Do you want to do this the easy way or do you want to do it the hard way? Because Republicans are prepared to finish what Chuck Schumer started 22 years ago, and what it will do is return the U.S. Senate to those practices, customs, and traditions that prevailed here from the 18th century to 2003 for both parties, for Presidents of both parties. I think our Republic was just fine from the 19th century--I am sorry--the 18th century to 2003. But one way or another, I promise you, this is going to stop.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, well, here we go again. Hamas is on the verge of defeat, so it has cranked up the propaganda machine once again. Now Hamas wants the world to believe that Israel has undertaken a campaign of deliberate starvation of the Gazan population, and as usual, Hamas can count on an international media and political chorus to fight their battles for them and try to bully Israel into submission. So I would like to set the record straight.

First, let me observe that no decent person wants to see innocent children caught in the crosshairs of war and suffering and hunger and malnutrition. Israel agrees, of course. That is why, since Hamas started this war with its brutal atrocities, Israel has helped bring into Gaza approximately 96,000 trucks containing nearly 1.5 million tons of food, 46,000 tons of medical supplies, 60,000 tons of water, and around 170,000 tons of shelter equipment.

Put simply, children in Gaza aren't going hungry because of lack of supplies from Israel; they are suffering because Hamas uses food and humanitarian aid as a weapon to stay in power.

Now, you may see these easels next to me and believe I am about to show you heart-wrenching images of malnourished kids. That is what some more gullible Senators have done lately--and I am afraid to say, gullible might be a charitable way to describe their motives--much like the New York Times buying hook, line, and sinker the images of Gazan children afflicted with terrible diseases but passed off as malnourished.

But, no, I have other images to show; namely, the immense volume of food that is being ruthlessly withheld from the children of Gaza. Pallets and pallets of United Nations aid are just waiting to be distributed to the children of Gaza. Some of these contain canned goods such as chickpeas, white beans, green peas, and carrots. But these supplies, at this very moment, are sitting and baking in the hot sun instead of feeding hungry kids.

While the situation is shocking, it is not at all surprising. After all, Hamas's infiltration of U.N. aid mechanisms is well-documented. Time and again, we have seen Hamas terrorists divert aid shipments to themselves or loot delivery trucks, only to resell the supplies on the black market at outrageous prices.

Last year, this terrorist-infiltrated aid system managed by the U.N. and others allowed Hamas to rake in more than half a billion dollars in profit--profits that fund Hamas's campaign of terror against Israel and its own people.

How critical is this systematic theft to Hamas's grip on power? Well, one of Hamas's chief demands in recent cease-fire negotiations has been the dismantling of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, a new charity created specifically to end Hamas's stranglehold on aid and supplies. The foundation has even offered to distribute U.N. aid for free, despite the risk to its own people. And much of this aid, which is sitting in the sun and partly taxpayer funded, is already inside Gaza; it simply needs to be picked up and distributed.

But the offer has fallen on deaf ears because Hamas uses humanitarian aid as a tool to fund, facilitate, and fight its war against innocent children, against Israel, against the civilized world. And Hamas's cheerleaders, apologists, and dupes in Europe, in America, and, sadly, here in the U.S. Senate once again turn a blind eye to Hamas's crimes, blaming, instead, Israel and the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation.

They demand that Israel agree to a cease-fire that preserves and rewards Hamas while also delivering even more humanitarian aid to Gaza for Hamas to steal and exploit. They expect Israel to feed the very people who attacked, raped, and murdered innocent Israeli men, women, and children on October 7 and--I would remind everyone--not a few American victims as well.

Once again, Israel is facing demands placed on no other nation in the world. I don't recall from my history lessons, for instance, the United States providing humanitarian aid to Germany and Japan in World War II. On the contrary, the Allies imposed naval blockades that led to widespread shortages in those enemy nations.

When, in the annals of history, has the victim of an unprovoked war of aggression ever been held responsible for the nutrition of the aggressor? Put simply, Israel doesn't have any responsibility to send a single loaf of bread to Gaza.

I wonder why so many Senators, pundits, podcasters, and European politicians impose this unique standard on the Jewish nation. Why could it be? But despite all that, despite the brutal slaughter of nearly 1,200 Israelis on October 7, despite Hamas's continued repression of its own people, Israel is still delivering aid to Gaza while Hamas rips it from the hands of hungry children.

Once again we see very simply and very clearly in this war who is on the side of justice and who is on the side of evil. And I would ask anyone who places these singular demands on Israel: Whose side do you want to be on? And if you truly care about the children of Gaza, as I do, as Israelis do, as any decent person surely does, I would encourage you to support President Trump's statement of moral clarity and strength from earlier this morning:

The fastest way to end the Humanitarian Crises in Gaza is

for Hamas to SURRENDER AND RELEASE THE HOSTAGES.

Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, today, I urge my Senate colleagues to confirm Joe Kent as the Director of the National Counterterrorism Center.

Mr. Kent has 20 years of military service and 11 combat deployments during the War on Terror, as well as experience as a Green Beret and a CIA officer. Mr. Kent has dedicated his career to fighting terrorism and to keeping Americans safe.

For Joe, this mission is both patriotic and, sadly, personal, as his first wife Shannon was tragically killed while serving in Syria in 2019. America remains grateful for and honored by her selfless, valiant service to our Nation, and we continue to hold Joe and their children in our prayers for their loss.

Mr. Kent understands the grave threat that terrorism poses to the security and safety of Americans. He has committed to returning the National Counterterrorism Center to its statutory mission of integrating threat intelligence from foreign terrorist organizations and to getting out of purely domestic activities. These are among the reasons I call on my colleagues to support his nomination.

Finally, in addition to Mr. Kent, I would like to emphasize the urgency with which the Senate ought to confirm nominees to all intelligence and national security-related positions. Getting these nominees through the confirmation pipeline is essential to our national security and crucial to increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of our intelligence Agencies.

Again, I am pleased to offer my support for Mr. Kent's nomination, and I call on my colleagues to do the same.

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

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, today, I encourage my Senate colleagues to confirm Mr. Aaron Lukas as the next Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence.

Mr. Lukas's long career serving our Nation as a CIA officer makes him well suited for this important position. He has more than 20 years of intelligence experience, which includes working as a CIA Station Chief and joint duty rotations at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the National Security Council.

With Mr. Lukas's knowledge, experience, and know-how, he has the right background to assist Director Gabbard with eliminating bureaucratic bloat and returning our intelligence community to its core mission of aggressively stealing the secrets of our adversaries.

I am grateful to Mr. Lukas for his decades of service, and I would like to thank him and his family for being willing to answer the call of our country to serve once again.

For all these reasons, I again encourage my colleagues to join me in supporting Mr. Lukas's nomination to be the Principal Deputy Director of National Intelligence.

I yield the floor.