[Pages S410-S421]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

CLOTURE MOTION

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before
the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

Cloture Motion

We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the provisions of
rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, do hereby move to bring
to a close debate on the motion to proceed to Calendar No. 3, H.R. 23,
a bill to impose sanctions with respect to the International Criminal
Court engaged in any effort to investigate, arrest, detain, or
prosecute any protected person of the United States and its allies.
John Thune, Tom Cotton, Tim Scott of South Carolina, Pete
Ricketts, Shelley Moore Capito, Deb Fischer, Markwayne
Mullin, Rick Scott of Florida, Tim Sheehy, Cindy Hyde-
Smith, John Boozman, Marsha Blackburn, Mike Rounds,
James Lankford, Ted Budd, John R. Curtis, Tommy
Tuberville.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum
call has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the
motion to proceed to H.R. 23, a bill to impose sanctions with respect
to the International Criminal Court engaged in any effort to
investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute any protected person of the
United States and its allies, shall be brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant executive clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Ossoff) is
necessarily absent.
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 54, nays 45, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 22 Ex.]

YEAS--54

Banks
Barrasso
Blackburn
Boozman
Britt
Budd
Capito
Cassidy
Collins
Cornyn
Cotton
Cramer
Crapo
Cruz
Curtis
Daines
Ernst
Fetterman
Fischer
Graham
Grassley
Hagerty
Hawley
Hoeven
Husted
Hyde-Smith
Johnson
Justice
Kennedy
Lankford
Lee
Lummis
Marshall
McConnell
McCormick
Moody
Moran
Moreno
Mullin
Murkowski
Paul
Ricketts
Risch
Rounds
Schmitt
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Sheehy
Sullivan
Thune
Tillis
Tuberville
Wicker
Young

NAYS--45

Alsobrooks
Baldwin
Bennet
Blumenthal
Blunt Rochester
Booker
Cantwell
Coons
Cortez Masto
Duckworth
Durbin
Gallego
Gillibrand
Hassan
Heinrich
Hickenlooper
Hirono
Kaine
Kelly
Kim
King
Klobuchar
Lujan
Markey
Merkley
Murphy
Murray
Padilla
Peters
Reed
Rosen
Sanders
Schatz
Schiff
Schumer
Shaheen
Slotkin
Smith
Van Hollen
Warner
Warnock
Warren
Welch
Whitehouse
Wyden

NOT VOTING--1

Ossoff

The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote the yeas are 54, and the nays are
45.
Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn not having voted
in the affirmative, the motion is not agreed to.
The motion was rejected.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Banks). The Senator from Alabama.

WALL Act

Mrs. BRITT. Mr. President, January 2025 has been a turning point for
the United States of America. President Donald Trump's inauguration
marked the beginning of, as he put it, a new ``golden age'' for
America. And our new President unveiled a list of Executive orders
undoing 4 years of decline, in his very first week in office.
He has already reversed a number of the failed Biden-Harris policies
that weakened both security at our border and enforcement of our
immigration laws in our Nation's interior. He has taken action to end
catastrophic catch-and-release policies. He reinstated ``Remain in
Mexico,'' and he stopped the abuse of immigration parole.
Not only did President Trump turn our country's border and
immigration policies around 180 degrees on his very first day, but,
finally, at long last, Congress is working again. The House and the
Senate sent the strongest immigration enforcement legislation to the
President's desk since 1996.
After nearly a year of working to get the Laken Riley Act through, it
is finally mere hours from becoming actual law. We are finally on our
way to ensuring that criminal illegal aliens are off our streets before
they can commit the most heinous crimes imaginable. Providing our
States the ability to compel the Federal Government to do its job is
something it also includes--and the enforcement of the laws that are
actually on the books.
Far too often, we hear from grieving parents whose children's lives
were cut far too short by illegal border crossers, who were poisoned by
fentanyl brought across our southern border, or who suffered abuse at
the hands of people who shouldn't have been in our country to begin
with.
The American people have heard enough of those stories, and, on
November 5, they told us they wouldn't take it any longer. The results
of the November election were a signal from the people we represent to
the lawmakers meant to act on their behalf. They were a verdict from
the American people that Washington had, for far too long, become
guilty of overlooking the problems that actually mattered to the people
we are here working for.
With the Laken Riley Act, we have started to deliver on that verdict,
but we are not done yet. The Laken Riley Act addresses the important
problems of criminal illegal aliens already inside our country, but
interior immigration enforcement is only one aspect of the problem we
face. There is another priority we must focus on: preventing criminals
from entering our country to begin with.
That is why I have reintroduced the WALL Act. It is long past time to
finish construction of a wall on our southern border, and this bill
would put us on the path to doing just that. It would appropriate
funding necessary to finish the wall, and it would allow President
Trump to do so without raising taxes on U.S. citizens or increasing our
national debt by a single cent. In fact, we would fund the wall by
fixing yet another issue with our immigration system: We would
eliminate taxpayer-funded entitlements and tax benefits to illegal
aliens. Not only would taxpayers stop having to foot the bill for
illegal aliens, but we would also close the loopholes that illegal
aliens are taking advantage of. Meanwhile, the benefits intended for
citizens and legal residents would truly only go to citizens and legal
residents.

[[Page S411]]

Solving another problem, the WALL Act would impose monetary fines on
illegal aliens and immigrants who overstay their visas. We would finish
building the wall, and we would save money while we are at it.
The Joint Committee on Taxation estimated in 2018 that enacting the
provisions in the WALL Act would save us $33 billion over 10 years. The
bill would save us both dollars and lives. And what could be more
important than the task of keeping our country safe and restoring
financial responsibility?
Just like the Laken Riley Act, the WALL Act is common sense, and,
most importantly, it delivers to the American people what they have
demonstrated they want, need, and deserve. It is the first move toward
making sure that our immigration enforcement and border security
Agencies have the funding they need to carry out the will of the
people.
We must fund construction of the border wall, but we can't just stop
there. As the chairman of the Homeland Security Appropriations
Subcommittee, I am committed to ensuring that the Trump administration
has the detention space they need to get criminal illegal aliens off of
our streets and providing funding for CBP and ICE enforcement and
removal operations so these Agencies have the personnel, resources, and
technology necessary to fulfill their missions. And that, Mr.
President, is a long time coming too.
As long as civilization has existed, both leaders and citizens have
understood that the most important role that the government has is to
provide security for the people who live under its jurisdiction. From
the White House to both Chambers of Congress, the Republican Party is
committed to getting our country back on track, to responding to the
demands of the American people that they made to us this last November:
securing our border, removing criminal illegal aliens from our streets,
and providing a safe, orderly nation for the American people.
There is no greater responsibility we have, no higher calling we can
seek than making America safe again. We have heard the American
people's voices, and we understand the call. Now, let's heed that call
and pass the WALL Act. Let's continue to turn our promises made into
promises kept.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.

Trump Administration

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, the government shutdown that Donald Trump
just ordered is illegal and unconstitutional. He is not a King, and we
do not live in a monarchy.
It is Congress's authority to decide on Federal funding. The power of
the purse is the foundational funding of the article I branch.
Everybody talks like that. Everybody says those things. But now we are
all put to the test--Democrats and Republicans.
Are we going to forfeit all of our power? We are the elected branch.
We make the laws. And the President of the United States just ordered a
funding freeze for stuff he doesn't feel like funding. That is
literally not how it works.
And, today, the White House Press Secretary was asked about specific
popular essential programs. You know what she said? She said: Have
those people talk to Russ Vought and make an appeal to him.
Now, there are a couple of problems with that. First of all, Russ
Vought doesn't get to decide, in an appropriations law, which parts of
the law to follow and which parts not to follow. Second of all--let's
be really clear about this--Russ Vought is not a government employee
right now. He is a nominee to lead the Office of Management and Budget.
And so we are supposed to have--I don't know--Medicaid recipients, VA
home loan recipients, nursing homes, education organizations,
healthcare organizations, transportation contractors, like, appeal:
Mercy to the King. Will you please release these dollars? that is not
how the American system works. This is illegal.

There is real pain starting today because of this funding freeze.
Schools, childcare facilities, fire departments, community health
centers, domestic violence shelters--all of them will instantly lose
their funding at 5 p.m. today because somebody said: We are fiscal
conservatives. You want to enact a fiscally conservative appropriations
bill, pass a law. Pass a law.
I also would like to select the Federal funding which I agree with
and fund that and select the funding that I disagree with and defund
that, but I am not a monarch, and neither is Donald Trump.
We are hearing from so many constituents across the country, and I
had a bit of a time delay because it is earlier in Hawaii, but all of
my colleagues were getting incoming texts and calls and panicked
people. This isn't about some arcane government program; this is, like,
basic stuff. People are staged to do construction and told not to show
up for work. Some of these construction projects are in places where
you only have a narrow window during which you can even do
construction, so a 90-day freeze means: Wait until next year. I don't
care what the law says; wait until next year.
If you are a disaster survivor in North Carolina or Louisiana or
California or Texas or Florida or Maui, you don't know what happens
next. If you are a low-income family that relies on the Women, Infants,
and Children Program to get healthy meals for your kids; if you live in
a remote area like Waianae or Lanai in Hawaii and you go to a community
health center to fill your prescriptions, to get a checkup, this freeze
on funding means you don't get help.
You know how long it takes to get a home loan, a VA home loan or any
other kind of home loan. People are showing up to get their VA home
loans and saying: Not today. You might be like 45 days from closing.
You are a veteran. You are entitled to this thing under the law. Russ
Vought--not a member of the Federal Government yet--has decided you
don't get your home loan today.
What an embarrassing abdication of the role of the Congress. All of
this high-minded talk from my fellow appropriators about, you know
there are really three parties in the Congress--this is the old joke--
Democrats, Republicans, and appropriators, right? The idea is that the
appropriators are the adults in the room. The appropriators are the
adults in the room, and they are not going to let nonsense,
unconstitutional, illegal acts happen because we are the ones that
control the purse strings.
I want to make one final point. In addition to all the pain that is
being caused, my goodness, the door swings both ways in Washington.
Imagine a progressive President reaching into the Federal budget after
an appropriations bill is passed and saying: You know what, I don't
like that thing. I don't like that other thing. I don't like this one.
I don't like that one. I am in charge.
What are we even here for?
So this is not going to be business as usual. I will tell you one
thing: I have never in my 13 years withheld my unanimous consent. I
have used a little leverage. Everybody does. But we better get this
straight on a bipartisan basis--not because I want to score partisan
points, not because I want to characterize Donald Trump in one way or
the other, but because we all worked so hard and made real sacrifices
to get to this place so we could have a position of responsibility to
uphold the Constitution of the United States.
What is happening today is unconstitutional. It is also against
statutory law. But most importantly, it is causing pain across the
country.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Immigration

Mrs. BLACKBURN. Mr. President, nothing is more important than our
national security and this Nation's sovereignty, and that means we must
control our borders. That is why, in November, the American people gave
President Trump an overwhelming mandate to finally go secure these
borders. It was a major issue. They were tired of 4 years of Biden-
Harris failures.
Thankfully, in just his first week in office, the President has
already taken steps to do just this. On Inauguration

[[Page S412]]

Day, for example, President Trump restored many of the successful
policies from his first administration that former President Biden had
ended, including the ``Remain in Mexico'' policy, border wall
construction, and enhanced vetting of all aliens trying to come into
this country.
At the same time that President Trump did those reinstatements, he
terminated Biden's disastrous open border measures, including ending
catch-and-release, thank goodness. That CBP One app, where he was
trying to make illegal entry legal, the Trump administration ended
that. They ended migrant flights that brought more than 500,000 illegal
aliens to cities all across the country--ended those flights. He also
took new action to strengthen our border and end illegal immigration,
including Executive orders to prohibit birth tourism.
This is a practice where you have companies or cartels and they sell
you passage to the United States to come here for the express purpose
of having a child on U.S. soil. It is a practice called ``birth
tourism.'' President Trump ended that.
He designated cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, and he
chose to send troops to the border. And among these troops are
Tennessee soldiers from Fort Campbell's 101st Airborne Division who are
doing incredible work to help make this Nation safe.
Perhaps, most importantly, the President ordered mass deportations,
something the American people have demanded after the Biden
administration allowed more than 10 million illegal aliens to enter
this country. And that does not count the ``got-aways''--the ``got-
aways''--known and unknown ``got-aways'' that are here--the worst of
the worst, most likely, people that were trying to evade detection and
people that have seeped into our communities.
To no one's surprise, these strong Executive actions are already
yielding positive results for our Nation, our Nation's sovereignty and
security, and the safety and security of communities all across this
country, because on Joe Biden's watch, what did we see happen? We saw
every town become a border town and every State become a border State.
People went to the polls in November and voted saying: Enough is
enough. We have to restore law and order.
And in the last week--I want you to think about these numbers. I
encourage all of our colleagues: Look at these numbers from the last
week.
In this last week, ICE, or Immigration and Customs Enforcement,
arrested more than 2,600 illegal aliens. Now, these are criminal
illegal aliens. They are including gang members, convicted sex
offenders, and murder suspects--2,600 in 1 week. This tells you they
knew where these people were. It is just that their hands were tied by
the Biden administration. They could not go get these people that were
making our communities less safe.
Just on Thursday alone, ICE arrested two people in Nashville, TN.
What we found out is they were both members of the gang Tren de Aragua,
right in Nashville. Both of these illegal aliens have a criminal
history of promoting prostitution and entered the country last year
after being processed by the Biden administration.
While migrant encounters at the border have plummeted over the past
week, the Trump administration has also conducted deportation flights
to send illegal aliens back to their home countries.
Make no mistake, if any country refuses to take in their own
citizens, President Trump has made clear that there will be
consequences brought to bear. In just the last 24 hours, the Government
of Colombia learned that lesson, completely reversing its blockade of
deportation flights after the President said he would impose tariffs
and sanctions.
For so many in Tennessee and across the country, this is welcome
news. This is what they wanted to see. They were tired of talk. They
were tired of appeasement. What they wanted was action to get these
criminals out of their communities, to get them behind bars.
We can only have national security and know that this country is safe
if we have border security. And for too long, Tennesseans and, I think,
all Americans have suffered the consequences of this open border--the
migrant crime, the fentanyl overdoses, human trafficking, strained
public resources, and the list goes on and on.
While President Trump will continue to lead the way in securing our
border, Congress should play a crucial role in supporting his efforts
and make certain that no President can surrender our national
sovereignty ever again. That is why, in the Senate, I have introduced a
slate of bills that promote securing our border.
Here is an example, the CONTAINER Act. This is something that I have
had for a while. This would empower communities along our border to
construct barriers that would prohibit illegal aliens from crossing
into their communities and stop the flow of traffickers and drugs and
criminals that have been coming through these communities.
When you are on the southern border, you visit ranchers and farmers
and communities where they say: If we could just put a barrier up.
The CONTAINER Act would give them that opportunity to put up a
barrier and protect their areas.
The CLEAR Act, meanwhile, would reaffirm the authority of State and
local governments to enforce Federal immigration laws by apprehending,
detaining, and transferring illegal aliens to Federal custody. It also
says that the Federal Government has to reimburse that local law
enforcement agency for the money that they have spent.
And while President Trump reinstated by Executive order ``Remain in
Mexico,'' which requires asylum seekers to remain in Mexico while
awaiting their court date, I also introduced legislation that would
make this crucial policy the law of the land, requiring future
administrations to support it.

You see, that is the importance of Congress taking action on what the
President has done by Executive order. It is putting it in law, putting
it in Federal statute so that future administrations have to abide by
the law and implement it.
In addition, I have recently introduced the Preventing Violence
Against Women by Illegal Aliens Act, which allows the deportation of
illegal aliens convicted of sexual offenses or domestic abuse. What we
have learned is that under the Biden administration, hundreds of
criminal illegal aliens convicted of sexual offenses entered our
country. This legislation would ensure that every single one of them
can be removed from this country.
To end the surge of human trafficking at the border and bring this
modern-day slavery to an end, I also have brought forward a
comprehensive package of bills.
The PRINTS Act would give Border Patrol the authority to fingerprint
noncitizens under the age of 14 so that we can combat this horrific
practice of child recycling. This is something that the cartels do.
They take a child, they place them with an adult, they bring them to
the border, and then, once they are across, they turn the child loose.
Many of these children have a name, address, and phone number written
in indelible ink on their backs, on their arms. This needs to stop. So
the PRINTS Act would give the Border Patrol the authority to use these
fingerprints.
And we have the End Child Trafficking Now Act, which would require a
DNA test to determine the relationship between illegal aliens coming
across the border with children with them.
Both bills are crucial for ending child trafficking. And we know that
between 30 and 40 percent of the children that presented at that border
when we were doing DNA testing were found to be children being
trafficked. Think about that.
The Biden administration ended the practice of DNA testing. When I
inquired as to why they did it, the answer I got was because of the
amount of time it took to do the DNA test. Well, it took 45 minutes--45
minutes. But to the Biden administration, pushing people across the
border and into the country was more important.
And now we know that HHS has lost track of over 300,000 children. It
is imperative that we find these children. It is imperative that we end
this cross-border human trafficking of children.
I also have the SAVE Girls Act. It is bipartisan. Senator Klobuchar
has joined me on that bill. It would provide States and local
governments and nonprofits with the vital resources they need in order
to help combat this trafficking of girls and women.

[[Page S413]]

I also have a bipartisan bill, the National Human Trafficking
Database Act. It would establish a national human trafficking database
at the Department of Justice and incentivize State law enforcement
agencies to report crucial data.
You know, as we fight human trafficking, one of the things that we
have learned from local and State law enforcement--by the way, this is
a job that landed in their lap, to do this because there was not
Federal enforcement. What we learned is there was no single repository
for information about the traffickers, individuals that were being
apprehended. So this would establish that database.
So we have had a busy week. The President has had a busy week, and we
are grateful to President Trump and Vice President Vance for how
quickly they have moved on these issues of national security and the
response they have given to the American people that, yes, they have
been heard, and they are taking action that the American people have
wanted to see.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order
for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Unanimous Consent Request--S. Res. 42

Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, we are a week into the Trump
administration, and it can be summed up in one word: lawlessness.
Trump is showing every day, with nearly every action, that he has
zero regard for the laws of this country--from pardoning en masse
violent insurrectionists to illegally firing government watchdogs
charged with holding him accountable, to issuing blatantly
unconstitutional Executive orders, to asking OMB to halt funding
Congress passed, which is something that is now causing serious chaos
and harm to red States and blue States.
We are not going to let his strategy of overwhelming chaos win the
day. We are fighting each of the actions, and we will not stop
asserting our power as an equal branch of the government. But right
now, today, we are going to focus on one issue in particular, one that
is not just alarming but actually personal to all of us here in the
Senate because it concerns the Capitol Police each of us walked by
every single day.
I have made it clear I will not sit back and allow President Trump to
rewrite the history of the January 6 insurrection. Already, his Justice
Department has taken down the public database that laid out the
thousands of investigations. He is literally trying to erase the
evidence from public memory. But no President can rewrite history, not
unless we stand by and let him, and that is absolutely not going to
happen.
We will not forget what really happened here on January 6, 2021. As
we all remember, as the American people witnessed in real time, armed
insurrectionists, egged on by the sitting President, broke into the
U.S. Capitol and violently assaulted Capitol Police officers in their
attempt to overturn a free and fair election. You do not have to take
my word for it, although, like many of my colleagues, I have a first-
person account of that day.
The reality is well documented in videos, in photos, in case
documents from thousands of people charged with felonies after that
day, including assault. We know as a matter of fact that some
insurrectionists brought knives, tasers, axes, hatches, pepper spray,
zip ties, and more. We know as a matter of fact that some assaulted
officers with flagpoles, stun guns, fire extinguishers, and bear spray.
We know as a matter of fact that Capitol Police officers suffered
severe injuries as a result, including cracked ribs, smashed spinal
discs, brain injuries, and even the loss of an eye.
Officers here sacrificed tremendously to keep Senators safe,
Republicans and Democrats alike, and we have the footage, the photos,
and the police reports that clearly show the crimes and the violence
that were committed.
President Trump's decision to pardon en masse 1,500 people charged in
the insurrection is truly an unthinkable attempt to erase the facts of
that day and undermine our democracy, but it is especially heinous that
he chose to pardon individuals who violently attacked our Capitol
Police officers, not to mention commuting the sentences of 14 others,
people found guilty of seditious conspiracy, people like Enrique
Tarrio, leader of the Proud Boys, and Stewart Rhodes, leader of the
Oath Keepers. It is a betrayal of the law enforcement that protected
all of us that day and a dangerous endorsement of political violence,
telling criminals that you can beat cops within an inch of their lives
as long as it is in service to Donald Trump.
Every one of us here owes a tremendous debt of gratitude to our
Capitol Police. They protected our lives, and they protected our
democracy. That is why we are here today to pass a resolution that
makes clear the U.S. Senate stands with our Capitol Police officers by
disapproving the pardon of those who violently attacked the officers
who keep us safe.
It is a very simple, modest resolution. It reads in its entirety:

Resolved, That the Senate disapproves of any pardons for
individuals who were found guilty of assaulting Capitol
Police officers.

It is that simple. We aren't relitigating every case; this is only
about people guilty of assaulting Capitol Police.
I made sure this was short and clear, something we can pass
unanimously because a message like this really should be unanimous. In
fact, just to underscore how straightforward this is, I want to read it
in its entirety once again:

Resolved, That the Senate disapproves of any pardons for
individuals who were found guilty of assaulting Capitol
Police officers.

That is it, the entire thing. I don't think there is anything here
for anyone to disagree with.
I yield to the Democratic leader.
Mr. SCHUMER. Let me thank Patty Murray for her leadership on this
issue.
It is becoming clear--it has become clear already, but it is even
clearer today--a pattern is emerging from Donald Trump's Presidency, a
pattern of lawlessness. He has pardoned insurrectionists. He has fired
many of the government's independent watchdogs. And today--or last
night--he froze billions, perhaps trillions, of Federal grant funding
to hospitals and fire fighters and seniors and Head Start. Under Donald
Trump, it is already clear: It is a golden age--a golden age for
lawlessness.
Today, Democrats will seek passage of a resolution that talks about
one aspect of this lawlessness: We simply condemn pardoning rioters who
attacked our Capitol Police officers on January 6.
My colleague Patty Murray, who has done such a great job on this,
read the whole resolution. How the heck can anyone object to a
resolution that says we should condemn pardoning those who assaulted
police officers? Where is the law-and-order crowd? Where are the people
who talked about defunding the police? How do you think every police
officer feels when one of their brethren is assaulted and then they are
pardoned, and their own Senators, who represent thousands and thousands
of police officers each in their States, won't even stand up for their
fellow officer?
I just hope our Republican colleagues don't block this resolution.
All of us, every one of us--it doesn't matter if you are Democrat or
Republican, liberal or conservative--every one of us should be able to
agree that people who attack police officers don't deserve Presidential
pardons. If Republicans stand in the way of this resolution, what an
awful message it sends to our own Capitol Police whom we see every day,
who work so hard to keep us safe.
Let's be clear. The people who invaded the Capitol on January 6,
whether engaged in violence or not, committed a very serious crime. I
saw them. I was within 20, 30 feet of them. Now, because of fear of
President Trump, the party on the other side says: Never mind.

One of the worst days in American history. There is no gray area
here, particularly when it comes to people who attack police officers.
By handing out these pardons to convicted criminals, President Trump
is effectively saying: You want to attack our brave police officers?
That is OK.
Pardoning lawless rioters is not, not, not what Americans want the
President to be prioritizing. They want to

[[Page S414]]

see answers to problems that impact them: inflation, good-paying jobs,
a better future. They sure as hell don't want to see OMB taking away
monies that have been lawfully allocated that they desperately need in
so many aspects of their lives.
Our Capitol Police deserve nothing less than our full and steadfast
support for everything they do to keep us safe. The very least--the
very least--we can do for them as Senators is to come together and
declare that those convicted of attacking Capitol Police officers--we
say clearly with one voice, let's hope--that these people do not--do
not--deserve a pardon.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, as if in legislative session, I ask
unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S.
Res. 42, my resolution condemning the pardons for individuals who were
found guilty of assaulting Capitol Police officers, which was submitted
earlier today; further, that the resolution be agreed to and the motion
to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no
intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there an objection?
The Republican whip.
Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, reserving the right to object, I heard
the Senator from Washington State say we are now 1 week into the Trump
administration. I am very grateful we are now 1 week beyond the Biden
administration.
Democrats do not want a serious debate here about the use of
Presidential pardon power. If they did want a serious conversation,
they would talk about Joe Biden's pardons--over 8,000 of them. The
previous President used his final days in office to grant clemency to
37 of 40 of the worst killers on death row.
President Biden said time and time again, oh, he wouldn't pardon his
son Hunter--oh no. Not only did he pardon Hunter for the crimes for
which he had been convicted, he pardoned him for 10 years of his
additional criminal activity, which has not yet been discovered. Then,
minutes before leaving office on Inauguration Day, Joe Biden gave
preemptive, blanket pardons to five more members of his own family. If
they weren't guilty, why would they need or accept pardons?
President Biden commuted the sentences of two men who killed a Sussex
County police officer.
President Biden also commuted the sentence of a killer who executed--
executed--two FBI agents in cold blood. The FBI Agents Association said
Biden's pardon was a ``cruel betrayal to the families and colleagues of
these fallen agents.'' They said that the Biden pardon of this
coldblooded murderer was ``a slap in the face of law enforcement.''
President Biden also commuted the sentence of a drug trafficker
involved in the murder of an 8-year-old boy and his mother. The Biden
administration actually classified him, believe it or not, as a ``non-
violent'' offender. Even the Democrat Senator from Connecticut said
``someone dropped the ball'' on granting that clemency.
In all, more than 8,000 criminals were pardoned or had their
sentences reduced by Joe Biden. Now, that is more than any other
President in history. It isn't even close.
This resolution that the Senate is asked to consider today does not
condemn the Biden abuse of the pardon power. It does not condemn the
pardons or the commutations of police officer killers, of murderers, of
rapists. It ignores the pain and suffering of the victims and their
families.
I oppose, as do my colleagues on this side of the aisle, any violence
against police officers. I oppose pardons of violent criminals. These
officers deserve our thanks and our prayers. They deserve not to be
used in political games--games like the ones that the Senate Democrats
are playing today on this very floor. Democrats should be ashamed, and
Democrats should be embarrassed.
Therefore, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The Senator from Washington.
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, I am deeply frustrated that is the
response we got today. We cannot agree on something as simple as
standing by the officers who keep this building safe, officers every
one of us walks by every day? There are officers standing outside the
floor right now keeping watch as we are forced to debate whether it was
not OK to pardon the people who violently attacked them. I don't know
how my colleagues who oppose this simple resolution can look them in
the eye.
It is insulting enough that Speaker Johnson--someone who has a
dedicated 24/7 detail--has refused to put up the plaque honoring the
brave officers who kept us safe 4 years ago, but the fact that we can't
pass a resolution as simple as the one I presented today, the fact that
we can't all agree that we should side with the people who keep us safe
over the people who are attacking us, is disgraceful. It is unworthy of
this body and unworthy of the sacrifice our Capitol Police have
demonstrated time and again. We owe them better. I will not stop
pushing to make sure we show them we understand that.
The President may be able to grant pardons, commute sentences,
release criminals, delete databases, but I will tell you here, he can
take no action that will erase the past unless we let him. As long as I
can stand, as long as I can speak, as long as I am here, I will not let
him or anyone rewrite the history of the January 6 insurrection or
erase the important lessons that we must learn from it.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Illinois.
Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, I rise in support of the resolution
offered by my colleague from the State of Washington, and I thank her
for that.
This is personal. For many of us, it is personal. We were here on the
Senate floor on January 6, 2021. Vice President Pence was presiding. I
was sitting at this very desk. A few minutes after 2 o'clock, the
Secret Service came in and literally removed him from his chair.
We knew there were demonstrations outside, but we didn't know how
serious or how violent they had become.
A few minutes after that, a Capitol policeman stood in front of this
Chamber and said to all of us: Stay in this room. Just take your seats.
This is going to be a safe room. There will be many people coming in
here, and we will keep them safe.
We didn't know what was happening outside, but we knew something
serious was going on.
We waited another 10 minutes, and the same Capitol policeman said: A
change of orders--leave immediately and exit through that door.
We all filed out through that door and headed for one of the
buildings on Capitol Hill where there was a safe space for Members of
the Senate to meet.
I wasn't sure what was going on in the House of Representatives. I
still don't know all the details. But the reality was the mob--the
insurrectionist mob--was taking over the Capitol. Thousands of people
were storming into this building--not for a peaceful demonstration by
any means but, sadly, for violence and destruction.
That day was the worst day I can recall in the history of the Senate
in terms of our respect for this building that has become a symbol--not
only for the United States but for the world--for peace and democracy.
And I thought of those poor Capitol policemen who were asked to
defend us with their lives. They were asked to risk their lives for us.
And they did. Four or five of them lost their lives as a result of it,
and over 140 were seriously injured. Some of the things that were done
to them were outrageous. You have seen the videotape. We don't have to
speculate on what it was. We saw it, as they tore down building
structures, as they beat up on these cops as many of them faced death
and knew at the time it was that serious.
The grimmest reality of those riots was the subsequent death of five
of these law enforcement officers and the injuries to approximately 140
others, many of whom still pay that price to this day.
Last week, President Trump, who incited the violence, commuted the
sentences of 14 individuals and granted full, complete, and
unconditional pardons to approximately 1,500 others convicted of
offenses related to the January 6 attack. Many of the perpetrators have
shown a stunning lack of remorse following their violent assaults on
the brave members of the U.S. Capitol Police and DC Metropolitan Police
who

[[Page S415]]

protected my life and the lives of so many others that day.
For example, last August, David Dempsey, just a few hours after
receiving a 240-month prison sentence for attacking police on January 6
with a flagpole, crutches, pepper spray, and pieces of furniture,
called in to a gathering of supporters outside the DC jail. In
reference to Trump's opponents, Mr. Dempsey said:

Don't celebrate too hard man, because that sentence is only
gonna last like 6 months.

He knew that if President Trump were elected and had the power, he
would pardon him, despite what he had done to the Capitol Police.
Devlyn Thompson attempted to throw a speaker at police officers,
which ended up hitting and injuring a fellow rioter, and hit a police
officer with a metal baton.
Daniel ``D.J.'' Rodriguez, a California man who drove a stun gun into
an officer's neck during one of the most violent clashes of the Capitol
riot, was sentenced to more than 12 years in prison before President
Trump granted him clemency.
Andrew Taake pepper-sprayed police officers and hit one with a metal
whip. He was supposed to serve 74 months in a Federal prison in
Beaumont, TX, but he was pardoned by President Trump.
These are just a few--a few--of the hundreds of individuals President
Trump decided to pardon in his unconscionable Executive order. The list
of crimes committed by these thugs goes on for pages and pages and
pages of court documents.
Winston Churchill said once:

Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to
repeat it.

That is why we must continue sounding the alarm on the violence and
chaos of that day to ensure it never happens again. We must be clear
that violence for political purposes is never, never acceptable. It has
no place in democracy.
The men and women who bravely defended the Members of this body
deserve more, and we should honor them for their heroic efforts, not
excuse the thugs who attacked this body and the ideals it represents.
President Trump was wrong in pardoning these men who attacked the
police.
I thank Senator Murray for introducing this resolution condemning
President Trump's pardons of the January 6 insurrectionists who
assaulted our brave law enforcement officers, and I am disgusted--
disgusted--that our Republican colleagues won't join us in honoring the
men and women who risk their lives every single day for us. They risk
their lives for us, and Senator Murray has asked us to recognize that
fact and say violence against them is never acceptable.
We couldn't even get a bipartisan vote for that. It is a shame it has
reached that point, but it has.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. KELLY. Mr. President, I stand before you today as the son of two
police officers. Growing up in our family, service always came first.
My mom was actually the first woman to become a police officer in our
hometown of West Orange, NJ. Before that, she was working as a
secretary and a waitress, often at the same time. Her becoming a cop
meant more money for our family. It literally changed our lives.
One day, my mom was seriously injured in the line of duty. When on
patrol, she got a call about a burglary at a department store. She
rushed to that store to help. The criminal attacked her--attacked her
pretty badly. She was injured, and her injuries forced her to retire.
It ended her career.
Now, that was a risk that she took for our community as a police
officer. These are the same risks we see officers make every single day
across our country--in all 50 States, all the Territories, and here in
Washington, DC.
Our New Jersey community and her union, they had her back. The very
idea of her attacker being let off the hook would have been outrageous.
It would have been shocking. And it is almost impossible to imagine
because it simply would have never happened.
Yet that is exactly what did happen when the President, Donald Trump,
pardoned hundreds of criminals who violently assaulted Capitol Police
officers and DC Police officers on January 6. That was his priority on
day one of his Presidency. It wasn't to lower the price of gas or
groceries or housing; it was to let violent criminals off the hook for
storming this building and attacking the police, leaving many of them
bleeding and bruised or worse--in some cases much, much worse.
Now, how does this line up with backing the blue? I don't get it.
These pardons are an insult to every man and woman, like my parents,
who served and served our country in law enforcement.
President Trump is sending a message that violence against cops is OK
when it is done for him. That is a message that all of us must reject
unequivocally.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I rise together with my colleagues to speak
in opposition to the President's action pardoning those who attacked
this Capitol on January 6, 2021.
I was here that day. I shared that day with these colleagues, and we
all have memories of it--memories that we never would have imagined and
hope never to repeat.
But I am not going to talk about my experiences of the day. I am
going to talk about a friend, a Virginian, Howie Liebengood, a Capitol
Police officer who spent his career protecting this building and who
died as a result of that day.
And the fact that President Trump would pardon the people who
attacked this Capitol, leading to Howie Liebengood's death, is a deep,
deep stain on President Trump and, frankly, a stain on this body if we
casually tolerate it.
Howie Liebengood is a Virginian who grew up in this building. His
father was the Sergeant at Arms of the U.S. Senate and, prior to
assuming that role, worked in other roles in the Senate. And Howie and
his two siblings grew up coming to the Capitol and treating it like it
was sort of their playground and their yard--running through the halls,
meeting Senators, hearing their dad tell stories about what it was like
to serve this article I branch as a patriotic American public servant.
When Howie came of age, he started a career that he enjoyed and
worked together with his father for a number of years as a NASCAR
driver, and he worked on the NASCAR circuit, kind of working his way up
from minor league races to more significant races. But after a number
of years of doing that--look, he was a child of the U.S. Senate. He was
a child of this Capitol, and he decided that he would enter the
training program to be a Capitol Police officer.
And he told his siblings--by this time, his father had passed. He
told his siblings: I think my dad would be very, very proud of me.
Howie went through the academy and became a Capitol Police officer,
and I came to know him, as I suspect many of my colleagues did, because
he usually was staffing the Delaware door at the corner of Delaware and
Constitution right here, the Delaware door into the Russell Building.
And this is a door that--I know Senator Murray's office is right close
to that door. It may be the closest office to that door, and mine is
close as well.
We would come in in the morning, and Howie Liebengood would be there
to greet us, to ask us a question about the procedural vote from the
night before or what was on today. As much as he was a friend of mine,
he was even more of a friend of my staff. My staff loved interacting
with Howie. And he eventually served as a Capitol Police officer for 15
years.
He was here on January 6 when his beloved Capitol was attacked. And
as devastating as that attack was for many of us, for Howie--who had
made this place his whole life, who had really been raised in these
halls--that attack was very devastating. In the aftermath of the
attack, those working on the Capitol Police were put on extended hours,
little sleep. Would there be more attacks? Where was this going? What
would happen? It was a time of fear and anxiety and confusion.
And a few days later--within 3 days after that attack of January 6--
Howie went to his home in Virginia. His wife Serena asked if he was
doing OK. She could tell he was under enormous stress. And he said he
just needed to sleep.
And Howie went upstairs and, using his own service revolver, ended
his life.

[[Page S416]]

Howie Liebengood would be alive today--Howie Liebengood would be
alive today if President Trump hadn't urged people to gather to do
something wild in Washington, DC, on January 6, 2021, and then urged
those gathering to go up and raise hell at the Capitol. My friend would
be alive if President Trump had not done what he did.
I have waited in vain, not naively, but with a hope that there might
be some--some--sign of remorse over what happened, for the pain
suffered by Serena Liebengood and Howie's siblings and family members,
for other law enforcement officers, all of whom lived in Virginia, who
lost their lives as a result of that day. Dozens of others were
injured.
And I have waited for years to see if there might be some semblance
of remorse shown by the President who inspired that attack, for the
damage and pain and loss of life and injury that he has caused, and I
have seen not a shred of it.
But these pardons are the ultimate injustice, are the ultimate
injury. The family is still suffering. For them, it is salt in an
unhealed wound and an injury that will never heal.
And so I join with my colleagues, in Howie's memory, in support of
Serena, in support of Howie's family, to stand on this floor and
deplore as strongly as I can--and words aren't sufficient to really
explain how I feel about this, but I stand here to deplore as strongly
as I can the pardons of these lawbreakers who gathered for a particular
time, at a particular moment, in a particular place to conduct violence
in the cause of a particular result: the overturning of the peaceful
transfer of power.
And as I sit down, Mr. President, I will just say this: I lived in a
military dictatorship in 1980 and 1981 in Honduras when the military
ran everything. I know what authoritarianism is. I didn't live there
for years like my Honduran friends, but I experienced it. I was very
naive. I was 22 years old when I lived there, and I saw what it is like
to have a society run by somebody who believes they are all-powerful,
who can change any rule, who can foment violence, who can make sure
that those who commit violence escape with impunity. I know what this
is like, and we are in danger of moving into the same kind of
authoritarian behavior when we casually pardon and excuse those who
perpetrate violence to overturn our democracy. That is a big concept,
but it all comes down to the effect that it has on individual people
like my friend Howie Liebengood.

I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Mr. President, many of us who were here on January 6
have pretty indelible memories. I am looking at Senator Murray, who has
particularly harrowing memories. One of mine is, I was one of the last
people out of the Senate, and by the time we got to the room where we
were sequestered for our own protection from the mob, colleagues were
irate, and they had been frightened.
There is footage of Republican Senators running through the halls to
get away from the mob. I remember one of our colleagues shouting out
that we should get back over here to vote even if it meant protesters
would have to be shot--again, a Republican.
There were 600 of the rioters here who committed violence on police
officers, and nearly 200 of them used weapons. They were convicted of
this after all proper, fair procedures in an American court of law.
Then the notion of pardons started to come up, and we were basically
shushed by our Republican colleagues. Oh, that will never happen.
The Vice President said: If you committed violence on January 6, you
shouldn't be pardoned. In fact, he said ``obviously''--``obviously you
shouldn't be pardoned.''
Another colleague in the Judiciary Committee chastised Democrats for
asking the Attorney General nominee what she would do with respect to
the violent January 6 protesters. Would she recommend that the
President pardon them? And we were chastised for the absurdity of that
question. That is an ``absurd and unfair hypothetical to even ask.''
Over in the House, Jim Jordan said that he didn't think anybody
violent was going to be pardoned. ``I think,'' he said, ``he is going
to focus on . . . all the people who didn't commit any violence.''
Another colleague on the Judiciary Committee said he was against any
such pardons ``for people who assaulted cops, threw stuff at cops,
broke down doors, broke windows.''
We heard this cascade of denial from the other side about these
pardons. It was unfathomable that he would do this. It was wrong that
he would do this. It was absurd that he would do this. And then he did
it.
And what happened? Well, two things happened: One, over 1,000 people
who have demonstrated their willingness to commit acts of political
violence at the behest of Donald Trump were set loose on the streets.
We haven't heard the last of them. There may be another call to arms.
``Will be wild!''
``Be there.''
We haven't heard the last of them.
But just the leading edge, in only the week since we have been
there--one has already been arrested for a violent confrontation with
police officers, another was killed in a shooting incident when he
refused to be arrested and engaged police officers with a weapon, and a
third is in Rhode Island in our ACI, our adult correctional institute,
for having challenged police officers in an armed standoff. Now, he was
in prison when he was pardoned. Nobody in this pardon operation thought
to understand that this guy actually was convicted again of violence
against police officers and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment in
my State.
So we know that there is going to be more violence from these people.
We know that Trump now has an on-call assault team that he can use to
launch political violence, just the way he did on January 6, and this
is a dangerous situation.
This ought to be the easiest vote in the world. How you can even walk
through these halls and look our Capitol Police officers in the eye--
the ones who were there, the ones who took their lives in their hands
to steer the mob away from vulnerable Senators--how you can look them
in the eye if you haven't supported this, I don't know.
There is a word in the English language, ``subservience.'' I think we
need a word called ``Trump-servience'' in which things you know you
shouldn't do you do anyway because you are either frightened of Trump
or want to suck up to him.
This is not a great moment.
There is an effort, frankly, to erase that incident. For a long time:
Oh, just peaceful protesters. This was all just, you know, happy people
coming in to visit the Capitol, fun and games.
Yeah, so fun that we had Senators running down the aisles to get away
from them; so fun that, to get back into this building, we had armed
SWAT officers with automatic weapons lining the entire pathway back
from where we were secured into this Chamber.
Just remember what our colleagues were saying in that time period,
but the effort to erase this moment goes on. It occurred just recently
in the Judiciary Committee when the Attorney General nominee said that
there had been a peaceful transfer of power, like January 6 never
happened.
I asked a question for the record, asked her to explain that. She
said: Well, on Inauguration Day, it was peaceful.
Do you remember why it was peaceful on Inauguration Day? Because we
had the Capitol of the United States surrounded by more soldiers, more
police officers, more fencing, more snipers, more law enforcement and
military safety people than had probably been the case since the Civil
War. Yet now everything is peaceful.
We cannot forget what happened here. It is wrong to forget what
happened here. It is an insult to this Capitol to forget what happened
here. It is an insult to the men and women of the Capitol Police
Department and the DC Police Department and the others who came in to
fill in when they were overwhelmed by these brutal rioters.
So I am glad that Senator Murray did this. I appreciate very much the
opportunity to speak on their behalf, both for the sake of those police
officers and for the sake of the truth and for the sake of our history
here. This deserves to be remembered.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.

[[Page S417]]

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, 8 days ago, democracy and the rule of law
were dealt another blow. It wasn't at the hands of a mob this time. No
bear spray. No battering rams. No chants of ``Hang Mike Pence'' or
``Where's Nancy?'' echoing through these halls. This time when the blow
came, it made barely a sound. No screaming rioters in military garb and
Viking helmets--only a President in a suit and tie with the demure
flourish of a pen.
Eight days ago, President Trump pardoned over 1,500 people who
assaulted this Capitol, brutalized police officers, and sought to
overthrow a free and fair election. Among them were the ringleaders of
the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers--violent, unrepentant, White
nationalists who orchestrated an insurrection; some who were convicted
of seditious conspiracy, others of beating police officers, of dragging
them into a mob, of bear-spraying them, of crushing them in a revolving
door. Horrifying, sickening stuff.
With the flick of a wrist, their benefactor, their inspiration,
Donald Trump, erased their crimes and handed them something unthinkable
in a democratic society: absolution in the form of pardons and
clemency.
This was not mercy; this was madness--1,550 pardons; 1550 acts of
absolution for those who committed violence against our Constitution
and against those who swore to defend it; 1,550 ``get out of jail
free'' cards handed to individuals who tried to overturn a free and
fair election.
Make no mistake, these pardons were a promise--a promise that if you
commit violence in Donald Trump's name, you will be protected and you
will be hailed, even glorified, for your violence; a promise that no
matter how egregious your actions on behalf of this President may be,
accountability will not find you; a promise that America will now have
to live with the fear that January 6 may not be the last of the
violence in service of this President.
Senator Kaine was saying that we have seen what happens when
democracies falter, when leaders resort to violence and when those who
were meant to stop them lose their will, when those who defy the rule
of law are exalted instead of prosecuted. History is littered with the
wreckage of nations whose leaders decided that violence for them was
more important than justice, more important than the law, more
important than the people.
Sadly, these pardons are not the last action the President will take
to bend and subvert the rule of law to his will.
Already, we have seen this President and his Justice Department fire
those who led a completely justified investigation into him, which led
to indictments and, if allowed to proceed to a jury, would likely have
led to his conviction.
We have seen his Justice Department announce an investigation into
the investigators and those who prosecuted important cases against
January 6 violent criminals.
We have seen this Justice Department, his Justice Department,
reassign those who were viewed as not loyal enough.
We will see a lot more before the week, the month, and the year are
out--much more. If we are to remain a democracy, we had better see much
more done to stop it. In this body, in this vital check on the power of
the Executive, we must see more done to stop it. We must draw a line
here. We must draw a line now.
The Vice President argued that these pardons are about liberty. They
are not. I ask you: What does liberty look like to the police officer
who was beaten with a pole that once held the flag he was sworn to
defend? What does liberty look like to the congressional staff who
barricaded themselves in their offices, listening to the chaos outside?
What does liberty look like to the families of those who died as a
result of the violence that day?
Liberty and justice don't come from pardoning the perpetrators of
violence; it comes from ensuring that violence is not repeated,
condoned, absolved.
The question before us is simple, one that our Founders answered
correctly and that today we must answer again: Are we a nation of laws
or are we a nation of men or more specifically, of one man, above
accountability, beyond reproach? Because make no mistake, we cannot be
both.
What does it say if the Senate cannot and will not pass such a
straightforward recognition of the law enforcement officers who protect
us or a condemnation of the rioters who attacked them and tried to stop
the peaceful transfer of power? It says that we are willing to see our
cherished legacy die with a whimper, one sordid absolution after
another. It is really that simple.
I urge my colleagues to join me, to join us, in condemning this most
grotesque abuse of power. Condemn these pardons.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.

Trump Executive Orders

Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Washington and
Senators Schumer and Durbin for bringing us together to condemn the
pardons and what happened, but I also want to first express my
dissatisfaction about what is happening with this administration in
just the first week.
It was only a week ago that we gathered in the Capitol Rotunda, and,
as I said that day, there is a reason we have three branches of
government under the Constitution.
The first article is article I, which establishes the Congress and
makes very clear our job to have people's backs. And what has happened
with an order in the middle of the night--just a letter from a
bureaucrat, in which one person can--what?--basically get ahead of the
Constitution--I think we have gathered here today saying: No.
This has real consequences for people's lives. I think about the mom
who didn't know this morning if she could send her kid to childcare. I
think about the teenager--and I was contacted about this--in a cancer
study, hoping that it is going to save his life. I think about the
woman in an abusive relationship who has nowhere to go because her
local domestic violence shelter couldn't take her in.
Our office heard today from a domestic violence organization in
Minnesota that said it could not access critical funding.
We think about the first responders and the firefighters all over our
country. We think about what we saw them doing in Los Angeles over the
past month. Grants that pay for their equipment, funding that pays for
them to allow them to hire firefighters--this is not acceptable.
It is not the executive branch's decision to make. It is Congress's
job to direct funding through laws passed by both Chambers. In fact,
the laws we are dealing with here clearly had bipartisan support. That
is how they got in when we had one House that was Republican and one
House that was Democratic. Now that switched, and they are both
Republican. But the money and the funding were supported by both
parties.
The American people have sent us here to represent our constituents,
and that is what we are doing.
This chaos that we have seen today, with multiple groups and people
not knowing what was happening, reminds me of the last Trump
administration. We saw the same thing.

January 6

Just a few days ago, the President issued blanket pardons for the
insurrectionists who desecrated this very building on January 6, 2021.
It is a shocking display of disrespect for the law enforcement heroes
who defended our democracy.
I will say, I have been critical of pardons from Presidents of both
parties. I think we desperately need pardon reform. While it is the
power of the President, when you look at what Governors do across the
country, which actually have commissions set up that make
recommendations on pardons, you could still have the power to pardon,
but you could make recommendations and more thoroughly look at these
cases on a case-by-case basis.
So January 6 and the assault on our democracy, many of us were there.
I was the one with Senator Blunt, the former Senator of Missouri. We
were the leads on the Rules Committee, and we were the ones, at 3:30 in
the morning, when everyone had gone home, that made that walk with Vice
President Pence. It was just the three of us and three pairs of young
women holding the mahogany boxes with the electoral ballots that one of
the young pages had the wherewithal, and the Parliamentarian staff, to
get out of the Chamber before it was invaded.
In the morning, when we made that walk, it was a celebration--pomp
and

[[Page S418]]

circumstance--everyone following behind us. And then that night, at
3:30 in the morning, we had officers with scratches on their faces,
over 100 of them injured, and we made that walk over broken glass and
by pillars spray-painted with racist vulgarities.
We made that walk, and democracy prevailed. Part of that democracy
was to make sure that those who violated the law, those who assaulted
the police officers, those who had members of our staff--people always
focus on the Members of Congress, but so many members of our staffs
were hiding. My staff was hiding in the little kitchen downstairs, with
knives in their hands, for 3 hours, behind a door. Two of them were in
this little closet off the kitchen. That story was repeated throughout
the Capitol.
These were assaults. This was a violent mob that attacked our
democracy and attacked brave men and women of the Capitol Police who
were defending it.
Over the last 4 years, I have led bipartisan hearings to examine the
events and the security failures. I did that with Senator Blunt and
Senator Portman and Senator Peters. We have worked. We have 103
recommendations that came out of the inspector general and dozens out
of our committees, and Chief Manger has met the challenge--all 103
recommendations. We have increased morale. We have the fact that we
have more police officers. We hired hundreds more.
Then came the gut punch of these pardons--the gut punch to justice,
the gut punch to these police officers. They were the heroes that day,
not the criminals that stormed the Capitol because they didn't like the
election result. To pardon these criminals, many of them convicted of
very serious felonies, is to endorse political violence. It is a slap
in the face of the men and women of law enforcement who showed true
patriotism that day, and it is truly an affront to our democracy.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Mrs. MURRAY. Mr. President, we have several other colleagues who are
going to come later to speak about this as well.
I wanted to thank everyone who is here today. We want to make it very
clear that we will not forget what happened on January 6. I don't care
what records they raise or what kind of new stories they want to tell.
We know what happened. This country cannot forget.
And, today, we are here simply to say that the Senate disapproves of
the pardons for individuals who were found guilty of assaulting Capitol
police officers. I am disappointed that our Republican colleagues,
today, refuse to join us.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sheehy). The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Mr. President, on January 6, many of us stood right
here toward the beginning of the day. In fact, most of us can remember,
almost minute by minute, what occurred as we learned that the Capitol
was under attack. It was under attack, not just metaphorically. It was
actually under physical attack on that day by rioters who bore pipes
and baseball bats and, yes, firearms and physically battered this
place. And they threatened every one of us who was here.

They did more than threaten the police officers who defended the
Capitol on that day. They actually assaulted those police officers.
They attacked them brutally--sometimes with their own shields or with
arms that they brought with them. They gave lasting, severe injuries to
a number of them and, in some instances, contributed to their deaths.
The mob violently attacked those police officers--punching them,
kicking them, choking them, pepper-spraying them, plunging stun guns
into their necks, beating them with all kinds of weapons, including
flag poles, hockey sticks, as well as those baseball bats.
Many of us have heard Capitol Police officers recount their feelings
on that day--terror, fear, guilt. They thought they would die. They
even thought that that would be their last day, and some phoned their
families to tell them as much. These brave officers suffer from severe
and lasting injuries and trauma. Five died in the aftermath. All
experienced some form of very severe pain and trauma.
Nearly 600 rioters were charged with assaulting law enforcement
officers, and 170 of them were charged with using a deadly weapon or a
dangerous weapon to commit the assault. True, they were not charged
with killing anyone, but those charges against them were serious and
severe. They were convicted by juries of everyday Americans who were
instructed properly as to the law by judges who were simply following
those statutes on the books, and they convicted those defendants,
insurrectionists, rioters in proceedings that have been reaffirmed on
appeal, where there were appeals, or where there were guilty pleas and
an acknowledgment of responsibility from some.
Now, with clearly callous regard for the justice system, for those
juries, for the prosecutors, for the judges, for the rule of law, the
President has gifted them--gifted them--``full, complete, and
unconditional'' pardons--``full, complete, and unconditional''
pardons--even after those proceedings of lawfully convicting them.
Shame on him.
These sickening pardons are the ultimate show of disrespect for our
police officers and a clear endorsement of political violence. His
actions normalize political violence. They condone it--maybe even
encourage it--because, from now on, those kinds of rioters who disrupt
the lawful and peaceful transition of power or any other functioning of
our government can at least hope for and, under this President, maybe
expect that they will never be held accountable.
These pardons are a betrayal not only of these officers--the Capitol
Police--on that day, who defended and protected us and who literally
were willing to lay down their lives for our democracy, but these
abuses of pardons show that it is past time for Congress to enact
reform and implement restraints on the pardon power. America elects
Presidents, not Kings with unfettered power. The pardon power was
lifted--taken from England--by the Founders, who saw the practice in
the monarchy at that time. It was one of the only powers--maybe unique
among powers--in its being totally unchecked. We need accountability
and transparency, starting with this resolution--transparency and
accountability, starting here.
But we also need the measure that I propose, the Pardon Transparency
and Accountability Act, which will impose some guardrails and
safeguards: a statement by the President explaining why he is doing a
specific pardon, because it is supposed to be an individualized
judgment; then a justice impact statement that gives the victim of that
crime or any related offense the opportunity to be heard and state a
position; the prosecutors an opportunity to state a view; and a
disclosure as to what lobby--maybe even campaign contributions--have
been involved.
Ultimately--and I know we are speaking to history here--there needs
to be a change in the Constitution, an amendment, that, in effect,
shares that pardon power with other branches of government. It may be
that pardons are appropriate whether as an exercise of mercy or
ultimate justice or a recognition of rehabilitation for whatever
reason. Maybe we need the pardon power, but it should not be unchecked
and absolute in the President. We are limited as to what we can do in
reform because it is in the Constitution. What we can do without a
constitutional amendment by statute is simply to require some
explanation, a justice impact statement, fuller disclosure, and more
transparency and accountability in the limited ways that the
Constitution permits, but we need to begin with this resolution today--
right away.
I urge my Republican colleagues who were protected on that awesomely
terrible day and who now are silent--they are silent in the face of
these sickening pardons--to join us. Come with us in condemning the
violence that occurred and stand with the officers--the police, the law
enforcement. Stand with the blue, and condemn the violence of that day.
Stand with the officers who put their lives on the line and who
suffered injury, maiming, and some deaths in the aftermath.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.

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Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, the murder rate in the United States
today--the global murder rate--is infinitesimal. It is a fraction of
what it was 200 years ago, 400 years ago, 600 years ago--a fraction of
what it likely was in the Bronze Age or in the days when native Tribes
patrolled this land.
What we have seen over the course of global history is that human
beings have decided that instead of advancing our social power or our
economic power or our political power through violence, we are going to
have law and order. We are going to have economies that reward merit.
We are going to punish people who disobey those laws to protect the
rest of us, and that has served us really, really well. Today, you are
fundamentally less likely to be attacked, to be murdered by a neighbor,
by somebody you have a contest with than you were centuries ago.
Donald Trump is throwing that out the window. Donald Trump is
throwing out the window the idea that we only advance ourselves
politically or economically or socially through nonviolent means. What
happened last week is that Donald Trump said to this country: If you
use violence on my behalf, you are off the hook. If you beat the hell
out of police officers, if you pound them over the head with metal
poles, if you yank them by the neck and drag them into a crowd and hold
them down so that people can stomp on them, if you tase police officers
to the point that they suffer a heart attack, as long as you are doing
that to advance my political power, you are off the hook.
The people who walked out of jail last week were convicted of
viciously violent crimes. Yes, there were plenty of people who were
convicted who didn't engage in that horrific violence, but I was here
in this Chamber that day. I remember all of my Republican colleagues
running out the door just like the Democrats did. I don't remember any
of my Republican colleagues staying in the Chamber to greet the
tourists. Everybody knew that our safety was in jeopardy. Democrats
certainly knew our safety was in jeopardy because, as we found out,
many of those protesters were looking for Democrats.
One of the most violent protesters who was let out of jail last
week--in the middle of his sentence after he had beaten up police
officers--went to the gallows, went to the noose that was constructed,
and posted on social media: Too bad no Democrats here.
If you beat up a police officer for reasons other than perpetuating
Donald Trump's power, you are still in jail. The only people who beat
up police officers in the year 2021 who got let out of jail last week--
the only ones--were the ones who beat up police officers to help Donald
Trump. That sends a clear signal that your violence is excused if it is
for Donald Trump's political purposes, and that puts all of our lives
in jeopardy. That puts our democracy in jeopardy when violence is
excused. And what we are learning in the days following that
unconscionable Executive order of pardoning the rioters--not some of
the rioters, everyone--is that it is part of a plan.
Listen, I have done a lot of work across the aisle. I have such
respect for my Republican colleagues. I have spent hours, weeks, days
sitting in rooms, negotiating immigration bills and voting bills and
public safety bills. But, man, you are watching this President trying
to seize power right now, trying to make us irrelevant, trying to
suppress political dissent. What happened last night is part of a
story. A President can't be the only person in charge of who gets money
or not in this country. That is corrupt because then the President can
dole out money to his political friends or the friends of his
billionaire friends. He can dole out money to States with Senators who
are loyal to him. He can punish companies that are competitors with his
billionaire friends or punish States represented by people who are
disloyal to him.
That is not how our democracy works. We are in charge of making sure
that taxpayer money is spread out evenly. That has nothing to do with
loyalty or disloyalty to the leader.
A couple of days ago, all of the inspectors general just got fired.
That is illegal, but they all got fired. Why? Because, if you are going
to engage in corruption inside these Agencies, you don't want anybody
to be watching.
So you have got to put this next to each other. You have got to
understand the story. If you are trying to transition our democracy to
a government of which only one person is in charge, you permit people
to engage in violence on your behalf so as to intimidate the opposition
into being silent. And I am just going to tell you, if you don't
believe this, there are a lot of folks who don't support Donald Trump
who are not going to show up to rallies, who are not going to
participate in politics because they just learned that if they do and
somebody hurts them, that person might be let off the hook. You excuse
violence. You arrange government so you can operate in darkness, and
you rig the rules so that nobody is in charge of dispensing money
except for you. Violence is a legitimate tool of politics; one person
in charge of dolling out money; government decisions made in secret.

That is not a democracy; that is a recipe for corruption--for
corruption.
So, yes, I am fuming mad about how my Republican colleagues talk
about law and order and then mostly, with a few exceptions, either
remain silent when the most violent January 6 protesters get pardoned
or celebrate those pardons. But I also want to be clear that it stands
in a context of actions taken during this first week that are
undermining our democracy to the point of putting it on the brink of
possible extinction as a means for fundamental corruption to take place
inside our government. That should be unacceptable. That is
unacceptable.
I am thankful to Senator Murray and others for bringing this down to
the floor to raise this alarm bell.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Nevada.
Ms. CORTEZ MASTO. Mr. President, I am so appreciative of my
colleagues coming down here to talk about not only the January 6
pardons that President Trump has done but to stand with the men and
women in law enforcement.
When I am home, quite often I will hear at times: Well, Democrats
don't support law enforcement. They don't support the men and women who
keep our communities safe.
That is just not true, as you can see today.
But here is what I know, and this is why this is devastating, I
think, to so many men and women who not only are Capitol Police
officers right here who defended this Capitol on January 6, who stand
guard to protect us, but, honestly, for all of the men and women in law
enforcement across this country who are paying attention and watching
what this President does. Will he have their backs when the time comes?
Will he be there to truly support them in their time of need when they
are doing their job like he says he will?
We have spent the last decade hearing Donald Trump talk about law and
order and cracking down on crime. Last fall, on a national podcast, he
called for giving our law enforcement back their dignity. He said we
need to give them their ``dignity back.'' Just last week at the White
House, at a press conference, he claimed to be a friend of the police.
Well, now, Donald Trump has been in office for just 1 week--although,
I will be truthful, it seems like longer, but it has just been 1 week--
and already, his actions have made it crystal clear that he does not
mean what he says. In fact, from his actions that we have seen so far,
he is actively working against the men and women in law enforcement,
not only those here who work in this Capitol but across this country.
Let me put this in starker terms that I think my Republican
colleagues will understand. Nevada families across my State have been
torn apart by dangerous drugs like methamphetamine and opioids. That is
true for so many families across the country, including, Mr. President,
in your own State. It doesn't matter if they are Democrats or
Republicans or libertarians or Independents, illicit drug trafficking
is impacting everyone in this country.
But last week--just last week--Donald Trump pardoned the founder of
Silk Road. What is Silk Road? It is an underground internet site that
oversaw the trafficking of $200 million in illegal drugs and other
illicit trade. The founder of Silk Road was convicted by a jury of his
peers and sentenced to life

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in prison for participating in a criminal organization and distributing
narcotics on the internet. In fact, we know after that trial that some
Americans died after purchasing those illicit drugs on that website--a
website that was specifically designed to skirt the law and support
criminal activity. But now this founder, the founder of that website
who was sentenced to life in prison, is walking free because Donald
Trump pardoned him.
Donald Trump giving a full, unconditional pardon to this drug dealer
and criminal profiteer is a slap in the face to the victims of this
crisis and to law enforcement who work to promote our communities and
to keep our communities safe.
What Donald Trump has done is not law and order; it is chaos. And it
is not just with one pardon. Donald Trump has pardoned more than 130
individuals--130--who were convicted of assaulting police officers and
some of them right here at the Capitol.
Like my colleagues you have heard, I was here that day. I will never
forget it. I remember, in the Capitol, running into one of those police
officers who had been pepper-sprayed by a rioter in Donald Trump's mob.
At the same time while he was washing out his eyes, he was reassuring
us Senators that, don't worry, I have your back, and I am standing
guard. And he ran back out to the front of the Capitol. He was doing
his job that day.
But do you know what else happened that day? As we all saw--we saw it
on TV, and those of us who were here either saw it personally or later
found out--those rioters and those insurrectionists actually came to
the Capitol with weapons and zip ties. Now, if nobody knows what is a
zip tie is, that is a handcuff. What were these rioters doing with
weapons and zip ties coming into our Capitol?
They used WD-40 and bear spray on our officers--a perfect example,
the officer I saw that morning--and they assaulted our officers with
American flags--American flags. They were beating them with these poles
of these American flags.
This is not some political conspiracy that Donald Trump would like to
rewrite; these were insurrectionists. We all know. They posted online.
You saw those videos. If you didn't watch it real time on TV, you saw
those videos. We saw them shoving, punching, and attacking our law
enforcement.
Now, instead of serving their time and facing the consequences for
the dangerous actions that they committed against our officers, Donald
Trump is telling them that not only were they wrongfully punished but,
in fact, their behavior on that day is encouraged by him as long as--
listen. Think about this. It is encouraged by him as long as they are
doing his bidding. As long as they are doing his bidding, he does not
have the backs of our law enforcement officers.
Criminals convicted of attacking law enforcement are now giving TV
interviews. You have heard from some of my colleagues that they are
giving interviews saying that President Trump's pardons have vindicated
their actions.
This is an endorsement of political violence. These actions--what
President Trump has done is an endorsement of political violence. Quite
honestly, it is an insult to the men and women who risk their lives
every day to keep our families safe.
Why do I know that? You don't have to trust what I am saying. Let me
just ask you this: I cannot imagine anyone here in this room--when you
have a problem, you have a concern about the safety of your family or
friends at home or wherever you are, what is the first call you make?
To 911 to get a law enforcement officer to come and stand and protect
you.
I happen to know many law enforcement officers personally because I
have spent a good part of my career as a prosecutor--not only here in
this U.S. Capitol but as the attorney general of the State of Nevada. I
have spent most of my life working with some great men and women in law
enforcement.
Oh, by the way, I am married to one. My husband worked in Federal law
enforcement his entire career. Like the men and women in law
enforcement, his priority in doing his job was to keep people safe
because that is what our law enforcement does. That is what they are
trained to do--to put their lives on the line every single time--every
single time--to keep our communities safe.
Let me just say it is not just the law enforcement officers--it is
not a slap in the face to just those officers; it is to their families
because when you are the spouse or the loved one of an officer who gets
that call, sometimes in the middle of the night, and they are going out
to address some sort of crime or activity that is happening in their
community to keep our communities safe, you don't know if they are
coming back.
There are two calls--the worst kinds you can get as a spouse of a law
enforcement officer. The first one is from your spouse saying: I am in
the hospital, but don't worry; everything is OK. The second one is not
from your spouse, but it is from another law enforcement officer
telling you that your husband or wife went out on a call and didn't
come back. The sacrifices not only of our officers but their loved ones
need to be considered.
If we truly believe in law and order and we truly believe that we
should support them because they put their lives on the line every
single day, then we should stand to have their backs. No matter how
difficult it is, no matter your politics, no matter what is happening,
we should always be there to support them.
You can imagine from what I am saying and my personal background that
I will always stand up for law enforcement. I have passed legislation
to support public safety under both administrations, Democratic and
Republican. I will always speak out when our leaders act against law
enforcement, whether they are a Democrat or a Republican.
Listen, I have heard some of my colleagues call out President Biden's
pardons as an excuse not to call out Donald Trump's pardons, but let me
just say I disagreed publicly with President Biden. I disagreed
publicly with granting pardons to his family. I disagreed publicly when
he gave clemency to Leonard Peltier, who was convicted of murdering two
FBI agents. I disagreed with President Biden in commuting the sentence
of Adrian Peeler, who was convicted of drug trafficking and murder.
I will tell you what, I also spoke out when President Biden nominated
Adeel Mangi to be a Federal judge. I did not support him because of his
affiliation with a group that wanted to let cop killers out of prison.
Now, that was me standing up for law enforcement.
Believe me when I say this is not partisan. This is about standing up
for the men and women who put their lives on the line every day despite
the fact that you may be in the same party of the ongoing President. It
shouldn't be hard.
Listen, everybody knows. Everyone knows in our communities that if
you commit a violent crime in our communities, you should face the
consequences.
But you know what, don't take my word for it. There are many police
organizations out there--one of which is the largest organization of
sworn law enforcement officers in the world, the Fraternal Order of
Police--and they have condemned Trump's pardoning of those who
assaulted Capitol Police officers on January 6.
But I will tell you what--I will tell you what--there are too many
Members of this body who had the benefit of those Capitol Police
officers on January 6 protecting their lives, too many who have been
oddly silent to what Donald Trump has done in pardoning individuals who
committed violent crimes against our police officers.
And you have heard that, earlier today, my Democratic colleagues and
I, we cosponsored a resolution to condemn these pardons. You would
think that it is very simple. Everybody should get on board. Everybody
should have the back of a police officer. Even my Republican
colleagues, who claim to be pro-law enforcement, should have signed
this resolution and stood with it. But you heard what happened today:
It was opposed.
The only thing I can tell you, Mr. President, in this day and age, is
that if we truly believe in law and order and we want to work together
to keep our communities safe, we have to not only talk about it, but we
have to act, because the American people deserve better. The American
people deserve a President who isn't going to release violent criminals
back into our communities. The American people, they

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deserve safety, and our law enforcement, who maintain that safety, they
need to know we have their backs.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

____________________