[Pages S2644-S2656]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

PROVIDING FOR CONGRESSIONAL DISAPPROVAL UNDER CHAPTER 8 OF TITLE 5,
UNITED STATES CODE, OF THE RULE SUBMITTED BY THE DEPARTMENT OF ENERGY
RELATING TO ``ENERGY CONSERVATION PROGRAM FOR APPLIANCE STANDARDS:
CERTIFICATION REQUIREMENTS, LABELING REQUIREMENTS, AND ENFORCEMENT
PROVISIONS FOR CERTAIN CONSUMER PRODUCTS AND COMMERCIAL EQUIPMENT''

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The bill clerk read as follows:

A joint resolution (H.J. Res. 42) providing for
congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United
States Code, of the rule submitted by the Department of
Energy relating to ``Energy Conservation Program for
Appliance Standards: Certification Requirements, Labeling
Requirements, and Enforcement Provisions for Certain Consumer
Products and Commercial Equipment''.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.

Trump Administration First 100 Days

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, we are 100 days into Donald Trump's term,
and it is time that we ask the most important question, the most
obvious question, but it is a question, actually, that has not been
asked enough--not ``How is he doing?'' not even ``What is he doing?''
That is important too. The most important question is ``How are we
doing under Donald Trump?'' The answer is ``Terrible.'' It is going
very badly. In 3 months, we have become less safe, less secure, and
less prosperous, and it comes down to Donald Trump.
People voted for him for all kinds of reasons, but as my friend
Senator Chris Murphy said, people took him seriously when he said he
would lower costs and didn't take him seriously when he said he would
act like a dictator. It turns out that the opposite is true. We are
paying more for everything. We are paying more for everything. People's
life savings and college plans for their kids are being gutted. Tens of
thousands of jobs are getting cut.
Investors are looking for more stable places to invest their money.
The hallmark of the U.S. financial system and economy is that we are
the most stable place, the most predictable place, the best place for
rule of law, to park your money, for infrastructure, for higher
education, and all of that has been lit on fire in 100 days.
Unfortunately, the worst is yet to come. Trump's approach to
tariffs--one day they are on, and the next day they are gone--is
starting to make everything from groceries, to clothes, to cars and
homes more expensive. And people are understandably worried about a
recession. Consumer confidence is at its lowest point in 5 years.
You will recall that there was a global pandemic that caused people
to have a low level of consumer confidence. But this is not a global
pandemic; this is a self-imposed recession by one person who has a very
weird idea about economic policy and nobody willing to stand up to the
mad King.
This is not what people voted for. And if you voted for Donald
Trump--look, a lot of people voted for Donald Trump. Most people voted
for Donald Trump. I am not here to scold anybody. But people thought
that whatever his other faults, Trump was going to be good for the
money side of things--he was going to be good for your money; he was
going to be good for entrepreneurship; he was going to be good for your
401(k); he was going to be good for the stock market; he was going to
be good for investments. Here we are, and the American economy is in a
free fall, threatening to drag the entire world down with it.
But it is not just the economy that is hurting. Trump, aided by his
band of rogue advisers, including Elon Musk and Russ Vought, has broken
basically everything, forcing seniors and disabled people to wait for
hours just to get help with the benefits they have already earned.
Veterans are being laid off by the thousands and facing even longer
delays in getting the care they need. Trash is piling up at national
parks with fewer park rangers to look after them. Drastic cuts to
medical research and staff mean fewer discoveries and potentially
lifesaving treatments for conditions like cancer and Alzheimer's. The
national parks, the VA, the NIH, the CDC--these are the kinds of
American institutions that have made us strong for generations, and
they are being trashed on purpose. A proposed downsizing at the Postal
Service will keep people waiting longer to get their packages and their
mail and their prescriptions and their bills, especially in rural and
remote areas. And none of this is saving any money. It is absolutely
making people's everyday lives harder.

OK, so the economy is not doing great, support services are being cut
left and right, but are we at least safer and stronger and more
respected globally? The answer is no. Since his first hours in office
when he froze all foreign assistance, Trump has undermined our safety
and national security at every single turn. He has picked fights with
neighbors and allies, weakening longstanding partnerships and forcing
the rest of the world to work against us rather than with us.

[[Page S2645]]

I was in Europe a couple of months ago, and it was kind of jarring
when our allies--and I mean our allies, our closest allies, who have
always been there with us, who have defense treaties with us, who have
economic partnerships with us, who have people-to-people ties--came to
us and said that the biggest destabilizing force on the planet is the
President of the United States.
We used to be the good guys that would respond to disasters and treat
diseases around the world, but Trump has decimated one of the most
successful global health programs in history--PEPFAR--leaving an
estimated 1 million newborns to contract HIV from their mothers--1
million newborns contracting HIV from their mothers. What possible
purpose could there be behind that?
One note to my former colleague Secretary Rubio: There is not a
waiver program in place that allows lifesaving aid to flow. These
organizations that provide aid are absolutely shutting down.
I was just talking to a colleague who was in Africa over the recess
period, and he said kids are on half rations. Kids are half the size
they are supposed to be because of what America is doing--because of
what America is doing.
An earthquake hit Myanmar, and the United States sent three aid
workers to assist with the disaster response, who were then fired while
they were on the ground. We have three people there to help people in
Myanmar, where there was a catastrophic earthquake. The ``United
States'' logo is on their armbands, and they are fired and told to come
home.
Guess what happened next. China sent 600 workers and has committed to
delivering close to $14 million in supplies. I think that is
catastrophic for humanitarian reasons. I think that is catastrophic for
moral reasons. I think it is bad that the United States is causing
death on purpose. But even if you don't care about that, we can at
least see the geopolitical downside to vacating the scene when another
country is in trouble and letting China go into the breach.
I have a friend of a friend who just texted me. They were doing good
work in Fiji, and they were sent home. China came in within 2 weeks and
is performing the same work. I cannot imagine anybody making the
argument that that is good for the United States.
You do not counter China's growing regional influence or outcompete
its economy by walking away from the world and insulting all of your
friends. You don't bring peace to Gaza and Ukraine by making false
promises and empty threats, nor do you win the future on issues like AI
and clean energy by pretending that America, as strong and powerful as
we are--and we are strong and powerful--that we can solve any of these
global challenges alone.
A lot of Trump's failures, whether in domestic or foreign policy,
boil down to the simple fact that he and his people honestly don't know
what they are doing. There is no grand strategy that we are all somehow
missing. There is no brilliant, new way of looking at things. They are
just kind of messing around in the most powerful positions on the
planet--the Signal group chat, the forged DOGE savings receipts, the
frantic firing and rehiring of nuclear weapons workers and disease
detectives.
The people currently in charge of the most powerful Nation in human
history, moving trillions of dollars around, are just winging it, and
their response to the frequent mistakes, no matter how serious or
costly, is ``oops'' or sometimes they pretend it was their plan all
along.
Trump's ineptitude is matched only by his corruption. Just days
before his inauguration, he launched his own meme coin, which he
encouraged supporters to buy. For those of you who are not super up on
all the crypto stuff, this is the equivalent of basically saying: I
have a Swiss bank account in case anybody wants to deposit money into
the President of the United States' pocket. That is what this meme coin
does.
After he made close to $100 million from it, the coin quickly lost
most of its value. And then just last week, after Trump announced a
dinner with the coin's top holders, complete with a ``VIP White House
tour''--let's be very clear. There are some things you absolutely can't
do. One of them is to monetize the Presidency. The other thing is to
use a government building, to use the White House as an inducement to
pay the U.S. President is out-of-this-world corrupt. It is the kind of
thing that if you are on the Foreign Relations Committee or the Defense
Committee or whatever it is and you are traveling abroad, you will have
in your talking points to scold some counterpart of yours about
corruption. This is the kind of thing that, up until about 100 days
ago, we went around the world trying to prevent, but now our leader is
doing it.
While regular people are losing money every day because of Trump, he
and his family continue to get richer--and worse, if Trump has his way
with the tax bill, billionaires will get the biggest tax break in
history while children, seniors, and families find it even harder to
make ends meet because they can no longer get healthy meals or because
they have been kicked off of Medicaid.
One final point: Whether it is withholding funds that were enacted by
Congress and made into law or deporting people without due process,
including a 2-year-old--a 2-year-old--American citizen with cancer last
week, Trump is breaking the law on a daily basis. Everyone is afforded
due process in our system, and with good reason--because the moment
some people are not provided due process, there is no telling who is
entitled to it and who is not and, crucially, who decides who gets due
process. It sure shouldn't be any individual elected official to
determine whether you get due process.
This has been the worst start to a Presidency in the history of the
United States. People had their own reasons for voting for Trump last
fall. I have got friends who voted for Trump. I understand, for some,
it was COVID. For some, it was Gaza. For some, it was the price of
everything. For some, it was Biden's being too old. A lot of people had
a lot of reasons, and I am not here to judge.
A good buddy of mine, a former Governor of Hawaii, used to say: You
know, people vote for you for their reasons, not yours.
So I am not here to try to be vindicated. I am saying, for even those
people who voted for him, all of the reasons that you voted for him,
unless you were enthused about corruption, unless you were enthused
about lawbreaking, unless you really hated Medicaid, unless you really
wanted veterans to be laid off, unless you really wanted our standing
in the world to be diminished by massive proportions in a super short
period of time--unless you love that stuff, it is OK to say: This guy
is not working out. He doesn't own your vote. He doesn't own your
support. You cast a ballot, and he becomes the President of the United
States. It went very badly. This is the worst 100 days of a Presidency
in American history.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.
Ms. ALSOBROOKS. Mr. President, I would like to use my time tonight to
talk, as well, about the first 100 days under this administration's
leadership.
You have heard my colleague already speak, and I concur with his
remarks. Simply put, it has been chaotic; it has been disorganized; it
has been an unmitigated disaster. Quite frankly--and I know that I am
not alone in this--we are absolutely sick of it.
This President and this administration rode in with promises of
reducing costs for American families--families like the family I grew
up in, with a father who worked through the night and into the morning
as a newspaper delivery person and with a mother who worked as a
receptionist. This President promised. He said, on day one, that he was
going to reduce the cost to American families and improve their quality
of life. Only, 100 days later, Americans have only seen reductions in
the stock market, in their 401(k)s, and a lowered respect for the
Constitution. What we have seen continue to rise, instead, are grocery
prices. We are seeing the cost of living grow out of control as
families experience freezes in critical funding that supports their
households. We are seeing housing costs continue to skyrocket as well.
Again, we were promised the exact opposite, which is that this
President knew and understood what it was for the average American
family to struggle to afford the cost of housing. He

[[Page S2646]]

promised that he had the solution and that he was going to cause those
costs to go down. Yet everyone from our children to our veterans has
suffered under this administration and under this leadership. Not one
promise that this administration made to everyday, hard-working,
working-class families, made at the outset of this administration, has
been met. In fact, they have not even come close.
And do you know what? What is worse is they don't seem to care. But
do you know who does care? The American people care.
If you are a working-class American who had hopes that this
administration would lower costs as they promised, I will bet you are
feeling betrayed by now by the impact of the Trump tariffs.
If you spent your working life paying into Social Security, like so
many of our seniors, in the hopes of having a reliable safety net in
your later years, you are feeling helpless in listening to this
administration's plans to raid Social Security.
If you get your healthcare through Medicaid and Medicare, you are
feeling alarmed at this administration's intent to gut these essential
programs.
If initiatives like SNAP and Head Start help keep your family's head
above water during tough times, you are feeling frustrated that this
administration is so out of touch that they would even consider
eliminating this critical funding.
These emotions run deep nationally, and I have seen them felt
locally. Somerset County, for example, is one of the poorest counties
in my State, the State of Maryland. If that is not enough, its
geography has contributed to awful flooding problems for decades. The
city of Crisfield was depending on a Federal grant to finally help fix
the problem. It was a funding plan that people had worked on for years
and for such a long time, but this administration's rash decisions have
now eliminated that plan.
These are the kinds of decisions that can leave you feeling hopeless,
and when you see that your emotions and your struggles are being
ignored by this President so that he can hand tax cuts to the
billionaires around him who choose to grab for more money instead of
holding on to some sense of morality, you feel angry. Resources may be
in short supply for American families right now, but there is more than
enough hurt and anger to go around. This administration is hurting
Americans--the ones who voted for this President and Americans who
didn't. They are hurting Americans who didn't vote and Americans who
were too young to vote. They are hurting the business community, and
they are hurting farmers. They are hurting cities, and they are hurting
our rural areas. They are hurting law enforcement officers and factory
workers. They are hurting teachers and students. They are hurting
factory workers and union members. They are hurting doctors and medical
professionals and researchers.

Across the political spectrum and across all demographics, the only
thing we have to show for the first 100 days is losing, the kind of
losing that will be felt in this Nation for years to come.
One hundred days in, look at how they have treated the very best of
us--this Nation's civil servants, the Federal workers who serve with
absolutely no political motivation. I have met them. I know them. Close
to 160,000 of them live in the State of Maryland, and many of them have
served for years under both Democratic administrations and Republican
administrations, and they have one dedication, and that is to their
fellow Americans. Our Federal workers keep our food safe. They explore
the bounds of science to find cures to our most challenging diseases.
They make sure that our veterans receive the benefits that they so
richly deserve and that our seniors have access to resources that they
set aside for the future.
Our civil servants do so much to boost our quality of life, and do
you know what? This administration doesn't care. For the first 100
days, they have been subjected to spiteful, petty attacks. They have
been caught in the crossfire of a political witch hunt. They have had
their lives disrupted by these abrupt and improper firings.
My State has felt a significant impact from these firings. It is home
to so many Federal workers--as I have mentioned, 160,000 of them--
people who I am incredibly proud to represent. I have heard the calls
from panicked workers who don't know what the future holds. I have met
with distraught workers who fear that they won't be able to provide for
their families.
All of this is the result of an administration claiming to prioritize
efficiency. The majority of Americans is OK with finding efficiency.
What they are not OK with is the cruelty that we are seeing. How you
treat people matters, and this administration is more interested in
celebrating cruelty than being cost-effective.
There is no better example of this administration's chaos and cruelty
than HHS Secretary Kennedy. His Department and its Agencies are
indispensable in the fight of keeping Americans safe and healthy. From
keeping our food safe today to finding cures for disease, the mission
of these Agencies and their workers is critical to our well-being. Yet
Secretary Kennedy doesn't care. He has pledged to make America healthy
again, but in reality, he has fired safety inspectors, eliminated food
safety labels and labs, and revealed plans to take the Federal
Government out of the role of keeping our food safe.
Our Nation has enjoyed progress due in no small part to our
commitment to sustained research. The groundbreaking discoveries that
our Nation's researchers have made have done so much for our society.
At Health and Human Services, that has meant eliminating diseases that
used to ravage our communities and currently means working on solving
health challenges that continue to puzzle us today.
The NIH is headquartered in my State, and I know firsthand the good
work that they do. We know all too well the significant role that the
NIH and other health and research Agencies play in developing and
deploying vaccine treatments. Only recently emerging from a devastating
public health crisis, we know firsthand how important their work is.
Secretary Kennedy either doesn't know or doesn't care what his
Department's mission is. He is doing the administration's bidding to
eliminate funding that goes toward finding cures for cancer,
Alzheimer's, and rare diseases; and in the midst of outbreaks of
measles--a disease that researchers had virtually eliminated--he has
pressed forward with firing thousands of vital workers in our health
Agencies. This is not efficient, and it is not a profile in competent
leadership. What it is, instead, is absolutely dangerous, and it is
putting sensitive information and decisions between life and death in
the hands of grossly unqualified people.
Secretary Kennedy's pledge to make America healthy again is another
promise that this administration is either unwilling or incapable of
keeping. His idea to create a national registry for people with autism
is an example of what happens when incompetent and incapable leadership
is in place.
This administration is full of examples like this. The callous,
heartless disregard for others comes right from the top, and it is
mirrored in the people who have been nominated to run the government.
So we can't join them in celebrating this milestone, because there is
nothing that they can hold up as an accomplishment that they have
achieved on behalf of everyday Americans.
One hundred days in, we have seen what this administration is. They
are disinterested in the lives of working-class and middle-class
Americans, uncaring about the futures of our veterans and our seniors,
unmoved by the plight of the underprivileged, obsessed with attacking
our civil servants and settling scores, unable to make good on the
promises that they laid out when they took control, and they don't seem
to care.
But Marylanders care; the American people care, and we are tired of
seeing this administration tank our economy. We are tired of seeing
out-of-touch leaders dismiss the sacrifices that families across the
Nation make every single day, and we are already sick and tired of
seeing billionaires win while the rest of us lose. We are sick of it,
and we are fighting back.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.

[[Page S2647]]

Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I want to say how much I appreciate the
remarks of Senator Alsobrooks.
It is an honor to fight alongside you.
So here we are--100 days, 100 acts of corruption.
Today, I am reading into the Congressional Record 100 reports of
corruption from Donald Trump's first 100 days in office.
Now, when he ran for office, Trump promised repeatedly--repeatedly--
that he would lower costs ``on day one.'' But instead of following
through on his promise, Trump and his Trump administration have paved
the way for the President, his top officials, and his billionaire
buddies to personally feed at the trough of government corruption.
So count with me. In just 100 days, Donald Trump, his family, and his
administration have:
No. 1, turned the White House into a Tesla dealership.
No. 2, fired independent Commissioners at the Federal Trade
Commission.
No. 3, punished former officials who opposed his 2020 election lies.
No. 4, paid for the White House Easter Egg Roll by soliciting
corporate sponsors who have business pending before the government.
No. 5, helped Trump's son set up a club--pay $500,000 for access to
Trump's Cabinet.
No. 6, declared that there would be no tariff exceptions, then
permitted Apple's CEO behind-the-scenes access, and, poof, iPhone
tariffs were cut.
No. 7, created an opening for insider trading by reportedly giving
Wall Street exclusive information about how trade talks were going.
No. 8, hosted million-dollar dinners between Big Pharma CEOs and
their regulator, R.F.K., Jr.
No. 9, launched crypto meme coin right before the inauguration to
make millions of dollars, then increased the value of those coins by
signing Executive orders, making crypto a priority.
No. 10, launched a meme coin for Melania too.
No. 11, promised his ``rich-as-hell'' donors a giant tax handout and
is working hard to deliver.
No. 12, weakened rules insulating government workers from politics.
No. 13, limited corporate foreign bribery investigations.
No. 14, halted enforcement of the Corporate Transparency Act--
wouldn't want people to know what is going on.
No. 15, offered a private dinner with Trump himself and a special
tour of the White House for the top 220 holders of his meme coin,
permitting Trump and his family to profit both from the runup in the
value of the coin and the increase in trading on the Trump platform.
No. 16, accepted $40 million for First Lady Melania's documentary
from Jeff Bezos--way above the market rate.
No. 17, pointed to Bezos's multimillion-dollar documentary payment as
a model when Warner Bros. asked Trump's team how to improve its own
relationship with the White House.
No. 18, struck a deal with Amazon to stream Trump's old show, ``The
Apprentice,'' which will mean more money for Trump, as Amazon is
seeking tax breaks and other Federal benefits.

No. 19, coercing law firms to offer almost $1 billion in free legal
work in an arrangement that experts say could run afoul of anti-bribery
laws.
No. 20, started undermining Medicare's ability to negotiate drug
prices after Big Pharma gave millions to Trump's inauguration.
No. 21, filed a meritless lawsuit against ``60 Minutes'' and launched
a baseless FCC investigation.
No. 22, tried to get the AP to bend the knee and kicked them out of
the White House briefing room when they refused to bend the knee.
No. 23, hired Defense Secretary Hegseth's younger brother to serve in
a key role.
No. 24, hired a longtime former partner of Don, Jr., to serve as
Ambassador to Greece.
No. 25, nominated Jared Kushner's father to serve as Ambassador to
France.
No. 26, selected Tiffany Trump's father-in-law to serve as an
adviser.
No. 27, appointed an oil and gas executive to lead the Department of
Energy.
No. 28, selected a Chief of Staff who was a big-time lobbyist for
clients like tobacco and mining companies.
No. 29, named officials who had recently lobbied for oil and chemical
giants to help write EPA rules. What could possibly go wrong?
No. 30, appointed Mehmet Oz, who had close ties to Medicare Advantage
insurers--in fact, sold it on TV--to lead CMS to set payment rates and
otherwise help out whom? Medicare Advantage insurers.
No. 31, appointed John Phelan, a major donor with no military or
government experience, to lead the Navy and hand out Navy construction
contracts.
No. 32, appointed Pam Bondi, a former lobbyist for a Federal
detention contractor, to lead the DOJ.
No. 33, announced that the DOJ would stop prioritizing enforcement of
restrictions on foreign lobbyists under the leadership of Bondi, who
herself is a former foreign lobbyist for Qatar.
No. 34, appointed Howard Lutnick, who has billions invested in
companies accused of illegally facilitating crypto money laundering, as
the guy to lead the Commerce Department.
No. 35, appointed Marty Makary, the former executive of a company
selling weight-loss drugs, to lead the FDA, which would be the Agency
that would regulate his company.
No. 36, appointed Sean Duffy, who lobbied for the airline industry,
to be the Transportation Secretary to regulate the airline industry.
No. 37, tapped Pete Hegseth, whose wife owns stock in large defense
contractors, to lead the Defense Department and help hand out those
defense contracts.
No. 38, tapped Doug Burgum, who made money from leasing land to Big
Oil, to lead the Interior Department and manage the leasing to oil
companies.
No. 39, nominated a Big Oil lobbyist to run the Bureau of Ocean
Energy Management.
No. 40, nominated as IRS head Billy Long, an aggressive salesman for
a fraud-riddled tax credit who received donations after being nominated
so he could clear out old campaign debts.
No. 41, tapped Paul Atkins, a former crypto lobbyist, to lead the SEC
that will regulate crypto.
No. 42, appointed a former tax lobbyist to lead tax policy.
No. 43, appointed Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who planned to get paid for
anti-vax lawsuits while he was heading up HHS and could affect the
outcome of exactly those same lawsuits.
No. 44, appointed a top Pentagon official who led a firm investing in
defense contractors and has directed DOD to outsource as much as
possible to defense contractors.
No. 45, appointed someone who lobbied to privatize Medicare to lead
OMB's healthcare budget.
No. 46, installed Steve Davis to effectively lead DOGE, while also
leading another Musk company.
No. 47, installed another DOGE leader to control Treasury's payment
system, while still holding down his day job, oh, as a software CEO.
No. 48, handed the power over crypto policy to a White House crypto
czar, who leads a venture capital firm that heavily invests in crypto.
No. 49, selected a border czar, who led a firm that got tens of
millions of dollars of Federal contracts for Homeland Security
companies.
No. 50, appointed Treasury Secretary Bessent, who is gutting the IRS
so that it can't audit rich tax cheats because he himself is a tax-
dodging megamillionaire.
No. 51, pardoned Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois Governor
convicted for corruption after his vocal support for Trump.
No. 52, pardoned January 6 insurrectionists who tried to overturn an
election that Trump lost.
No. 53, pardoned a Trump loyalist found guilty of wire fraud.
No. 54, pardoned the son of a longtime Republican donor.
No. 55, pardoned a corporation that had been fined $100 million for
money laundering.
No. 56, watched his own stablecoin while preparing to sign
legislation that will help stablecoin and let Donald Trump oversee it.
No. 57, sold merch with Presidential branding.
No. 58, disbanded DOJ's crypto unit after business talks between
Binance and a Trump-backed crypto company ramped up.

[[Page S2648]]

No. 59, halted SEC enforcement actions against crypto companies that
enriched Trump personally.
No. 60, met with crypto executives who are asking Treasury to back
off of oversight of their companies, all while simultaneously exploring
a deal to list a Trump-linked crypto company's new stablecoin.
No. 61, maintain financial ties between Trump officials and Trump's
media company that includes FBI Director Kash Patel, who was given a
huge award of Trump media company stock.
No. 62, nominated Attorney General Bondi, who owned $2 million in DJT
shares.
No. 63, paid the Education Secretary almost $1 million in Trump media
company shares.
No. 64, nominated Intelligence Board nominees who have millions in
Trump media company shares.
No. 65, selected a special envoy to the Middle East who wants to
develop real estate in Gaza while running his own real estate firm
while he is Special Envoy to the Middle East.
No. 66, appointed an FBI Director who consulted for the Qatari
Government.
No. 67, picked that FBI Director, even though he also received
millions of dollars from a Cayman Island holding company with ties to
China.
No. 68, decided to cancel the Direct File Program. The cancellation
of this program that lets taxpayers file their taxes online for free
will help the bottom line of Intuit, which charges people for filing
their taxes and that gave $1 million to Trump's inauguration.
No. 69, took its largest inauguration donation from a poultry company
that was under DOJ's scrutiny. After the donation, the SEC approved its
parent company for the New York Stock Exchange.
No. 70, dropped a probe into sexual misconduct allegations against
Trump's Education Secretary's husband.
No. 71, hosted dozens of foreign Federal and State officials at Mar-
a-Lago, helping enrich Trump.
No. 72, hosted a GOP retreat at another one of Trump's resorts, for
which Trump's resorts get paid.
No. 73, circumvented the normal contracting process to pick a company
with close ties to Trump's former campaign manager.
No. 74, awarded a $30 million ICE contract to Trump insider Peter
Thiel.
No. 75, continued developing new Trump properties overseas, including
in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
No. 76, hatched a plan for the State Department to pay Tesla $400
million.
No. 77, accepted a $4 million inauguration donation from a GOP
megadonor and then nominated him as UK Ambassador on the same day.
Did anyone miss the message here?
And Donald Trump took actions so that he could advance the personal
interests of his ``co-President,'' Elon Musk. How? Well, he fired EEOC
leaders that were investigating and suing Tesla. He illegally fired the
NLRB Chair, which had filed a complaint against SpaceX, one of Musk's
companies. He gutted the CFPB staff and fired the Director after they
investigated complaints against Musk's companies. He gutted the
Department of Labor office investigating Tesla and SpaceX and fired the
USAID inspector general who launched a probe into satellite terminals
made by Musk's Starlink.
No. 83, targeted the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration
staff who were reportedly ``a thorn in Tesla's side.'' That is enough
to fire them.
No. 84, said Musk would self-police his conflicts of interest--yeah,
right.
No. 85, pressured the Administrator of the FAA, which fined Musk's
SpaceX, to resign.
And No. 86, permitted Musk to keep his financial disclosure hidden.
And, by the way, I have a new bill to fix that one in particular.
No. 87, allowed Musk's Starlink to start working with the FAA after
Musk criticized the FAA's air traffic telecom system.
No. 88, made Musk's SpaceX the frontrunner for a new, lucrative
Golden Dome contract.
No. 89, stood by Musk when his X executives told an advertising firm
to increase ad revenue, threatening that Musk could interfere with
their pending merger if they didn't play along.
No. 90, permitted Musk to join Trump's interview with the Air Force
Secretary nominee while SpaceX held billions of dollars in contracts
with the Air Force.
No. 91, permitted the National Transportation Safety Board to share
news related to the airplane crashes in Washington and Philadelphia
only on Musk-owned X.
No. 92, permitted the Social Security Administration to share
important public communication only on X.
No. 93, dropped the Department of Justice's anti-discrimination
complaint against Musk's SpaceX.
No. 94, fired FDA staffers reviewing Elon Musk's Neuralink clinical
trial applications--a lot of benefits for Elon Musk there.
And for our closing six moves that make every bit of this corruption
even harder to root out, Trump got rid of the cops on the beat.
No. 95, fired 18 inspectors general who make sure that Federal
Agencies follow the law.
No. 96, fired the head of the Office of Special Counsel, who protects
whistleblowers and makes sure that civil service laws are followed.
No. 97, fired the head of the Office of Government Ethics, who
watches to see that the President and his administration follow the
laws on conflicts of interest, bribery, and other ethical issues. The
guy is gone.
No. 98, fired DOJ prosecutors who worked on the January 6
investigations.
No. 99, sidelined DOJ's office that reviews the legality of Executive
orders.
And No. 100, gutted DOJ's office that prosecutes misconduct by public
officials.
That is 100 corrupt acts in 100 days. Americans deserve
accountability. We need to fight back--all of us.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I have a question for my colleague from
Massachusetts, if she would yield for a question.
Ms. WARREN. Of course.
Mr. MERKLEY. In your knowledge of American history, has there ever
been a Presidential first 100 days that showed this level of corruption
that we are witnessing with this administration?
Ms. WARREN. I appreciate the question. I want to say here that I have
never seen, anytime in American history, this level of corruption over
8 years in the White House, much less in just 100 days.
This level of corruption is everywhere, all the time, and it truly
undermines the ability of our country to function. It undermines our
economy. It undermines our position in the world. It undermines the
economic stability of our families. And it undermines our entire
democracy.
I thank the Senator for the question.
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I appreciate the Senator's speech in
laying this out.
I am going to address another aspect of the first 100 days, which is
about the phenomenal strategy of President Trump to undermine our
Constitution; to undermine the separation of powers, the checks and
balances, for the purpose of creating a strong-man state, which is also
just an extraordinary, extraordinary experience to be living through.
The first 100 days of the Trump administration have plunged our
Nation into a constitutional crisis unparalleled since the Civil War.
How bad is it, and how will we respond? How will this Chamber respond?
How will the House respond?
Our democratic Republic, with its separation of powers and checks and
balances, is sliding into an unaccountable strong-man state.
To the first question--how bad is the constitutional crisis?--I
summarize: worse than we could possibly have imagined. It is an
authoritarian takeover, emboldened by a subservient majority in
Congress, a deferential Supreme Court, and an aggressive, authoritarian
President.
We all know that strong republics can slide into corrupt strong-man
states. Witness Venezuela. Witness Turkiye. Witness Hungary. It can
happen gradually. It can happen suddenly that Congress becomes a
rubberstamp, that the courts defer to an aggressive Executive, the
press softens its criticisms, and other institutions tread ever so
carefully.

[[Page S2649]]

However often we have witnessed this happening elsewhere, however, we
always thought that it could never happen here, not in the United
States of America. It could never happen here because our commitment to
the separation of powers is too secure, our 250 years of dedication to
a democratic republic too established for it to ever happen here.
But the last 100 days have shown us that we were robbed. So tonight,
I am ringing the alarm bells. The danger is clear. The danger is
present. This crisis calls upon every patriot, every individual who
cherishes a deliberative republic, every institution--whether it is
Congress or the court or the people or the press or the university or
the law firm--to use their heart and mind and sinew, their clout and
their connections, to resist this authoritarian takeover and save our
Republic.
In only 100 days, Trump has aggressively pursued five strategies to
advance his authoritarian powers. The first strategy has been to
willfully violate a host of Federal laws.
One hundred days ago, on January 20, I sat in the Rotunda of the
Capitol, just down this hallway, halfway between here and the House of
Representatives, for Donald Trump's inaugural address. It was not a
traditional address. A traditional address is when the President lays
out a vision and says: Here in our democracy, I will be working with
Congress to pass laws to provide a foundation to implement that vision.
That is the way it works when power is divided between a court and an
Executive and Congress. But instead, the speech that President Trump
gave just down this hallway in the Rotunda didn't talk about working
with Congress. It didn't talk about passing laws. He spoke only of
governing by Executive order, as if he was already a King.
Well, governing by Executive order is exactly what he has done, with
26 Executive orders on that first day and over 130 Executive orders and
counting as of now. And many of those Executive orders directly violate
laws on the books.
He fired 17 inspectors general, violating a law that allows a
President to fire an inspector general only for cause and with 30 days'
notice to Congress.
He fired members of the Boards that lead independent Agencies,
violating the law that provides these members with established terms
and says that they can only be fired for cause.
Trump's targets have included Gwynne Wilcox of the National Labor
Relations Board, Rebecca Slaughter of the Federal Trade Commission, and
quite a few others.
Trump violated the Antideficiency Act when Elon Musk and DOGE sent
the ``fork in the road'' email to 2 million Federal employees, offering
a buyout with pay through September 30, committing funds beyond the
March 15 deadline that the law allowed.
Trump violated the Privacy Act of 1974 when Trump, Musk, and DOGE
accessed sensitive personal information from the computers of the
Social Security Administration.
Trump violated a 2018 law banning reductions in indirect costs
covered by the National Institutes of Health research grants when he
capped those rates at 15 percent.
The mastermind behind this strategy of deliberately, willfully
breaking the law, time and time and time again, is one man. His name is
Russ Vought.
Who is this man? He directed the Office of Management and Budget in
the last year of Trump's first term. He is an architect of Project
2025, and he is leading the Office of Management and Budget for Trump's
second term.
As the ranking Democrat on the Senate Budget Committee, I interviewed
him in my office before his nomination hearing, and he was very clear,
very direct about his viewpoint. He is a proponent of the fringe
unitary executive theory that says the President has complete authority
over every element of the executive branch. The President, he believes,
can ignore any detail in law passed by Congress and perhaps ignore any
order by the courts that constrains how the President manages the
executive branch.
Vought anticipates that when Trump's lawbreaking reaches the Supreme
Court, a deferential Court will legitimize his unitary executive theory
and hand vast power to President Trump.
Mr. Vought's deliberate desire to break the law and violate the
separation of powers caused me to label him the most dangerous man in
America. He is a direct threat to the entire vision of our
Constitution.
I led a 30-hour debate here in this Chamber on his nomination to put
a spotlight on him and on his ideas, but it was a party-line vote.
Every one of my colleagues across the aisle looked to their loyalty to
President Trump over their loyalty to the U.S. Constitution.
The second Trump strategy to expand the power of the President--the
authoritarian power of the President--is to usurp Congress's article I
power of the purse by impounding the funds that Congress has dedicated
in law and long passed in the Senate and passed the House and signed by
the President, impounding funds in those laws for specific programs.
This is illegal. It violates the law, and it is unconstitutional, and
it violates the separation of powers.
You know, Nixon tried this. He impounded funds for the EPA for fiscal
year 1973. The Supreme Court ruled, when this case finally reached it
in Train v. City of New York, that impoundments violate article I of
the Constitution, which so clearly--this Constitution so clearly gives
the power of the purse to Congress.
And when Congress passed the law in 1996 that gave the President a
line-item veto on program funding, the Supreme Court ruled again, in
Clinton v. City of New York, that Congress could not give to the
President the power the Constitution reserves to this Chamber, to
Congress.
It is worth noting that Trump had a choice. Instead of illegally
impounding funds, he could have sent a legal rescission request to
Congress. And there is a good possibility, perhaps a probability, that
the Republican-led House and Senate would have passed that rescission.
A rescission formally undoes a law by Congress reconsidering it. But he
deliberately--he, being Trump--deliberately chose the illegal path of
impoundments, the unconstitutional path of impoundments in order to put
a case before the Supreme Court so the Supreme Court could rule--Trump
and Russ Vought hope--for the unitary executive theory of power, the
vision of a strong-man rule in our Nation rather than government by the
people.
Note the parallel. Trump fired thousands and thousands of employees
across this country. He could have done it legally through reductions
in force, RIFs, but he chose to do it illegally. Why? To put a case
before the Supreme Court so the Court could enhance the power of the
President of the United States of America. It is that hope that they
have for that deferential Court.
Trump and his team have impounded funds for so much now. There are so
many cases in the courts. Court ruling after court ruling are saying:
This is illegal. You cannot do this. This is unconstitutional.
But he just keeps doing it.
Electric vehicle charging stations, impounded. Security systems to
Ukraine, impounded. Program funds for sanctuary cities, impounded.
Immigration lawyers for 26,000 unaccompanied children, impounded.
But the most tragic example of impoundment is Trump's attack on the
U.S. Agency for International Development.
On February 3, Elon Musk posted that he and DOGE had ``spent the
weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper.'' Musk was bragging that
he and Trump had destroyed an Agency in a single weekend, in violation
of the law. They fired almost all of USAID's employees and canceled
more than 5,000 contracts, crippling America's delivery of lifesaving
aid around the world and, I might add, crippling relationships that
create soft power for the United States of America to accompany the
hard power of our military.
In February, a senior USAID official Nicholas Enrich estimated that a
yearlong pause in AID's programs could cause between 71,000 to 166,000
additional deaths just from malaria, with huge increases in deaths from
tuberculosis and infectious diseases like Ebola. Shortly after making
these estimates, Enrich was fired.
Speaking the truth in this administration is a cause to be fired
because the truth scares Donald Trump. He doesn't want the truth. He
just wants

[[Page S2650]]

his power and everyone to be in line behind it.
Another study estimates that shutting down USAID over 15 years could
result in 25 million additional deaths worldwide. That is a hard number
to digest--2 million more deaths from tuberculosis, 8 million more
deaths from malaria, from malnutrition and other causes, and 15 million
more deaths from AIDS, with PEPFAR shut down. And those 15 million
deaths from AIDS generate 14 million additional orphans.
Just let that sink in. One illegal decision in one weekend by Musk
and Trump putting AID in the wood chipper could result in millions of
deaths. Illegal defunding and dismantlement, done in one weekend, to an
Agency that constituted only one-third of 1 percent of our national
spending in 2024 could result in more deaths than World War I.
Now you may say: Is this some crazy theory on the internet?
It was a study put together by prestigious medical organizations,
groups like the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the Johns
Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, the New York University
Grossman School of Medicine--serious people, serious modeling, serious
understanding of what USAID does around the world.
And do you know what else his decision did? It created an enormous
opportunity for China to move in and say, ``You can't count on the
United States of America, but you can count on China,'' hugely
undermining our standing and influence in the world.
That is what was done illegally in one weekend.
A third Trump strategy for amassing Executive power is to attack the
constitutional power of the courts. The Founders gave the courts the
power to address ``all Cases, in Law and Equity, arising under this
Constitution,'' and that power includes the ability to strike down laws
that violate the Constitution. It includes the ability to invalidate
Executive actions that violate the laws or violate the Constitution.
But for the court's check--this crucial check on Executive misuse of
power--to be effective, the President must follow the decisions of the
court, and that is why the oath of office is so important. You are
taking an oath to the Constitution that lays out this structure of
accountability.

But President Trump is stiff-arming the court. He is not honoring the
Constitution. He is not honoring his oath to the Constitution.
He ignored Federal Judge James Boasberg's order not to deport
Venezuelan immigrants to El Salvador, refusing to keep the planes on
the ground or turn them around. He ignored the judge's order to provide
details regarding the flights to El Salvador. And in a stunning stiff-
arm to the Supreme Court, he refused to facilitate, after a 9-to-0
Supreme Court decision saying he must do so, the return of Kilmar
Abrego Garcia from El Salvador despite the Court's order.
In yet another confrontation with the Supreme Court, Vice President
Vance claimed in February that ``judges aren't allowed'' to check
Executive power.
Then, in March, Trump called for the impeachment of Judge Boasberg,
calling him a ``crooked'' judge, a ``troublemaker and agitator.''
What in Trump's mind is a ``crooked'' judge? One who is actually
ruling on the law because the last thing Trump wants is a judge who
honestly rules on the law. He wants subservience.
This call for impeachment of a judge provoked a rebuke--a rare
rebuke--from Chief Justice John Roberts, who said:

Impeachment is not an appropriate response to disagreement
concerning a judicial decision. The normal appellate review
process exists for that purpose.

Calm language to address a massive constitutional violation.
Over the last 100 days, Trump has brazenly signaled to the courts
that they should not interfere with his management of the executive
branch.
A fourth authoritarian strategy by Trump is to attack the free press
and free speech. Benjamin Franklin wrote that ``whoever would overthrow
the liberty of a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of
speech.'' Apparently, President Trump was paying attention because he
is seeking to overthrow the liberty of our Nation, and he is trying to
subdue the freeness of speech.
One of his tactics is to intimidate the free press by suing them. He
sued the Des Moines Register for an inaccurate poll predicting he would
lose Iowa. He sued CBS News for $10 million because he disliked its
editing of an interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris on ``60
Minutes.'' And he sued ABC News because George Stephanopoulos said on
the air that Trump had been found liable for ``rape'' when, in fact, he
had been found liable not for ``rape'' but for ``sexual assault,''
under the detail of the law, in the E. Jean Carroll lawsuit.
Trump hasn't just launched suits; he is succeeding in compromising
our free press. ABC bent the knee, agreeing after Trump won and fearing
for how Trump might misuse Presidential power, to pay Trump that $16
million to settle the case involving Stephanopoulos, even though Trump
had, in the view of experts, little chance of prevailing in court.
And last week, Bill Owens, the executive director of ``60 Minutes,''
resigned, citing encroachment of his journalistic independence in the
face of mounting pressure from Paramount, CBS's parent company, again
potentially for fear of the misuse of Executive power that would
compromise the success of Paramount.
A reported possible source of that pressure is from Shari Redstone,
Paramount's controlling shareholder, who is reportedly eager to settle
this issue to secure the Trump administration's approval for the
multibillion-dollar sale of Paramount to Skydance.
Trump further pressured the press by playing favorites with access to
White House events, barring the Associated Press from the White House
press pool for continuing to use the name Gulf of Mexico instead of
Gulf of America. It is a style manual question, and Trump doesn't like
that a free press can choose its own style.
A judge ruled on April 8 that, under the First Amendment, if the
government opens its doors to some journalist, it cannot shut those
doors to other journalists because of their viewpoints. The
Constitution, the court said, requires no less. But a week later, the
White House was still excluding AP from the press pool.
In yet another action against the press, Trump has silenced the Voice
of America. The Voice of America was created to counter propaganda from
authoritarian governments in the Second World War. The Voice of America
has grown to be a powerful check on disinformation from authoritarian
governments. It broadcasted in 40 languages, bringing facts to bear
against that propaganda from those strong-man states.
But now Trump has canceled that powerful counter to authoritarian
governments around the world.
He is attacking free speech as well as the free press. Like many of
us here, I was in the House Chamber last month for Trump's State of the
Union Address when he claimed to have ``brought free speech back to
America.'' That is completely wrong. The opposite is true. He has
sought to end free speech in America, taking control of content at the
Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian museums, canceling programs, firing
employees, even scrubbing Federal websites simply because of words he
doesn't like.
But most egregiously, Secretary of State Marco Rubio is using a 1952
Red Scare law--a McCarthyist law--to strip students and others of their
visas and deport them, students like Mahmoud Khalil at Columbia
University or Rumeysa Ozturk of Tufts University. Neither was accused
of a crime. Both had simply exercised free speech. I think every Member
here would have assumed that a student has the right to express their
opinion on an issue because we are here in the United States of
America.
You know, many of us grew up hearing the phrase: I disagree with what
you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it. That is
the conviction behind free speech. I don't like what you say. What you
say even makes me angry. But I defend your right to say it. I defend
your right to have that opinion because we live here in the United
States of America, where we honor free speech.
It is the freedom of the individual, and it is an important check on
power that people can express it, can express it without having their
documents canceled, without being arrested as they

[[Page S2651]]

leave a classroom, not being swept off to some prison halfway across
the country because you say something the government doesn't like. But
all that has changed here in the United States of America because
students who are saying things the government doesn't like are being
swept off the street and transported halfway across the country and
held in prisons in preparation to deport them.
This particular 1952 Red Scare McCarthyist law being used by the
Secretary of State says an alien can be excluded if ``the Secretary of
State personally determines that the alien's admission would compromise
a compelling [U.S.] foreign policy interest.''
``[A] compelling [U.S.] foreign policy interest.''
How does a student expressing an opinion on a campus somewhere
compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest? Does it
compromise our foreign policy interests when I say I disagree with some
foreign policy venture? I have said it about Democratic Presidents,
that I disagree with them. I have said it about Republican Presidents,
that I disagree with them. So has virtually every single Member of this
Chamber. That is freedom of speech. And we don't expect or believe that
compromises the United States; we think it makes it stronger to have an
actual debate of ideas, opinions expressed and hopefully considered.
It is an extraordinary law that came from another era where free
speech was under attack. It is an extraordinary power to have vested in
one person--the Secretary of State--that power to punish free speech.
It is a chilling attempt to silence free speech that presents
viewpoints out of favor with this administration, and it is wrong. It
is wrong under our Constitution.
I would hope that every single Member of this Chamber would share the
view that when they hear someone speaking with whom they disagree, they
would still stand and defend that person's right to say it.
Note that there was no due process for students Rubio disfavored,
just as there was no due process for the Venezuelan immigrants Trump
sent to El Salvador.
``Due process''--those two words. What does it mean? And maybe it
sounds like legal mumbo-jumbo. Due process is the guardian of our
freedom. It means you cannot be grabbed by the government at their
will, tossed into a van, and thrown into a prison because they cannot
do so, they cannot take away our liberty or our rights without a fair,
public process. That defends our freedom.
It is about freedom, but this administration isn't about freedom.
They are about power, authoritarian power, about creating a strongman
state. If we want to preserve freedom, we damn well better defend due
process vigorously.
The fifth authoritarian strategy by Trump is to target other power
centers in our communities, including law firms and universities.
Trump has attacked a host of major law firms, in some cases
hamstringing the firms by suspending their national security clearances
and therefore making them unable to represent their clients in key
cases. He has done this to punish their past association with
individuals or cases that threatened his power or to sway them from
using their skills, their legal skills, in new efforts that might
threaten that power.
The attacks that Trump has launched on law firms have generated some
results. Skadden, Arps and Paul, Weiss have capitulated, agreeing,
among other concessions, to end diversity policies and contribute
millions of dollars of pro bono work to conservative clients. It is
extortion. That is what this administration is involved in. They are
using the power of the Presidency to take away the ability of law firms
to operate in order to extort them to contribute free services to
causes the President favors.
Well, these law firms--Skadden, Arps and Paul, Weiss--are not alone.
As of a month ago, nine firms had surrendered, nine firms had bent the
knee, agreeing to provide $1 billion in pro bono legal work for causes
preferred by this administration. Again, it is extortion, and it is
misuse of the President's power.
But some of the law firms actually believe in an America where a
President cannot exercise this sort of extortion. Perkins Coie, Jenner
& Block, and WilmerHale have fought back. They are challenging Trump's
authority to do this. Impressively, more than 500 other firms have
stood with them, signing briefs denouncing Trump's extortion.

Trump and his team have also pressed to reshape policies at
universities by launching investigations of their practices and
freezing millions or billions in their Federal grants--$510 million in
Federal grants frozen at Brown University; $175 million in grants
frozen at the University of Pennsylvania; $210 million frozen at
Princeton; $2.2 billion in Federal grants frozen at Harvard University.
Some universities, like Columbia University, have capitulated.
Others, like Harvard and Princeton, are fighting back.
A sincere compliment to Princeton President Christopher Eisgruber,
who published an op-ed in The Atlantic when the first attack occurred
on Columbia University. He called on presidents to ``speak up and
litigate forcefully to protect their rights.'' He said: This won't be
the last university that is attacked. Not soon after, his own
university was attacked. He noted that this attack on universities is
``the greatest threat to American universities since the Red Scare of
the 1950s.''
Looking back on these 100 days and these five strategies to convert a
robust Republic, our robust Republic, with its checks and balances,
into a strongman state, it raises a number of questions--questions that
I hope folks will ponder.
First, Trump nominated a man, Pete Hegseth, to be Secretary of
Defense who is fabulously unqualified for the position. He fired
several highly capable, top-tier military leaders, including Chairman
of the Joint Chiefs, CQ Brown, and the Chief of Naval Operations, ADM
Lisa Franchetti. These firings make plain that Trump doesn't value
these professionals' management--nonpartisan management of our Armed
Forces.
Is Trump seeking to fill these top tiers of our military with
loyalists? If that is what he is up to--replacing these highly
professional, impartial managers of our military enterprise with
loyalists--what additional authoritarian risks does this pose for our
Republic?
Second, what has the Supreme Court unleashed through its Trump v.
United States decision? Last summer, less than a year ago, at the
beginning of July 2024, the Supreme Court found some invisible ink in
the Constitution. Grab your Constitution. Take a read of it. Where does
it say in here that the President is above the law?
Our Founders were terrified that a President would try to become a
King. They had just escaped one King; they didn't want another.
Instead, they had a theory of the world: Equal justice under law--
equal. For the powerful and the nonpowerful, for the rich and the
nonrich, equal justice under law.
It is carved into the stone above the pillars of the Supreme Court,
which, if you go out the doors I am pointing out to my right and you
continue down the hallway, there is another set of doors, another set
of stairs, and you can see the Supreme Court straight across from here,
and you can read ``equal justice under law.'' That is the principle.
But I will tell you what--that Supreme Court last year decided no equal
justice under the law. In fact, the President has complete immunity
from committing a crime as long as he calls it a government act.
It is invisible ink in here somewhere, but I will tell you, the
Founders are rolling over in their graves at this betrayal of the
Constitution by this majority in the Supreme Court. Think about what
they have done. You take this immunity from being accountable under the
law and you pair it with pardon power, and you now have an entire
executive branch that considers itself immune from the law, which helps
explain some of the items I went over before--how there are deliberate
and willful violations of law by this administration.
Quite a challenge for the future of our democracy has been created by
the Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court will have a chance to redeem
itself. It never really considered how the combination of the new power
they found in invisible ink that a President is above the law combined
with pardon

[[Page S2652]]

power has completely destroyed the foundation of law in our Nation--an
executive that considers itself not accountable.
A third issue is the stretching of laws that really don't even begin
to convey the power that Trump has claimed.
We are all aware of the tariffs that he is setting and tearing down
day after day. Tariffs are up. Tariffs are down. Tariffs over here.
Exceptions over there. Oh, iPhones? Too important. Let's create an
exception. Oh, cars are too expensive. Let's create an exception. Who
knows? It is certainly not a foundation for companies to invest in
America because it is chaos.
He is using the 1977 International Emergency Economic Powers Act as a
legal basis to set tariffs. But read the act. It says nothing about
powers of tariffs, nothing that gives the President the ability to
raise and lower tariffs on one fiat after another. It provides power
for sanctions and seizures, not tariffs. It has never been used by any
other President to set tariffs.
There is no precedent for it, and there is no language in the law
that serves it.
Or let's see him reaching further back into history, using the 1798
Alien Enemies Act. That act was passed when our early Members of
Congress were afraid that France would invade the United States, and
they wanted to be able to deport French citizens who might help the
French invasion, should it occur.
But Trump is using that as the legal basis for deporting Venezuelans,
saying: There is an invasion of Venezuelans.
Well, clearly there is no invasion by the Venezuelan Government. This
act was used, shamefully, in World War II, in particular, to lock up
Japanese-Americans in concentration camps, and it is being used
shamefully and inappropriately now.
It raises the question: What other ancient law is the President and
Russell Vought going to dust off and use in a way that was never
intended?
Whatever emergency power law--and there are 25, several dozen laws
that provide emergency power--is the President going to dust off and
say this gives me some additional ability? How might those laws be used
in ways to reinforce the strongman state and erode our Nation?
And might the President invoke the power in article II, section 3, a
power that is in the Constitution that says that the President can
adjourn Congress? Of course, it was never intended to undermine the
ability of laws to be crafted here or Congress to serve as a check on
Executive power. It has never been used, in fact, by a President ever,
but what is this President going to do with that power? Might he--given
how he is stretching other laws, misapplying them in situations for
which they were never intended--deliberately adjourn Congress to
advance his goal of the strongman state?
And let's ponder a few questions that are specific to our Congress.
Will Trump's impoundments and rescissions destroy the congressional
process for drafting bipartisan spending bills? For fiscal year 2025,
the year that started last October 1, the Senate Appropriations
Committee passed 11 of the 12 spending bills out of committee in an
overwhelmingly bipartisan fashion. In fact, most of them were passed
unanimously out of committee.
That was possible because compromises were struck. Compromises were
the priorities of both parties, compromises for priorities of different
regions of the Nation with different concerns.
Just think about the difference in types of natural disasters that
strike different parts of our country. Some States endure hurricanes,
others grapple with earthquakes. The Pacific Northwest, where I come
from, battles wildfires. Different parts of the country have different
needs. Different parts of the country have desires to have those needs
met, resulting in compromises in these spending bills.
But if Trump is allowed to impound the funds for programs for the
priorities of his political opponents of either party, then that
destroys the foundation for these compromises since no Senator can be
assured that the deal they are striking--you get what you need, but you
agree to help me get what I need for my part of the country--no one can
be assured that that compromise will be honored.
Second, what is the most effective way for Congress to confront
Trump's authoritarian exercise of power? In the second week of March,
just a month ago, with the authority for government spending set to run
out on March 15, the Senate Democrats had the ability to reject the
spending bill written by the House Republicans that created a massive
slush fund for Trump to use as he pleases to reward or punish specific
States or specific congressional districts.
Some on the Democratic side of the aisle here in the Senate argued
Democrats should not block this bill because it posed a potential
shutdown, and that shutdown had political and policy risks, given that
Trump might love the opportunity to operate a shoestring government
with the President deciding what constitutes essential services.
Others on the Democratic side of the aisle here in the Senate argued
differently, believing that the risk to our Nation was much greater if
we let Trump's authoritarian ambitions go unopposed and that history
teaches us that the best time to confront an authoritarian is right
away, before he amasses even more power.
Both of these arguments had some merit. We will face this decision
again soon when the existing continuing resolution runs out on
September 30. That will be a critical moment for Congress to confront
the President and not hand him more power. We should be preparing for
that moment now.
A third question specific to the operation of Congress: Over the next
several months, the national policy debates are likely to be dominated
by Republican pursuit of a reconciliation bill, a fancy term for a bill
that has a special fast-track, simple majority, no filibuster path
through the Senate. This bill is designed to cut $2 trillion from
programs families use to thrive--healthcare, housing, education, good-
paying jobs--gifts $2 trillion in tax breaks to the richest Americans.
So families lose and billionaires, they win. That is the philosophy of
this bill.

It also abandons the use of nonpartisan calculations of how much a
specific policy will cost and instead decides to engage in smoke and
mirrors so the American public won't realize what is being done. And it
will explode the national debt, adding 7 trillion of additional debt
over 10 years and 52 trillion of additional debt over 30 years.
Families lose; millionaires win. And America's future is deeply
damaged, perhaps drowned in an ocean of red ink created by this bill.
You know, it was stunning at the inauguration, the one that happened
just down this hallway in the Rotunda, to see President Trump with a
lineup of billionaires standing behind him. Some countries would call
this oligarchs--oligarchs standing behind him.
Will Congress really pass a bill that takes away 2 trillion from
families to give 2 trillion in tax breaks to the very richest Americans
to buy the support of oligarchs? Is that what we are headed to--a
strongman state in which Congress acquiesces in buying the support of
the oligarchs?
We saw this happen just yesterday and today. Amazon was going to put
up honest impacts on its website saying how much Trump's tariffs would
add to the cost of products so people could see why they were being
charged so much for things that were much cheaper a little while ago,
but Trump in this relationship with the oligarchs called up Jeff Bezos,
the owner of Amazon, and said: That is bad for me. Don't do it.
Here is what is going on. Trump is doing what is good for the
oligarchs, 2 trillion in tax breaks for the richest Americans, and then
he is asking them to do his bidding, and that includes not being honest
with the American people about the impact of his tariffs.
The first hundred days of Trump's administration has made clear that
his quest for authoritarian power is a threat to the framework of our
Constitution, to the separation of powers, to the checks and balances
that must be fiercely resisted, fiercely resisted by Congress.
And I call my colleagues across the aisle: Remember your oath is to
the Constitution. You did not take an oath to the President of the
United States, not to one individual. That is what people do when they
kneel to a King, and we are not a kingdom. We are a Republic, fiercely
resisted by the courts, fiercely resisted by the people through

[[Page S2653]]

mass action. The press needs to channel AP, not CBS. The universities
need to channel Harvard, which is resisting, not Columbia that bent the
knee. The law firms need to channel Perkins Coie, not Paul, Weiss,
which capitulated.
And to the American people across the country who are angry and
disturbed by what is happening, who want to stop this authoritarian
takeover, I have three suggestions:
Get off the couch. You can't help change the world curled up in a
fetal position on your couch.
Second, fiercely hold your elected representatives accountable with
your phone calls, with your mail, with your demonstrations outside
their office. Hold your representatives accountable. That is what you
get to do in a free nation.
And, third, join affinity groups. Being angry and frustrated alone is
depressing. Being angry and organized with others is energizing and
effective.
Next year, the United States of America will celebrate its 250th
anniversary. Let it be a celebration of our determination and our
effectiveness in confronting and turning back Trump's authoritarian
assault, a celebration of the reenergization of our constitutional
framework and the vision of government by the people, not by the
powerful.
We are participants in a 250-year relay of democracy, where the
responsibility to govern ourselves has been handed from one generation
to the next. We inherited it from our parents and our grandparents.
Let's pass it on to your children and our grandchildren.
When Ben Franklin was leaving the Constitutional Convention, he was
asked: What type of government do we have?
He responded:

A republic, if you can keep it.

Let's keep it.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Minnesota.
Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Mr. President, we are closing things out here till
midnight, but I do want to thank my colleague from Oregon for his
passion for this country.
We all do dream of that world where, in fact, the people in this
country can once more have a say in what is happening; that we do not
have this chaos that is actually not what they bought into.
I just came back from a 19-county trip across my State, and people
came up to me all the time and said: You know, I voted for you, and I
voted for Donald Trump. But I voted for him because I thought he was
going to bring costs down. That is not what is happening right now. Or
I thought he was going to do something about housing because we don't
have enough housing in rural Minnesota. Or I thought he was going to do
something about childcare.
They actually, understandably, thought it because it was the stuff
that he talked about in the campaign. But that is not what has happened
in these first 100 days. In fact, what do we have? We have got costs
are up; ask anyone in the grocery aisles. Corruption is up; look at the
budget being proposed, $50 million in tax cuts for millionaires. And,
yes, chaos is up.
Sadly, retirement savings are down. When you look at what has been
happening with the market, we haven't seen this kind of decline in the
first 100 days--I don't think it has been since Richard Nixon that we
have seen this kind of a drop.
So in his campaign, the President promised ``to lower prices on day
one.'' Instead, Americans are paying more today than we did on January
20. And then you look at the tariff taxes: $4,000, $4,000 per family,
$200 of that an increase in groceries. That is what it is; it is a
tariff tax.
At the pharmacy, prescription drugs will cost Americans an extra $70
a year, and clothing prices will soar more than $900 a year.
Look, Elon Musk is going to be able to afford that. Millionaires,
billionaires, OK, they can afford this doubling of certain
prescriptions. They can afford things going up at the grocery store.
Agriculture prices going up like they were--they can afford that. But
regular people, people who aren't in the Trump Cabinet, can't afford
that.

When you talk to people out there--I am not talking about activists,
as much as I am excited that they are showing up at things. I am just
talking about people that maybe have never even gone to a townhall
meeting before.
I had one case where a farmer was sitting next to a woman who had one
of the signs that said ``This is not normal.'' She is right, it is not
normal, but he didn't know what that meant.
He said to her: I am normal. What do you mean?
She said: No, it is not normal.
Well, he wasn't an activist. He was just someone that is worried that
his whole life's work is going to go to waste because he is a soybean
farmer, and that market is going to dry up where he sells his soybeans
in China because, guess what, they are going to look to buy from
Brazil.
People are worried about costs and their own families. They are
worried about healthcare access and the impact of Trump's tariff taxes
on the economy; people who live on fixed incomes, and suddenly those
costs are ballooning or they saved in a 401(k) or some other retirement
savings, and that has gone down to where they didn't expect it. Then
they try to call Social Security to figure out what they are going to
get or they are getting or they have a spouse who died.
One man who I met with--I could not believe his story. He has worked
with Social Security before. His wife died in January after a long
illness, and he emailed, and they asked for his fingerprint. He
couldn't do that online, but he kept emailing. Then he called. Then he
finally had to drive into Brainerd, MN, to get to the office. Then he
finally ended up having to call our office, and we figured it out for
him. That is happening now.
I think about the businesswoman Beth Benike from southern Minnesota.
She is an Army veteran and the owner of a little company called Busy
Baby and this year's Minnesota Small Business Person of the Year. She
is feeling really good about that. She has a business where she gets
mats for highchairs so these little babies can't throw things over.
Many of us who are moms remember that. All of a sudden, in come those
tariffs.
So some big businesses and their CEOs have a red carpet to the White
House. You know, Tim Cook--I am glad he saved his phones. But he is
able to make a call to the President at any time, and he can go in
there. Beth Benike at Busy Baby doesn't know the President's number.
She can't just waltz in there. She can't just go and make a call and
make sure that they are going to take care and make an exemption for
her Busy Baby gear.
Maybe the other ones got to go to that special, secret investment
meeting at J.P. Morgan with the Treasury Secretary. That soybean farmer
at the townhall meeting was not invited to that meeting. The owner of
Busy Baby was not invited to that meeting. So they don't actually know.
Maybe they revealed what countries are close to trade agreements.
Today, the Commerce Secretary claimed he has an agreement with a
secret country--his words--secret agreement. But my constituents who
are living on the margin, who, maybe because of input costs for their
business or their farms or their ranches or because of a weather event
for farmers or because of avian flu for some of our poultry producers--
they are just on the edge. They are on the edge, and they just barely
make it every year or maybe one year, they have a really good year.
But these tariffs for them came out of nowhere. They actually never
would have believed that this would have been going on as long as it
has.
You know, one of the problems is that even if it gets fixed, a lot of
those markets may not come back because we have become undependable to
other countries.
If we continue along this path, as we have already seen--the farmers
told me: Sometimes, because we need consistency, we figure out what
crop we are going to plant, what seeds we are going to plant. But we
are really not sure. It is a guess for us now because we don't know
about soybeans with China or ethanol--40 percent goes to Canada. But we
don't know which ones we are going to get the trade agreement with.
They need consistency.
So what happens when they don't have that consistency? Well, they

[[Page S2654]]

freeze their investments. They don't buy new stock. They kind of keep
what they have. Who loses out? Customers will lose out, yes, but the
people that work there lose out. They start laying people off. That is
what you are seeing. There are more announcements today about laying
people off.
The supply chains get messed up. They don't know--one of my major
manufacturers, about 20 percent of their parts come from China, but
they employ nearly 10,000 people in America, and they put stuff
together. They don't know which parts are going to be available or not
because they probably don't get them directly from one company. They
don't get them directly from China; they get them from someone in the
middle who doesn't know if they are going to get them. There is an
incredibly complex supply chain in this country.
We learned during the pandemic the hard way, the sad way, what
happens when that supply chain gets messed up. If just one thing is
missing, a piece of a part that goes on some furniture manufactured in
North Carolina, but they need some parts from somewhere else, then you
can't have it at the room and board in Minneapolis. That is what got
messed up during that time with the supply chains.
Those were the simplest examples.
When you have this intricate supply chain, as leaders of this
country, when we take out things like tariffs, we do it in a targeted
fashion, but we also do it in a smart way, and the best way to do it is
with trade agreements.
One of the things that always confused me about the President going
after Canada the way he has--we congratulate Prime Minister Carney, who
just won his election. One of the things that really confused me about
these attacks on one of our biggest allies, the incredible country of
Canada--the attack of calling it our 51st State--it was this country,
Canada, that fought alongside our soldiers in two world wars; it was
this country, Canada, that was there as the first ones on the ground
outside of America after 9/11; it was this country, Canada, that, on
their Embassy, had draped for years, when others sometimes didn't even
want to admit they were America's friend, ``friend, ally, partner.''
That is the country you are going to mess around with?
In my State, it is the top trading partner, and it actually eclipses
the next three added together. This is the State--my State--that is the
fourth biggest ag-exporting State in the country, that has multiple
Fortune 500 companies but also has very successful small- and medium-
size businesses.
So that is the messing around and the chaos we are talking about.
That creates a situation where some of our best friends who love coming
to America for vacations--they will go to Minnesota to go fishing even
though they have a lot of lakes in Canada. They will go to Vegas. They
will go to our national parks. They will go to New York City. They will
go to see one of their Canadian hockey teams play an American hockey
team. But do you know what is happening now? They are not just booing
at those hockey games. What is happening now is they are canceling
their trips, so they are not coming at all. It is viewed as a sign of
patriotism because of what President Trump has been saying about the
people in their country. They are predicting a 70-percent reduction in
Canadians coming to America.
I was just up in a small town on the North Shore of Lake Superior in
Minnesota. They have already seen like 15 percent down in just 1 month
in border crossings. Average tourists, when they visit from another
country, spend $4,000 in our country. That is going to restaurants--
waitresses, waiters, jobs, chefs. That is money spent on going to small
community theaters or going to the Mall of America in Bloomington, MN.
That has a huge number, in normal--normal--conditions, of Canadian
visitors.
That is the mess just with one country. I could use similar examples
with Mexico--40 percent of corn to Mexico. I could use examples from
some of our best allies--Japan, South Korea, Europe--countries that
have stood with us through thick and thin. But just slap a tariff on
it, and say it is paused but keep it in place. What is this going to do
to, yes, our national security but also to our relations with the rest
of the world?
That is why, when you see these public opinion polls, two-thirds of
Americans say they don't like these tariffs or tariff taxes across the
board--so many polls in the last week assessing these 100 days.
Americans say they don't like the way Donald Trump has handled this
economy--nearly two-thirds of them say that. His approval rating is
down to lower than any President in the last 80 years since they
started to do polling. People have noticed. It is their livelihoods.
Unfortunately--I would love to tell them: Hey, that is going to turn
around tomorrow. They have these secret deals. They are going to
negotiate.
I don't actually believe that anymore. I never really did.
But then to compound everything, you have this billionaire budget
going on. To pay for these tax cuts--I think it is $37 trillion total
in 30 years, but when you take out the tax cuts for people making under
$400,000--some of the ones that I strongly support--when you take those
out, you are left with about $25 trillion. You have $25 trillion added
debt in those 30 years.
What is it all about? How are we going to find ways they think will
pay for these tax cuts for these millionaires and billionaires? Well,
why not do it on the backs of working Americans? Because that is the
proposal from over in the House, where they have suggested hundreds of
millions of dollars--something like $800 billion--$800 billion. And the
way they have done it, the Congressional Budget Office has looked at
it, and they say the only way this will work is if you make reductions
to Medicaid. Eighty million Americans are on Medicaid. In my State, one
out of two people in nursing homes is on Medicaid. One out of five
people overall in our State is on Medicaid for their healthcare.
One constituent from Mora, MN, told me that Medicaid helps her afford
a direct-support professional for one of her daughters who has a
complex developmental disability. You have people who are in nursing
homes.
This is what is interesting about this. It is not just our seniors
who are on Medicaid; it is our family members. When my dad got sick
late in his life--he lived into his nineties--he was in a nursing home.
I knew exactly the day his savings were going to run out. We calculated
it because we knew that the place he was staying didn't take Medicaid.
I knew the exact day, the exact week, the exact month we were going to
move him. We were going to move him to Catholic Charities. They said
they would take him. It was about a year after he died that that date
hit, but I knew that date. So many families know exactly what I am
talking about. That is real--if we start messing around with Medicaid--
the effect that is going to have on families.
Then there is food assistance, which is big-time on the chopping
block. I think the farm bill estimates for the Senate bill would be
about $1 billion down, but in the House, it is $230 billion. Food
assistance for 42 million Americans, including 16 million children, 8
million seniors, and 1 million veterans is on the chopping block.
If you cut that in this reconciliation bill, if that gets cut under
the Trump budget and it gets transferred to the States--Texas alone--
let's say you have 20 percent. That is a number that was thrown out in
the House. Texas would have to take out of the State budget over $1
billion. This is in part because of the escalating costs of groceries--
$18 billion overall for the Nation.
When we talk about costs being up, we talk about real people, not
just what is happening with Wall Street and the shock it meant to the
market and the stocks going down. It is real people and their
livelihoods.
What else is up? Chaos is up. Yes, the billionaires' budget is cruel,
but so is the chaos that people are experiencing every day.
Social Security--I used that one example already. They proposed
stopping phone service on a number of Social Security claims. There was
so much pushback from AARP and seniors, I heard that they rolled it
back some, but it still does not allow the phone answerers for certain
things.
I mentioned the widower, the 79-year-old from Crosslake who couldn't
get the Social Security benefits after his wife died. That is
unacceptable.

[[Page S2655]]

They have also attacked food safety inspections, cutting medical
research out there, of course, when all those probationary employees
were fired and then, of course, brought back because of court orders
because this wasn't legal, because we in Congress, Democrats and
Republicans--a Republican-run House and a Democratic-run Senate--had
actually authorized that money and put a budget together that passed
the Congress and was signed into law.
Servicemembers, classified battle plans on unclassified Signal chats,
releasing the address of a secret CIA facility, sharing the names of
200 CIA officers in an unclassified email, planning to lay off 80,000
employees from the Department of Veterans Affairs--that will, of
course, increase wait times. You can't decimate this. You could--as a
CEO would do, you could go in there and say: OK. How can I do more with
less? Where do I want to move employees? What are my important
priorities?
That is not what happened. DOGE came in there and did this before
most of those Cabinet members were even in.
When our soldiers sign up to serve, when people in this country want
to serve our country, there is not a waiting line; and when they come
home to the United States of America and they need their benefits, they
need a job, they need healthcare, they need a place to live, there
should never be a waiting line in the United States of America.
But no amount of chaos has blinded Americans to this issue of
corruption. There have been attacks on the rule of law, attacks on our
Constitution, attacks on our system of checks and balances. Of course,
as I have discussed before, one of the President's first acts was to
pardon those who attacked law enforcement heroes, who defended our
democracy and the Capitol on January 6. He has used our justice system
to reward friends and punish who he considers his enemies. I have
multiple examples of this.
I think of one guy Chris Krebs, who was running the Agency that made
sure that our cyber was safe, that our elections were safe. He did this
during the last Trump administration, and he did a good job. He worked
with the military, and he came out of this and said after that election
that, in fact, it was a safe election. It was exactly what Bill Barr,
President Trump's Attorney General at the time, said--that it was safe.
This made the President mad. He fired Chris Krebs. All of a sudden,
just in the last month, he mentions Chris Krebs again--the guy who had
the audacity to make sure that our elections were not broken into by a
foreign country, that we didn't have data stolen--and he says he should
be investigated.
Or how about the taking away of security clearances on people whom he
doesn't like? Or how about just deciding ``this university I am going
to go after, not this one. I will go after that one. I will go after
that one.'' One of the things I have seen that I believe we didn't see
at the beginning of all of this that is worth noting is more and more
other universities that aren't being targeted have come together, all
signing a letter saying: No. This isn't right. Or law firms, the ones
who aren't being targeted, saying: Wait a minute. This isn't the rule
of law. You should be able to represent clients even if they are people
you don't agree with.
I have been at law firms. I know what this is like. I may not agree
with every client that our law firm represented. And I have also been
in politics. I might not like a story that was written about me. I
might not like what has happened in a certain race, but I don't go
after the media and say that they are enemies of the state, which is
what the President's FBI Director did.
The President has also--as you know, while the administration has
agreed with some court orders--OK. Great. It is important for probably
most of them--they just pick out ones they are not going to agree with
here and there. That is not how the law works.
Access to personal financial data that was given to Elon Musk and
illegally firing independent watchdogs from the Consumer Financial
Protection Bureau and the Consumer Product Safety Commission to
inspectors general, to the FTC. Why would you fire the very people who
are rooting out the waste and fraud that you claim you want to root
out? In 2023 alone--I will use the example of the FTC--the FTC returned
more than $330 million to consumers who lost money from scams and
deceptive business practices.
We always had a Commission and Commissioners from both parties. They
didn't always agree on everything, but it was actually a functioning
Agency. They are actually the ones who are bringing that case against
Meta right now, which was supported by both Republican and Democratic
Commissioners. Unfortunately, the President fired the two Democratic
Commissioners illegally. They are contesting it, but that happened.
Another example: Since it was established just 14 years ago, the
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has returned more than $21 billion
to Americans. Why would you want to get rid of that? President Trump is
attacking these consumer watchdogs while giving Musk deals and while
giving tax breaks and tariff exemptions to those who just happen to
have a connection to be able to get them.
This is not what the American people voted for. The American people
might disagree greatly on issues, but they did not vote for costs going
up. That is for certain. They wanted costs to go down. They did not
vote for someone who is engaging in: Hey, I am going to get rid of this
person because I don't like him. I am going to cut off this grant
because I don't like it. I don't like this program, even though
Congress authorized it. Even though it is illegal to stop it, I am
going to try.
They didn't vote for that, and they certainly didn't vote for this
chaos. Life is hard enough right now without having this chaos.
So what is happening? The courts and the Congress are constituents.
That is what is happening. So when you look at these court cases across
the country, there have been over 200 so far. There have been over 100
instances where judges--and this is really important to know that there
are major cases handled by judges appointed by President Trump himself
where those judges said: No. This is wrong. Under our laws, this is
wrong and under our Constitution.
There have been cases by Bush judges and, yes, Reagan judges,
including a very recent one by Judge Wilkinson, who is a revered
conservative judge on the circuit court, who upheld the district
court's decision and said the district court judge had done the right
thing under the law when it came to the wrongful deportation of a man
who they have now admitted was a mistake. They have made very clear
that he shouldn't have been deported, that it was a mistake. Then when
they tell him that they should, in fact, remedy their mistake by
bringing him back and U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen actually went to
the country to get his constituent and was able to meet with him, it
became very clear they could get that guy who was mistakenly deported
back. That is called when you follow the law and you do the right
thing, because, in America, the President is not King. The law is King.

How else do we hold them accountable? Congress. We are holding people
accountable when we do oversight hearings, but now we just avoid it. We
hold them accountable when we have votes, just like had happened on the
Canada tariff bill that Senators Kaine and Warner and I put forward. It
basically said the President didn't have the authority to say there was
an emergency at the Canadian border, because there wasn't. Four of our
Republican colleagues stood up--Senators Collins and Murkowski, whose
States border with Canada, and then Senator Rand Paul and Senator Mitch
McConnell, in Kentucky, which does a lot of ag. I know they have a lot
of soybeans; they have a lot of exports; they also have bourbon that
was being taken off the shelves, Kentucky bourbon, in the country of
Canada. They understand that that is really hitting their constituents
in a big way, and they stood up when it came to tariffs. It passed. Now
it is sitting over there in the House of Representatives in the
Speaker's freezer somewhere next to the frozen peas. I don't know, but
nothing is happening right now on that, and it should, because we
should actually have votes on this. Then if the President wants to veto
it, go ahead. Then we could override his veto if people stood up, and
this madness would stop about the Canadian tariffs. We could go

[[Page S2656]]

back. We are not saying we don't negotiate things. Negotiate them in
the reauthorization of the USMCA, which was one of the President's
crown jewels when he negotiated that. I supported it. But why not do it
that way instead of rubberstamping everything that he does?
We are also doing this with our constituents by our side, and this
means, to me, yes, some of the loudest voices in the room with the big
townhalls and people at the microphone. Someone I ran into the other
day who was not used to politics called them open mic events. Yeah,
those are happening, but what is more important to me is some of the
smaller ones in small towns of 1,000 people, in rural towns, with
people showing up from local businesses, with people showing up from
the Farmers Union, from the Farm Bureau, with people explaining what is
going on in their lives in a real way, people telling the stories of
trying to call Social Security. Or the two women I met who are in the
middle of cancer trials that have been incredibly successful, and no
one gave them a chance to live at the University of Minnesota, and they
went through this cancer trial, and now they don't know what is going
to happen because, while some of those cuts were put off, when you
start threatening the universities, when you start threatening the
funding that makes those cancer trials possible, when you have so much
chaos and you want people to leave and you gave them all these buyouts
and you say: Please go away, they are going to find other jobs,
especially people in the medical profession where we know it is hard to
keep people because they have other opportunities.
That word ``opportunity'' is really what people ask me about. What do
you think we are not talking about enough when it comes to this chaos?
You know, maybe we are not talking enough about what is going on in the
world. I think people are starting to do that. But I think what people
are not talking enough about is this opportunity that we are
squandering away because of the mapping of the human genome.
Because of the investments Democrats and Republicans made together
the last 11 years, every year we have increased funding to NIH--this
incredible development of personalized medicine. So when you find out
you have cancer, they can better figure out what your treatment should
be and try to use the least invasive procedure possible, as happened to
me, so that you can get through this with the breast cancer, with a
lumpectomy, and you can get through it with just 5 days of radiation.
You can be back at work that night. You may be a little tired, but you
can.
That never would have happened 20 years ago. I don't know if I would
even have been standing here. But because we invested as a country in
the technology and in the work that had to be done, we are where we
are, and now we are on the cusp, thanks to that mapping of the human
genome, the personalized medicine, all the information we are
gathering, and, yes, AI, if done and used professionally and ethically.
We are on the cusp of leading the world again when it comes to curing
rare diseases and when it comes to the next great big thing.
But that is not going to happen if we suddenly pull back, and people
start quitting all of our research facilities and go do their clinical
trials in other countries because it is more dependable, which is what
is happening right now. That is not going to happen if FDA inspectors--
which it is very hard to get these doctors and medical professionals
who can look at medical devices and make a decision. That is not all
going to happen if they start leaving because of the negativity coming
from the White House about their work, because of the forced
departures, because the incentives put in place cannot keep them there,
which is what we should be doing rather than incentivizing them to
leave.
On the day of the inauguration, I had the opportunity to speak for,
like, 4 minutes, and I picked every word really carefully. I knew it
was an important event. I knew what my role was--I would have done it
no matter who won--but on that day, I made three points, and I think
they are still more relevant than ever. I wanted to pick three things
that I thought would stand the test of time.
The first was that, before this and certainly now, our democracy has
been a hot mess. There is a mess of division, and I think it has gotten
much worse. But it is our job as citizens, especially as elected
Representatives, to be the ``shelter from the storm,'' to quote Bob
Dylan, a great Minnesotan. A shelter from the storm--that is what our
democracy should be: a place where people civilly debate things and
come up with a compromise and get through all this, and it is still on
all of us, especially in the U.S. Senate--what has been called the
world's great deliberative body--to do that.
The second thing: In America, the inauguration is not held in a
gilded palace. It is not held in an executive office building. It is
held in the ``People's House.'' It is held in the Congress for a reason
because we have three equal branches of government. That means we have
a court that decides the law. That means we have a Congress that should
be able to show its weight. And all of these Representatives, duly
elected in each State and each congressional district over in the
House--and show its authority on behalf of the people whom we
represent. That means taking on these tariffs and votes. That means
making sure this is a fair budget for the people of this country.
And the third and final thing that I believe will stand the test of
time is, remember that day in the Rotunda and there were all those
powerful billionaires in that room and there were also the people's
representatives in that room, but the thing that we had in common, from
a freshman Member of the House of Representatives to the President of
the United States that day, is the power did not come from within that
room; the power came from outside of that room, from the people.
So what you are seeing right now in the form of, yes, townhalls, also
in the form of rallies, yes, but also in the form of regular people
writing our offices, burning up the phone lines, showing up at events,
talking to you at a grocery store, talking to you on Main Street, and
they are saying: This is not OK, Senator; this is not OK,
Representative; I need you to do something about it. That is the power
of the people from outside this building. That is the power of the
people who gave us the honor of serving in this building.
So as we look at these first 100 days of this chaos, of these costs
going up, of the retirement funds going down, we still have to remember
why we are here. So instead of throwing our hands up in the air, either
side, and saying: Oh, what can I do? This is our moment in the U.S.
Senate to stand up, our moment to stand up on tariffs, our moment to
stand up on this budget. All we need is, like, four Republicans in the
House of Representatives to stand up and say ``enough is enough'' and
listen to their constituents instead of rubberstamping what this
President wants. This is truly our moment to do that.
With that, I yield the floor.

____________________