[Pages S2624-S2630]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]



                  Trump Administration First 100 Days

  Mr. KING. Mr. President, almost 75 years ago, the junior Senator from 
Maine rose in this Chamber to deliver a speech from her heart about a 
crisis then facing our country, a crisis not arising from a foreign 
adversary but from within, a crisis that threatened the values and 
ideals at the base of the American experiment.
  Senator Margaret Chase Smith's ``Declaration of Conscience'' turned 
out to be one of the most important speeches of the 20th century and 
defined her for the ages as a person of extraordinary courage and 
principle. And here she is with her famous red rose that she always 
wore on her lapel.
  Now, I should admit upfront that I worked for Candidate Bill 
Hathaway, who defeated her in the election of 1972. But she and I made 
it up years later when I was producing a documentary on her life for 
Maine PBS. In fact, as we began the project, I was so worried that she 
might resent my having worked for her opponent, so I sent her a letter 
confessing my role in her last campaign.
  Her response was pure Margaret Smith:

       Dear Angus King, it is perfectly alright with me that you 
     once worked for Mr. Hathaway. Yours sincerely, Margaret Chase 
     Smith.

  Simple as that.
  In working together on the documentary, she shared some fascinating 
background on this famous speech, including that she drafted it by hand 
at her kitchen table in her hometown of Skowhegan, ME, on Memorial Day 
weekend of 1950.
  After returning to Washington a couple of days later, she steeled her 
resolve and headed to the Senate floor. As luck would have it, when she 
got to the trolley from the Russell Building, there next to her sat 
Senator Joe McCarthy, who was the subject of the speech.
  ``Why are you looking so serious, Margaret,'' he asked her.
  ``Because I'm on the way to make a speech, Joe, and you're not going 
to like it.''
  She told me that she was so nervous about the speech and the breach 
that it would make in her relationship to the then-powerful Senator 
McCarthy--this was the height of the Red Scare in the 1950s, remember--
she told her chief aide, Bill Lewis, who was up in the Press Gallery, 
not to hand out the copies of the speech until she started speaking on 
the floor because she was afraid she might lose her nerve. But she went 
through with it, and the rest is quite literally history.

  Here is how Margaret Chase Smith began that speech:

       Mr. President, I would like to speak briefly and simply 
     about a serious national condition. It is a national feeling 
     of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide 
     and the end of everything that we Americans hold dear. It is 
     a condition that comes from the lack of effective leadership 
     either in the legislative branch or the executive branch of 
     our government.

  Remember, this is Margaret Chase Smith. These are her words, 75 years 
ago.
  She continued:


[[Page S2625]]


  

       I think that it is high time for the United States Senate 
     and its members to do some real soul searching and to weigh 
     our consciences as to the manner in which we are performing 
     our duty to the people of America and the manner in which we 
     are using or abusing our individual powers and privileges.

  Later in the speech, here is one of her conclusions:

       It is high time that we stopped thinking politically as 
     Republicans and Democrats about elections and started 
     thinking patriotically as Americans about national security 
     based on individual freedom.

  I think that is very important, Mr. President.
  She said:

       It is high time that we stopped thinking politically as 
     Republicans and Democrats and started thinking patriotically 
     as Americans about national security based on individual 
     freedom. It is high time that we all stopped being tools and 
     victims of totalitarian techniques--techniques that, if 
     continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come 
     to cherish as the American way of life.

  Senator Smith's speech had plenty of criticism for the Democratic 
administration at the time, but the real focus of her urgent plea to 
her colleagues was the actions of Senator Joseph McCarthy, whom she 
never mentioned by name in the speech, by the way. But Joseph McCarthy 
had embarked upon an anticommunist crusade in a manner that threatened 
the principles of free speech and the rule of law embedded in our 
values as a nation and in our Constitution. In other words, it wasn't 
McCarthy's anticommunism she objected to; it was the manner in which he 
carried it out.
  I fear that we are at a similar moment in history. While today's 
serious national condition is not involving the actions of one of our 
colleagues, it does involve those of the President of the United 
States.
  Echoing Senator Smith, today's crisis should not be viewed as a 
partisan issue. This is not about Democrats or Republicans or 
immigration or tax policy or even the next set of elections. Today's 
crisis threatens the idea of America and the system of government that 
has sustained us for more than two centuries.
  Again, this is not about the President's agenda, although, yes, I do 
disagree with most of it; it is about the manner in which he is 
pursuing it, which includes ignoring the Constitution and the rule of 
law. And it is this roughshod nonprocess that endangers all of us--all 
of us--his detractors and his supporters alike.
  What is at stake is simple and, in fact, was the driving force behind 
the basic design of our Constitution: the grave danger to any society 
of a concentration of power in one set of hands--the concentration of 
power in one set of hands.
  The paradox at the heart of the structure of any democratic 
government is that power is given to the government to protect and 
serve the people, but at the same time, the people must be protected 
from that same power being used against them.
  Madison put it clearly in the 51st Federalist:

       But what is government itself--

  Madison said--

     but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men 
     were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were 
     to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on 
     government would be necessary. In framing a government which 
     is to be administered by men over men--

  And, of course, it would now be men and women over men and women--

     the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the 
     government to control the governed; and in the next place 
     oblige it to control itself.
       A dependence on the people--

  He was talking about elections--

     is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but 
     experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary 
     precautions.

  Precautions that go beyond regular elections. The most important of 
these ``auxiliary precautions'' is the explicit separation of powers 
between the Executive and the legislature, which is at the heart--at 
the heart, at the very heart--of our Constitution, better known as 
checks and balances.
  My fear is this phrase ``checks and balances'' has become such a 
cliche that we don't recognize it as the fundamental premise of our 
constitutional system.
  There is nothing new, by the way, about the recognition of the danger 
of concentrated power. The ancient Romans summed it up with a simple 
question: ``Quis custodiet, ipsos custodes?'' or ``Who will guard the 
guardians?'' How do we control the government that we have created to 
keep it from abusing the people?
  Another way to define this danger is a universal principle of human 
nature: All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
  It is important to emphasize that the danger I am describing here 
isn't based upon institutional jealousy of Senators worrying about the 
President taking some of their power or a loss of the prerogatives of 
the Senate or the politics of Democrats and Republicans. It is about 
the violation of the very deliberate division of power between the 
legislature and the Executive, which is, as I said, at the heart of our 
Constitution. It is there for a reason: to see that the power is not 
concentrated in one set of hands. And this is the most important 
bulwark between our citizens and--let's call it what it is--tyranny.
  Again, Madison warned us in no uncertain terms, this time in the 47th 
Federalist:

       The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and 
     judiciary, in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced 
     the very definition of tyranny.

  Madison's word, ``tyranny.''
  Later in the same essay:

       There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive 
     powers are united in the same person.

  ``There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers 
are united in the same person,'' and yet this ``accumulation of all 
powers''--the term that Madison used--is exactly what is happening 
today before our very eyes. Although many in this body, unfortunately, 
seem determined to ignore it, deliberately ignore it, the evidence is 
everywhere: from the elimination of congressionally established 
Agencies to the withholding of appropriated funds--an appropriations 
bill, Mr. President, by the way, is a law; it is not a suggestion to 
the Executive about where he or she should spend money, it is a law to 
be observed--to issuing Executive orders purporting to be law in place 
of legislation, to sidestepping, if not ignoring, court orders.

  This President is engaged in the most direct assault on the 
Constitution in our history, and we in this body, at least thus far, 
are inert and therefore complicit.
  It is worth pausing for a moment to look at the terms of article II, 
which outlines the powers and responsibilities of the President--
article II of the Constitution. At the outset, we have to remember that 
the Declaration of Independence was directed specifically at the 
depredations of the British King, and later, the Framers had recently 
come through a brutal 8-year war against that same King. It is clear 
that a monarchy was exactly what the Framers were trying to avoid in 
the structure of the new government, and it explains the limited powers 
granted to the President in article II.
  So let's look at article II. In light of this antimonarchical intent, 
article II only gives the President 1\1/2\ unilateral powers. The 
unilateral power is the power to issue pardons. That is something the 
President can do without any check or balance. The half unilateral 
power is the role as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces in wartime, 
but even that is constrained by the reservation to the Congress of the 
power to declare war.
  With these two exceptions, all the other powers in article II granted 
to the President--appointment of judges, Federal officials; making 
treaties with other countries; vetoing legislation--are all bounded in 
some respect by the requirement of congressional assent.
  I want to repeat, article II is not a broad grant of authority to the 
President. It is anything but. It is a restriction on the powers of the 
President.
  And here, I think, is the most important phrase in article II. The 
principal responsibility of the President is spelled out in the last 
paragraph of article II: The Chief Executive ``shall take Care that the 
Laws be faithfully executed''--``shall take Care that the Laws be 
faithfully executed.'' It doesn't say only the laws he agrees with or 
that he has any power whatsoever to make laws. His job is to execute 
the laws passed by Congress without exception--a responsibility this 
President is spectacularly failing to meet,

[[Page S2626]]

to ``take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.''
  While this is the most serious breach of our constitutional order, 
the administration has also taken a series of apparently unconnected 
actions which, taken together, spell out our rapid path toward one-man 
rule--or tyranny, as Madison would say.
  In the style of the Declaration of Independence, here is a partial 
list--only, where the Declaration says ``he,'' it is referring to the 
King of England. ``He'' as used in my list refers to the President.
  Here is the list:
  He has enabled the random firing of personnel throughout the 
government without regard to the importance of the job or the 
qualifications of the individual, which has severely compromised the 
ability of the affected Agencies to carry out the purposes Congress 
intended--the very antithesis of faithfully executing the laws.
  He has enabled the dismemberment of Agencies providing essential 
services to the American people, most particularly in the Social 
Security and Veterans' Administrations, by people who literally don't 
know what they are doing--again, in violation of his responsibility to 
faithfully execute the laws creating those Agencies and programs.
  He has systematically--early in the administration--fired independent 
inspectors general throughout the government whose job it is to find 
fraud, corruption, and malfeasance in Agency programs, in clear 
violation of Federal law and apparent intent to govern without 
constraints.
  He has used the power of the government to threaten, intimidate, and 
extort private law firms for the supposed offense of representing 
clients he doesn't like--an exercise of governmental power nowhere 
found in the Constitution and a clear violation of the very structure 
of our legal system.
  He has used the power of the government to threaten and intimidate 
former government officials based upon actions and statements with 
which he disagrees, thereby sending the message throughout the 
government that pleasing the President is more important than telling 
the truth.
  Again, he has no such power over the Constitution, and the result of 
this abuse of his office is the opposite--the opposite--of faithfully 
executing the laws.
  He has openly threatened media platforms, particularly television 
networks, with license revocation or other punishment for airing 
content he doesn't like, in clear violation of the First Amendment, 
which is one of the fundamental bulwarks of our freedoms. For a 
President of the United States to threaten a media firm with revocation 
of their license or other kinds of punishment because they publish 
content he doesn't like--that is the antithesis of the First Amendment.
  By the way, the compromise of the free press has been a sign of 
incipient despotism throughout history and right up to today.
  He has used the power of the government, including the impoundment of 
congressionally appropriated funds and threatening tax-exempt status, 
to threaten and intimidate private universities in order to force them 
to adopt policies to his liking--again, a power found nowhere in the 
Constitution, nowhere in article II.
  He has enabled a national program of arrest and deportation of 
individuals in this country with no due process whatsoever. And even 
when it is admitted that at least one such individual was sent to a 
foreign prison by mistake, he has refused to make any effort to return 
that person to his home, despite court orders--including a unanimous 
order of the United States Supreme Court--of him to do so.
  This entire process is a violation of the 5th, 6th, 8th, and 14th 
Amendments. It certainly is not consistent with his obligation to 
faithfully execute the laws.
  He has openly suggested the possibility of sending U.S. citizens to a 
foreign prison for undefined crimes, thereby placing them outside the 
reach of our criminal justice system, including the constitutionally 
guaranteed right to counsel.
  He has abused the limited powers delegated to him by Congress in 
connection with tariffs and trade by declaring emergencies where none 
exist and singlehandedly plunging our economy into chaos and risk of 
inflation, unemployment, and possible recession--a perfect example of 
the dangers of one-man rule.
  The Constitution specifically delegates to the Congress, in article 
I, section 8 clause 3, the power over trade and commerce among nations. 
Congress delegated that power to the President under certain limited 
circumstances, that of an emergency, not that the President can define 
an emergency however he wants.
  I live in Maine. We are on the border of Canada. There is no 
emergency that justifies the imposition of tariffs with Canada. If he 
wants to propose a tariff against Canada or Britain or any other 
country, he should come here, because that is our responsibility. We 
should debate it; and chances are, we can come up with a more rational 
solution than the one that was presented to the country several weeks 
ago.
  He has also attempted to cut off funds to a single State, my own, 
because he took personal umbrage at our Governor's refusal to bend to 
his policy preference, which was inconsistent with the law of our 
State.
  Our Governor's position was not on the issue of trans athletes. It 
was on the issue of State and local control, which is the basic bedrock 
of our representative form of government.
  Tellingly, during that exchange, he said something really amazing and 
revealing. The President of the United States said:

       We are the law.

  That is more fitting to a king than to a President. ``We are the 
law.''
  By the way, an Executive order is not law, despite what this 
President seems to think. An Executive order is not law. The 
Constitution does not give the power to the President to unilaterally 
decide what the law is. Again, his job is to faithfully execute the 
laws that are made here in this building.
  This ``we are the law'' comment is a clear statement of an intent to 
govern as a sovereign without regard to the Constitution or the rule of 
law.
  In a field that I have some specific knowledge of, he has compromised 
national security by dismantling those Agencies charged with defending 
our Nation against the clear and present danger of cyber attacks and 
firing many of the individuals--with no stated cause--who are best 
suited to mount that defense.
  He has further compromised national security by alienating our allies 
with his unlawful and indiscriminate imposition of tariffs, which has 
severely undermined confidence in our country, again, acting far in 
excess of the limited power over trade delegated by Congress.
  I have served for the past 12 years on the Intelligence and Armed 
Services Committees, and I have come to realize that our asymmetric 
advantage in the world is allies. China has customers. We have allies. 
To alienate our allies without good reason, with no emergency, with no 
consultation with Congress, with no consultation with the Foreign 
Affairs Committee, with no consultation with much of anybody, that I 
can tell, is a serious compromise of our national security, both in 
terms of our intelligence capability but also who will come to our aid 
in a time of trouble.
  This is not a complete list. It does, though, present a disturbing 
and dangerous pattern. This President is attempting to govern as a 
monarch, unbound by constitutional restraint or by law, not as a 
President subject to the constraints of the Constitution or the rule of 
law.
  Again, this isn't about his policies, whether they be mass 
deportation or trans athletes, trade and tariffs, or the appropriate 
levels of staffing of the Federal Government. Reasonable people can 
discuss those, work out policies, and find what the law should be. It 
is not unilaterally in the hands of the President to make those 
decisions.
  No. The issue before us we can no longer avoid is the manner in which 
he is pursuing those policies, which violates both the spirit and 
expressed terms of our founding document.
  Again, this isn't about observing the boundaries prescribed by the 
Constitution just to check the appropriate boxes. This is about 
preserving boundaries to protect ourselves and our people from the 
abuse that inevitably--inevitably--flows from the unbridled 
concentration of power.

[[Page S2627]]

  To those who like the policies of the President and are, therefore, 
willing to ignore the constitutional means of effectuating them, I and 
history can only say: Watch out. Today, the target may be the 
undocumented or Federal workers, but tomorrow, perhaps, under a 
different king President, could be you.
  Once this power is concentrated into one set of hands, it is going to 
be very difficult to get it back, and it could turn that power against 
anybody who displeases the monarch.
  So what can we do? What are the guardrails? How can we buttress? It 
is important. The first guardrail is the Congress itself, the part of 
our government actually empowered to define policy, appropriate funds, 
oversee the actions of the Executive. But, unfortunately, the majority 
in Congress has thus far wholly abdicated these fundamental 
responsibilities and thus far shown little inclination to even 
recognize the danger, let alone take action to confront it.

  We could reclaim our power, however, by pulling back the trade 
authority--there is a bill to do that--instituting vigorous oversight 
of the activities of DOGE to determine to what extent their actions 
compromise the congressional intent, or holding the President's 
nominees and his prized tax bill until he seizes his attempts to make 
policy unilaterally, including compounding Congressionally authorized 
and appropriated funds.
  You know, do our job. That is the simple solution. Do our job.
  The second guardrail is the courts, which are generally holding up 
their end of the constitutional bargain. But they read the press just 
as we do, and they need to know we are ready to reassume our powers and 
responsibilities. As easy as it may be for us to rely entirely on the 
courts to save us, that is a copout. Reclaiming power must be a joint 
project.
  The final guardrail is the people, who more and more are speaking up 
in rallies, in correspondence with us, in town meetings, and in 
conversations at the grocery store. But their only real power, the 
midterm elections, don't happen for 19 months. And in the meantime, the 
burden falls back on us.
  I don't think we have 19 months, given what has happened in the first 
100 days. We need to act now before the awesome power of the United 
States Government is consolidated into one set of hands. When that 
happens, there may be no going back.
  No. We here in this body can't escape the responsibility of our oath. 
Each of us swore, mind you, to ``support and defend the Constitution of 
the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic'' and that 
we would ``bear true faith and allegiance to the same.'' The ``same'' 
being the Constitution.
  Clearly, the Framers knew that someday, there might be domestic 
enemies of the Constitution and made it our literally sacred obligation 
to defend the Constitution from those domestic enemies.
  I should mention that Joe McCarthy primaried Senator Margaret Chase 
Smith a few years after her speech as punishment to standing up to him, 
but to no avail. She crushed her opposition and won going away.
  With thanks to Margaret Chase Smith for her example and inspiration, 
this is my ``Declaration of Conscience.''
  I don't relish this moment, but I feel I have no choice but to call 
out the clear implications and dangers of what is happening--what is 
happening day by day--before our eyes.
  To do otherwise, to keep silent, would be to compromise what I 
believed about our country since my first civics class in high school 
and at about the same time when I watched my dad risk his career to 
fight for justice and the rule of law.
  So here I stand.
  Abraham Lincoln came to the Congress in the midst of the Civil War at 
a time when our forebearers--like us--were reluctant to face the 
responsibilities that had been thrust upon them. At that critical 
moment, this is what Abraham Lincoln said:

       Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this 
     Congress and this Administration, will be remembered in spite 
     of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance, 
     can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which 
     we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the 
     latest generation.

  ``The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor 
or dishonor, to the latest generation.''
  Mr. President, I deeply hope that in the midst of our fiery trial, we 
will choose honor and the Constitution.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, my colleagues, you are going to hear a lot 
of stories about the first 100 days of President Trump's second 
Presidency, and, indeed, there are a lot of stories.
  There is a story of incompetence. We are dealing with multiple 
measles outbreaks all across the country.
  There is a story about abdicating our responsibility to lead around 
the world. Vladimir Putin is laughing at us as Trump goes about the 
business of handing Ukraine to a brutal Kremlin dictator.
  There is a story of transferring wealth from the poor and the middle 
class, through massive cuts to Medicaid, to the very, very wealthy, who 
are asking for another massive tax cut.
  But I would argue that the most important story to tell is a story of 
corruption--a story of mind-blowing, massive, scalable corruption. That 
story is important because we are watching the theft of taxpayer money 
by the decision of the Republican Party to look the other way as Donald 
Trump essentially monetizes, at scale, the White House and the powers 
given to him by the Constitution and the American people in order to 
enrich himself and his friends.
  And if we don't tell this story and if we don't mount a national, 
bipartisan, apolitical resistance to this thievery, to this corruption, 
and it becomes normalized as just a part of doing business in America, 
a normal facet of residence in the White House, then shame on us 
because our democracy will not survive this level of corruption, grift, 
and graft.
  So I am going to try to tell the story really quickly. I have got two 
charts, and this is hard to read. These words are really small because, 
you know, over the course of 100 days, there are 40, 50, 60 different 
individual acts of precedent-breaking corruption.
  And that is intentional, because what President Trump is trying to do 
is engage in so much public corruption that you just become normalized 
to it, that you stop paying attention to the corruption because is it--
can it be--corruption if it is just playing out in public? He is trying 
to make you think that this stuff happens all the time behind the 
scenes, and, now, all that is different is that you are seeing it 
publicly.
  But that is not true. This is not, actually, how government works, 
and I refuse to accept that, just because the corruption is happening 
in public, in front of the cameras for everybody to see, we should 
accept it.
  OK, I am going to try to do this: I am going to try to do this as 
quickly as possible. I am just going to highlight for you maybe the 40 
most egregious examples of corruption in the first 100 days, but this 
is just the tip of the iceberg.
  So, on January 6--this is before Trump is even sworn in--Amazon, 
which has a ton of business before the incoming Trump White House, pays 
$40 million to the Trump family to license a documentary, a series, 
about Melania Trump--just a cash payment from a company that has huge 
interests before the incoming White House to the Trump family.
  On January 17, a few days before Trump is sworn in, maybe the most 
corrupt act in the history of the White House: This is the creation of 
the Trump meme coin. This is just a backdoor way for anybody with 
business before the Trump administration to send him millions of 
dollars in total secret.
  Trump doesn't disclose who buys the coin. He launders his income from 
the coin through an unregulated Chinese exchange. He promotes the coin 
on his social media feeds.
  In the first minute of trading, one buyer--and what we know is, this 
was likely a Chinese individual--purchases 6 million coins, sending the 
price through the roof and immediately making a ton of money for Trump, 
who makes money off of every transaction. Trump knows who this person 
is, no doubt, but American citizens do not.
  All right, on January 20, he is now sworn in, and he fulfills a 
campaign promise to the oil and gas industry. There is a report from 
the campaign

[[Page S2628]]

that said they came down to Mar-a-Lago, I think, and said: We will give 
you a billion dollars in campaign contributions.
  This is not me alleging this. This is an open report.
  The oil and gas industry says: We will give you a billion dollars in 
campaign contributions if you do what we want when you are sworn in.
  And the day he is sworn in, Trump issues an Executive order gutting 
environmental rules so that the oil and gas industry can start making 
bigger amounts of money.
  On January 25, Trump eliminates the inspectors general, the ethics 
officials in government, and whistleblower offices. It is a late-night 
purge; so you know it is fishy. On January 25, 17 inspectors general 
get fired, clearing the way for the President to engage in even more 
corruption--because that is what the inspectors general do: They sit in 
these Agencies, and they look for corruption.
  Now, the inspectors general are gone. They are just gone. But that is 
not good enough because, on the same day, Trump fires the head of the 
Office of Special Counsel. Why would you do that? Well, that Office is 
an investigative and prosecutorial Office that works to end government 
and political corruption and protects government employees who become 
whistleblowers. That office is gone now, along with all of the 
whistleblowers.

  Two days later, Trump illegally fires NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox. This 
effectively shuts down--illegally--the NLRB for a period of time. Why 
is that important? Because the guys who are standing behind Donald 
Trump on Inauguration Day, people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, are 
being investigated at the moment by the NLRB for massive workplace 
violations. Now the NLRB is shut down--a big gift to the people who 
financed Donald Trump's inauguration and stood behind him to give him 
political endorsement and cover on his Inauguration Day.
  On January 31, a trend begins. Enforcement actions are paused against 
Trump loyalists.
  This is Representative Andy Ogles from Tennessee. He was being 
investigated for illegal or potentially illegal loans made to his 2022 
campaign. But right after Representative Ogles introduces a bill to 
amend the Constitution to allow Trump to serve for a third term, what 
happens? Trump makes the investigation go away. As you will see, 
Trump's justice system will often look the other way if you cheat or 
steal but you are a friend of Donald Trump's.
  At the same time, another of Trump's friends, his IRS nominee, Billy 
Long, gets his donors--almost all of them have direct interest before 
the IRS--to pay off his six-figure campaign debt. It is a fabulously 
corrupt thing to do, but it is just all normal now. So when Trump is 
showing you the way, then the folks who work for him follow suit.
  All right. We will jump to February now, February 4. We are into, 
what, week 2 of the Trump White House. Trump hauls the PGA and the 
Saudi Government into the White House to broker an agreement between 
the two rival golf leagues so that Trump can make more money hosting 
golf tournaments. He is in business with one of these entities, the 
Saudi-owned LIV league.
  In a normal world, the President of the United States wouldn't be in 
business with any foreign government, but the President is. And not 
only is that OK, but it is also apparently OK for him to bring the golf 
league that he is in business with into the White House and pressure 
the other golf league, the rival golf league, to cut a deal. And guess 
what happens? The PGA, which had long said they were not going to host 
events at Trump's courses, after being hauled into the White House, 
looking the President of the United States in the eye--somebody they 
clearly have to do business with--they announce that they are going to 
start allowing their tournaments to be held at Trump courses--big 
benefit to Donald Trump's personal bottom line.
  On February 6, 2 days later, Trump ends the criminal enforcement of 
the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Do you know what this is? You 
should. It requires people who are being paid by foreign governments to 
register. It is no longer going to be enforced. So now members of the 
Trump administration can get backdoor payments from foreign 
governments, and nobody is going to enforce the law.
  This isn't theoretical. There were people who got arrested for doing 
this exact same thing--getting paid by foreign governments while 
working for the Trump administration in term one. He wants to make sure 
it is not a problem in term two, so he pauses enforcement of the actual 
act.
  Four days later, Trump eliminates the Consumer Financial Protection 
Bureau. This is just a magnificent present to all of his billionaire 
enablers because this is the Agency that stops big businesses--banks, 
other financial firms--from ripping off consumers, and now it is just 
shut down.
  The same day, DOJ drops charges against Eric Adams in a mind-
blowingly public and brazen quid pro quo. Adams says he will pledge 
loyalty to Trump. He is going to support Trump's political priorities 
in New York City. Trump drops the corruption charges against Adams.
  Just like the Ogles case, the door is now wide open to engage in 
corruption or criminality as long as you support Donald Trump.
  The thing that makes this one so egregious is that Adams and the 
White House go on TV to announce the corrupt deal, and they don't hide 
it. They just say that Adams is now supporting Donald Trump, and we are 
now going to drop the charges against him. And everybody gets the 
message: There is a lot of stuff I can get away with as a corrupt 
official as long as I am in bed politically with Donald Trump.
  On the same day, February 10, DOJ pauses enforcement of the Foreign 
Corrupt Practices Act. This is the law that stops American companies 
from bribing foreign governments in order to get business. On February 
10, Trump suspends enforcement of an antibribery statute, paving the 
way for his friends in corporate America to start bribing foreign 
governments again.
  Two days later, the State Department forecasts that they are going to 
dramatically upscale the amount of money that they are going to send to 
Tesla. This is the first time that Elon Musk shows up in this story. By 
February 12, Elon Musk is pretty well embedded in the White House, and, 
guess what, the State Department is now going to spend $400 million for 
armored Teslas--its largest expected contract in the upcoming year.
  On February 12, the same day, Musk infiltrates the Department of 
Labor and OSHA, giving him exclusive, secret access to labor law 
violation data against him and his competitors. It is unethical and 
corrupt, but this stuff is happening every single day.
  A few days later, on February 15 and 16, Musk now starts really 
testing the limits of what his boss will let him get away with. He 
fires a specific set of regulators at the FDA that are reviewing one of 
his medical products, Neuralink. The message is clear: You got to do 
right by my applications or you risk getting the ax too.
  Three days later, on February 19, Trump's new U.S. attorney for 
Washington, DC, Ed Martin, starts to use his government power to harass 
Trump's critics. He launches something called Operation Whirlwind, and 
he is pretty unapologetic about the fact that this is going to be an 
enforcement operation against anybody who just seeks to get in the way 
of DOGE. He doesn't say it is going after people who are acting 
illegally; he says anybody who tries to stop or protest or harass 
DOGE's work is now going to be the subject of Operation Whirlwind. He 
starts trolling critics of DOGE online. The U.S. attorney for DC is now 
just trolling DOGE critics online, obviously threatening criminal 
enforcement.
  See what is happening here? We are 30 days into the administration, 
and everybody in Trump's world, including the supposedly independent 
U.S. attorneys, are getting the message that it is now part of your job 
if you work for Trump to use your government powers to either enrich 
yourself or Trump or to help Trump politically.
  On February 21, 2 days later, the FCC drops a major investigation 
into a company called Robinhood. Why does this matter? You guessed it--
this firm donated $2 million to Trump's inauguration fund. Thirty days 
later, the SEC drops an investigation into that firm. Put a pin in that 
because you are going to hear stories like it over and over again.

[[Page S2629]]

  Throughout February, we watched the rich guys that are surrounding 
Trump come up with new ways to monetize their positions.
  Kash Patel is a perfect example. He is the nominee to head the FBI--
maybe the most important independent Bureau of the Federal Government--
and while he is going through that process, he is selling merchandise 
online, ranging from T-shirts to playing cards, with the proceeds 
supposedly going to whistleblowers' education and defamation cases.
  On February 26, news breaks that the FAA is considering giving a $2.4 
billion contract to Elon Musk's Starlink. But it is not like a regular 
contract that is up for bid; it is a contract that was already awarded 
to one of Musk's competitors, Verizon, and word leaks that the White 
House is thinking of just ripping the contract away from Verizon 
because Verizon is not a political supporter of Donald Trump in the way 
that Elon Musk is, and just giving it to Elon Musk.

  Now, that doesn't happen as reported. The contract has not been 
canceled yet. But there are regular reports of the administration still 
relentlessly attacking Verizon in a clear attempt to try to undermine 
their contract.
  On February 27, the next day, Trump drops a lawsuit against Capital 
One. Why does this matter? Capitol One donated $1 million to Trump's 
inauguration fund.
  It is now just kind of automatic--you donate a big amount of money to 
Trump's inauguration, and you can ask him for something.
  We are not done. That same day, the FCC drops a lawsuit against 
Coinbase. You have the story now. Coinbase donated $1 million to 
Trump's inauguration fund. They are now told that it is OK to keep 
cheating consumers.
  We are not done. On February 28, a day later, the DOJ announces that 
it would drop a complaint against SpaceX, Elon Musk's SpaceX, for labor 
discrimination.
  Elon is like: Wait a second. All of these other big donors to your 
inauguration are getting out of jail free. I want my get-out-of-jail-
free card as well.
  He gets it from DOJ.
  We are now into March. On March 1, a report breaks--this is maybe 
second to Coinbase, the most stunning act of corruption--on March 1, 
word breaks that Trump is selling meetings at Mar-a-Lago. On at least 
one occasion, Trump has charged guests $1 million to dine with him at 
Mar-a-Lago.
  According to the same report, business leaders can secure a one-on-
one meeting with the President of the United States for a $5 million 
payment to Donald Trump. If you were mayor of a medium-sized town and 
it was reported that you were selling meetings for like $200, you would 
be arrested. You would be run out of town. But not Donald Trump. He is 
selling meetings for $5 million, according to this report, and because 
the corruption in this White House is daily and normal, he gets away 
with it.
  On March 2, Trump launches the crypto reserve fund. This is going to 
involve government-taxpayer dollars purchasing and holding a variety of 
digital assets in a strategic reserve fund--a move that definitely 
inflates and protects Trump's investment portfolio, by now, you 
understand, very heavily dependent on crypto assets.
  Now, this normally wouldn't be a problem because normally when 
somebody takes a high position like President or Governor or mayor, 
they divest from their own personal assets or they put it all in a 
blind fund. Trump does none of that. He is controlling his own assets 
and his family is controlling their own assets while he makes policy 
that benefits himself and his family financially.
  On March 3, a really curious thing: DOJ intervenes in an obscure but 
open-and-shut 2020 Colorado elections case. This is the case of Tina 
Peters, who tampered with voting machines on Trump's behalf in Mesa 
County, CO. She was convicted by a jury of her peers, open and shut, 
but because Peters is a MAGA loyalist, now DOJ, on March 3, says it is 
going to step in and review the case because there are concerns about 
how it was prosecuted. This is just President Trump again clearly 
shielding those that violated the law to help him from consequences.
  Same thing, different day--no, not even a different day. This is 
actually still March 3. Yuga Labs, a blockchain company, donated 
$100,000 to Trump's inauguration fund. They now get in line. They get 
what everybody else is getting. The SEC closes an ongoing investigation 
into the company.
  On March 4, DOGE lays off thousands of IRS employees. This is bad for 
a lot of reasons, but it certainly helps Trump's Mar-a-Lago friends 
because the IRS now cannot enforce the law against the big giant tax 
cheats in the ways that it could have when it had those personnel on 
the books. Mar-a-Lago is celebrating.
  On March 4, the same day, word breaks that the Commerce Department is 
considering changes to a very specific rural broadband program and who 
is eligible. Why? Because Elon Musk wants to dominate that program. 
Under the program's original rules, Starlink was kind of capped at $4.1 
billion. This curious change now will allow Elon Musk's company 
Starlink to receive between $10 billion and $20 billion from the rural 
broadband program.
  This is like a broken record, but 6 days later, the CFPB, which is 
basically shut down but exists in name only, drops a lawsuit against 
Bank of America and J.P. Morgan. Bank of America donated $500,000 to 
the inauguration, and J.P. Morgan donated $1 million to the 
inauguration.
  On March 11, a day later, Trump and Musk hold this now very well-
known advertisement for Tesla on the White House lawn. This is just 
taxpayer dollars used to support the personnel at the White House and 
the White House being used to sell cars for Elon Musk. And the message, 
again, is pretty simple here: If you are loyal to me and you pay any 
kind of price for your loyalty to me, I will use government resources 
to help get you out of trouble, even including free advertising.
  On March 19--we are 8 days later--the GEO Group donated $500,000 to 
Trump's inauguration fund. This is a private prison company. The NLRB 
drops its investigation into this company.
  I mean, it is really getting disgusting at this point. I mean, I 
don't know that there is anybody left that made a major donation to the 
inauguration fund that has not gotten their favor from Donald Trump.
  On March 24, the Treasury Department guts something called the 
Corporate Transparency Act. This is the regulation that requires 
businesses to reveal their true owners to the government. These new 
rules now make it easier for billionaires to hide money, to avoid 
taxes, to engage in corruption--less accountability for corporations.
  On March 25, a day later, the SEC reduces from $125 million to $50 
million an existing fine. So this has already been litigated. This 
company, Ripple, a blockchain-based digital payment company, has been 
fined. Trump comes in and reduces the fine from $125 million to $50 
million.

  You know the story by now. These guys made a big investment in the 
inauguration. Most of these companies that got a ``get out of jail 
free'' or had their investigations terminated were giving $500,000 or 
$1 million. Ripple made sure they got it right. They made a $5 million 
donation to Trump's inaugural fund, and they got their fine reduced by 
$75 million.
  On March 28, Trump pardons the founder of Nikola autos, one of his 
campaign megadonors. Again, this is a pardon for one of his major 
campaign contributors. When asked about the pardon, Trump said: They 
say the thing they did was wrong, but he was one of the first people 
who supported me for President.
  He just tells you what he did. He said: Yes, they said what he did 
was wrong. He did something that was probably pretty wrong, but he 
supported me for President. So I am giving him a pardon.
  I am not saying there hasn't been a lot of really bad stuff that has 
happened in the pardon program under Democratic and Republican 
Presidents, but let's just name it what Donald Trump named it.
  April 8--we are into April. Trump issues an Executive order to expand 
coal mining, part of his downpayment on the promise he made to those 
oil executives. Shares of the company owned by Joseph Craft, the 
billionaire coal

[[Page S2630]]

magnate who helped lead those Trump fundraising efforts during the 
Presidential campaign, immediately shoot up.
  On April 9, this really curious timeline of events plays out, which 
Trump posts on his social media:

       THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!

  A lot of his followers comply. They make investments in the market. 
There are reports and speculation that many of his inner circle might 
have done the same thing. A couple of hours later, he announces he is 
pausing most of his tariffs. The market shoots up. People who followed 
his directions online make a lot of money, and, potentially, other 
people who had access to that insider information might have made a lot 
of money as well.
  On April 17, Musk steers billions of taxpayer dollars to something 
called the Golden Dome. Reuters, on April 17, reports that Elon Musk's 
rocket and satellite company, SpaceX, has emerged as the frontrunner to 
develop Trump's proposed Golden Dome. This is an ill-defined, 
technologically unproven defense system. It supposedly has a pricetag 
of hundreds of billions of dollars--money that now looks as if it will 
be funneled directly to Elon Musk. At this point, it is head-shaking.
  On April 23--now he can do anything he wants. It is like he has just 
blown the lid off of any expectations about what a President can and 
cannot do to enrich himself. On April 23, a message appears on the 
homepage of the website for Trump's meme coin, declaring the top 220 
meme coin holders would be invited for an exclusive dinner with Trump, 
and the top 25 coin holders--these are private investors in Donald 
Trump's financial empire--would get a ``Special VIP Tour'' of the White 
House.
  After the message went up, the price of Trump's coin jumped by more 
than 50 percent. In the 2 days following the announcement of the 
``Special VIP Tour'' in the ``People's House''--the White House--Trump 
and his allies made nearly $1 million in trading fees alone. They are 
just selling access to the White House out in the open.
  On April 26, Trump's family--this is just last weekend--announces the 
launch of a private club called the Executive Branch, a new private 
club in Washington. The initiation fee is around a half-million 
dollars. It is advertised as a place where you can hold secret 
audiences with the Trump administration, as long as you pay Donald 
Trump's family and their financial backers over $500,000 in membership 
fees. It has apparently already sold out.
  This is not normal. None of this is normal. This is outlandish. This 
is illegal. This is unconstitutional, brazen corruption, and this is 
only the first 100 days.
  I just detailed 40 instances of mind-blowing corruption in just 40 
days, capped off by an attempt to just sell access to the White House 
to people who put money in the pockets of Donald Trump's personal 
businesses.
  Donald Trump wants to numb this country into believing that this is 
just how government works, that he is owed this, that every President 
is owed this--that the government has always been corrupt, and he is 
just doing it out in the open.
  This is not how government works. This has been the story of his 
first 100 days, but it is our choice as a nation to allow it to be the 
story of the rest of his term. We need to expose what he is doing. We 
need to rally everybody, from the left to the right. Nobody in this 
country--whether you are a hardened conservative or a hardened 
progressive--should root for the President of the United States to be 
enriching himself off of this position. We need to rally this Nation 
against this corruption and bring it to an end because if Donald Trump 
gets what he wants and we just start allowing our government's leaders 
to openly steal from us during the first 100 days or for the rest of 
his term, then, I am telling you, American democracy is not going to 
survive.
  I yield the floor.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Curtis). The Senator from Idaho.