[Pages S4292-S4295]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                          TRUMP ADMINISTRATION

  Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, over the last 250 years, this country has 
grown from a handful of rebellious Colonies to an economic, scientific, 
military, cultural, technological, and agricultural behemoth. And, 
crucially, through it all, we have remained a democracy devoted to the 
hard work our Founders envisioned of making our Nation a more perfect 
Union. Progress has not always been straightforward, but it has been 
consistent over time and nothing short of extraordinary, which is why 
it is all the more heartbreaking to see so much damage, so much self-
inflicted harm imposed on our country by this administration, over the 
last 170 days.
  Indeed, if you were to design a Presidency and policies to diminish 
our scientific and technological prowess from within, it would look a 
lot like this administration.
  If you were determined to kill our clean energy future and retreat 
from any hope of addressing climate change, it would look a lot like 
this.
  If you wanted to undermine our standing around the world, befriend 
dictatorships, and betray our fellow democracies, it would look a lot 
like this.
  If you wanted to deliberately tear at the social fabric and cohesion 
of our country, set State against State and people against people to 
the point of conflict in the streets, it would look a lot like this 
administration.
  The President and his Cabinet have been tearing down so much of what 
makes this country special--and so quickly--that it has been hard to 
see the big picture, hard to separate the biggest harms from merely the 
most sensational or the most proximate. One hundred days was not enough 
time to evaluate the harms this administration had already inflicted on 
our country and its people, but 170 days just might be sufficient.
  So, today, I want to go through the top 10 ways this administration 
has been wrecking the country. From the thoughtless and irresponsible 
to the illegal and unconstitutional, to the deliberately cruel and 
malicious, I want to tell you what the actions of this Presidency have 
really meant for the country and for our future. So here they are, the 
top 10 ways the administration is wrecking the country:
  No. 10, Donald Trump is waging an all-out war on America's research 
universities.
  America's universities have been the envy of the world, for much of 
the last century, in powering scientific achievement and economic 
growth, dramatic breakthroughs in medicine, significant achievements in 
the arts, technological innovation, and all of the attendant economic 
benefits have been driven by a decades-old partnership between 
universities and the Federal Government.
  As a part of this grand bargain, the Federal Government invests in 
research conducted at top universities, and the country enjoys the 
benefits. From brilliant scientists and academia, the military gets new 
technologies and capabilities, including innovations in fusion energy, 
laser technology, electronic jamming capabilities, and so much more. 
Our healthcare is improved and our lifespans are increased by 
university-led research into new medicines, medical implants, and 
devices. Food science helps us grow healthier crops and produce more 
food with less water and less pesticides.
  You would be hard-pressed to find a field of scientific endeavor in 
which university research has failed to deliver. Now all of that is on 
the chopping block. The administration has canceled tens of billions of 
dollars in university research funding. It is stopping some of the best 
and brightest students from coming to the United States to study by 
banning international students from attending. Already, some of the 
world's most promising students are choosing to go elsewhere--to China 
or the UK or Sweden or Canada.
  The reason we want the very best students is so that we can remain 
the global leader in every field of endeavor. That is what makes us 
great. But this--this is a one-way brain drain in the wrong direction.
  The administration is also raising taxes on research universities and 
threatening the removal of accreditation from universities which fail 
to bow to the President's ideological and political whims. It is using 
real concerns about anti-Semitism on campus as a pretext or the 
policies of athletic departments that it disfavors to justify attacks 
on universities that will do nothing but set the country and our 
economy back. Their real agenda is to change the agenda at schools, to 
eliminate academic independence, and to indoctrinate students into an 
ideology that is more to their liking, turning administration 
bureaucrats into a kind of thought police.
  Coming in at No. 9 of the top 10 ways the administration is wrecking 
the country is taking away food from hungry kids in America.
  Donald Trump promised to make America healthy again, but he is not. 
Instead, he has settled for making America hungry again.

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  The budget just realized through their big, ugly bill makes a multi-
hundred-billion-dollar cut to the SNAP program--that is Supplemental 
Nutrition and Food Assistance--basically food for hungry kids and 
families. This isn't a cut that can be explained away with a vague, 
multipurpose phrase or platitude like ``waste, fraud, or abuse'' or by 
engaging in funny math. Feeding hungry families is not wasteful. 
Providing fresh food at schools for kids who can't otherwise afford to 
eat is not a fraud. Helping seniors living on the edge of poverty 
afford a meal is not an abuse. But taking this food away to fund tax 
cuts for wealthy people and corporations--that is a fraud, that is a 
waste, and that is an abuse.
  These cuts will mean more kids who are unable to get a school lunch; 
more seniors literally sitting and starving in their homes; an America 
that is more hungry than before; an America that, although it is the 
richest Nation on Earth and the most productive agricultural Nation on 
Earth, has chosen to adopt ``more hunger'' as its policy.
  Moving on to No. 8. Coming in at No. 8 of the top 10 ways the 
administration is wrecking the country, Donald Trump is destroying our 
alliances with democratic nations around the world and aligning our 
country with dictators.
  Across administrations and decades, America has been a symbol of 
stability for the globe, a trusted partner, a champion of freedom, a 
democracy. We have stood up to evil empires and championed the cause of 
liberty. And although we have made more than our share of mistakes in 
trying to rebuild other nations in our image, we have strived to 
achieve a foreign policy consistent with our values.
  Now, in just the first few months, so much of that legacy has been 
betrayed. So many of our alliances have been degraded. So much of our 
standing in the world has been made small. So many of our friends have 
become estranged. Our treaty partners are unsure of whether they can 
count on us in a pinch.
  Donald Trump likes to talk about peace through strength. He likes to 
think that bullying our friends or extorting a price for our security 
guarantees is what makes us strong, but he is wrong.
  He trashes our relationships with our friends. He belittles the 
Canadians and the British, who fought and died alongside American 
soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan. He denigrates Ukrainians and their 
brave President, who fight nobly in the defense of their democracy and 
their sovereignty. He insists on Ukraine paying tribute in the form of 
mineral rights to secure his support. He flatters and fawns over the 
Kremlin dictator--at least he did until even Trump could see that he 
was being made to play the fool by a mass murderer who did not want 
peace, only further mayhem. And who can say how long Trump's new 
resolve against Putin will last before it is overtaken by caprice or 
self-interest.

  The only true constant of Trump's foreign policy has been that the 
United States will be there for you if and only if it is pleasing to 
the President, if you flatter him, if you bow and scrape before him, or 
if there is something in it for him personally, like a $400 million 
aircraft or a multibillion-dollar crypto deal for his family. He has 
made it plain that American foreign policy is part protection racket 
and part just racket.
  All of this means that America is less safe and secure, with fewer 
friends we can rely upon out of any sense of shared sacrifice or 
values.
  The mutual defense clause of article 5 of NATO has been invoked only 
once, and that was on our behalf after we were viciously attacked by 
terrorists on September 11. Our friends and allies rushed to our 
defense--and not just out of a sense of treaty obligation but because 
of a shared sense of purpose and our common humanity.
  The problem with turning every relationship into a transitional or 
transactional one is that everyone will want something in return and no 
one will be there when you really need them.
  Moving on, No. 7 of the top 10 ways the administration is wrecking 
what is best about this country is their pointless, economically 
suicidal, and self-destructive attack on the development of renewable 
energy.
  Renewable energy can lead the world away from a climate catastrophe. 
It can be an economic slingshot, catapulting us into an abundant energy 
future that is American-made. It can truly make us energy independent 
instead of simply more dependent on the fossil fuel industry.
  But Trump has attacked clean energy with a vengeance, repealing 
incentives passed during the Biden administration. And why? Because 
they were passed during the Biden administration and because Donald 
Trump made a promise to oil companies in exchange for campaign cash--
lots of it, more than a billion of it.
  The ``Big Ugly Bill'' phases out tax credits meant to spur 
development of solar and wind power and replaces them with tax credits 
for coal. If you are wondering whether you heard that right, you did--
tax credits for coal mining in the year 2025. At a time when we have 
harnessed the capacity of the Sun and the wind to power entire 
communities, we are disinvesting in a renewable energy future in order 
to fund an industry from the 1800s. It is the policy equivalent of 
investing in black lung, and it will choke our energy supply over time 
and kneecap our economic potential.
  China knows this. In May, China installed 93 gigawatts of solar 
capacity. That is enough to power almost 70 million homes. And they did 
it in a single month. China is installing almost 100 solar panels every 
second. And that is not because the China Communist Party is populated 
by a bunch of crazy environmentalists; it is because they know this is 
the industry of the future. They want to dominate the global market in 
clean energy, and thanks to Donald Trump, they will.
  So how will Trump's energy policies impact you at home? It means your 
energy bills are going to go up--way up--by hundreds of dollars a 
month. Renewable sources of energy are the vast majority of new energy 
coming online in America. Take that away, and we are reliant on the 
same old capacity, your same old utility, less competition, and higher 
prices, costing you more to heat your home in the winter or cool it 
down during the hot, hot summer. It means more families will make the 
impossible choice between paying their utility bills and putting food 
on the table.
  Now, earlier, I talked about this administration's cuts to research 
universities, which brings me to No. 6: the broader attack on health 
and science.
  The administration is slashing the National Institutes of Health, the 
Nation's premier medical research Agency. They have cut NIH by almost 
half--almost half.
  Now, I am no scientist, but I took enough science classes in college 
to know my way around a lab, and I am certainly no economist, but I can 
do basic math, and I can tell you with certainty, as anyone can who 
looks at this, that cutting NIH in half, massively gutting research 
grants and positions, will lead to the cancelation of clinical trials 
and new treatments and to Americans needlessly suffering from any 
number of illnesses and diseases. It will mean scaling back research 
efforts on everything from cancer, to Alzheimer's, to HIV-AIDS, 
destroying years or decades of research in any number of fields that 
might have been weeks or months away from a breakthrough.
  That hurts everyone. There isn't a Senator in this body who hasn't 
been visited by families with sick children or sick parents or 
constituents who are ill themselves, constituents who have pleaded with 
us that we increase funding for NIH, who have put a human face on the 
hope that they or their loved ones might be saved--saved--if only we 
invest in NIH. And now we turn our backs on them. And for what? For 
what?
  At No. 5 of the top 10 ways the administration is wrecking the 
country, we have the massive DOGE cuts to the Federal workforce and 
Federal Agencies everywhere.
  Elon Musk and his lot of unqualified, unvetted, unrestrained tech 
bros have taken a chain saw to any number of Federal grants, Federal 
contracts, Federal Departments, and Federal jobs without the slightest 
understanding of the human consequences.
  Musk may have held himself harmless during these massive cuts--he 
managed to use his position in the administration to expand his 
billions in government contracts at Starlink--but everyone else was 
made to suffer. Now

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he is gone, but the wrecking crew continues its work.
  DOGE accidentally cut nuclear safety staff and then had to rush and 
try to rehire them. They cut specialists in bird flu, and then they had 
to try to rush and rehire them.
  (Mr. HUSTED assumed the Chair.)
  Remember those coal tax credits I mentioned earlier? Well, they are 
cutting mine safety efforts, making dangerous work even more so.
  They DOGE'd USAID and diminished our soft power around the world. 
They are dismantling the Department of Education and selling off our 
children's education piece by piece.
  And they would cut NASA in half. There is no more high-profile 
example of America's scientific and technological prowess than our 
space program, and, sadly, there is no better example of its deliberate 
forfeiture.
  In my lifetime alone, our space program was the first to plant a flag 
on the Moon. We launched the first solar probe. We took the first 
photos and landed the first rover on Mars. We are sending more humans 
into orbit than ever and on track to land the first human on Mars.
  We did those things not because they were easy. No. We did those 
things, as President Kennedy once said, ``because they are hard''; 
because space exploration can teach us things about our life on Earth 
that propel innovation here at home, innovation that allows us to 
travel faster, live longer, and live better; and because exploring 
space can provide the most profound thoughts of our place in the 
universe and whether, amidst all of that, we are alone.
  This Agency that has brought such hope and excitement and pride--
pride--will be brought low. It may be one small step for DOGE, but it 
represents one giant leap backward for mankind.
  The Trump administration has also paused the hiring of critical 
seasonal firefighting staff, laid off probationary employees just as we 
begin another devastating fire season. They cut staff and programs at 
NOAA and the National Weather Service, hurting early earthquake 
warnings--early warnings of all disasters--warnings that are pivotal 
when tragedy strikes, like it did in Texas this week, in North Carolina 
months ago, or in Los Angeles in January.
  They cut staff who run the phones at Social Security while closing 
regional offices, making it harder for seniors to get the benefits they 
paid into their entire life--because that was the goal. That was the 
goal.
  And for all the pain that DOGE has inflicted and continues to 
inflict, the only thing that bastard Agency has really served to 
accomplish is making government less effective, less efficient, and 
less trustworthy because, more than anything else, the DOGE 
bloodletting has killed the trust of countless Americans--trust that 
the Federal jobs and programs they relied upon would continue; trust 
that they might be paid less than private sector workers to do the work 
they love, to unravel new mysteries in space, in the oceans, in our 
bodies, and in ourselves but that they could rely upon the government 
as an employer; that they could be insulated from political and 
partisan considerations; that they would not become some ideological 
arm of the President or his party or its collateral damage.
  Now that trust is gone, and the loss of that talent and that trust 
just might be the most expensive loss of all.
  Now, No 4. At No. 4 of the top 10 ways in which the administration is 
wrecking our country and our economy: tariffs--the on-again, off-again, 
on-again, off-again, on-again, off-again, on-again tariffs; the ill-
considered, ill-executed, unpredictable, unproductive, costly, 
indiscriminate, and self-destructive tariffs.
  For a President who ran on lowering costs, his most significant 
economic action has been a colossal backfire. Prices for your Fourth of 
July barbecue last week were the highest they have ever been. Like the 
cost of burgers or beer, phones are now more expensive, cars are more 
expensive. Prices at Walmart, Target, Costco: up, up, up. And on 
Amazon, they were going to add a specific line item for the cost of the 
Trump tariffs beside each affected product, until the Trump 
administration begged its owner, Jeff Bezos, not to be so transparent 
with their own customers because it made the President look bad. This 
didn't stop Amazon from adding the Trump tax to the price of the goods 
you buy on Amazon. It just stopped Amazon from showing you just how 
much more you are paying.
  And while you get poorer because of these tariffs, America is not 
getting any stronger. While your pocketbook is getting hit, so, too, is 
our standing around the globe. After all, these chaotic tariffs give 
our trading partners all too accurate an impression that we are 
unpredictable; that we are unstable; that America, with all its power, 
is unreliable. So those trading partners are flocking elsewhere. They 
go to China or to India or elsewhere.
  The fact is, we have so alienated even our closest friends and allies 
that some countries, like Canada, have gone beyond reciprocal tariffs 
to a downright boycott of American goods, devastating American farmers, 
small businesses, and consumers alike.
  The ``Art of the Deal'' indeed.
  Which takes us to No. 3 and this administration's attack on our 
healthcare. When the Senate passed Trump's ``Big Ugly Bill'' last week, 
50 of our colleagues put their stamp on a budget that will devastate 
Medicaid; that will mean hospitals and clinics close; that millions of 
Americans will lose access to lifesaving care; that will mean people 
get their care denied; that will mean the long, hard fight against 
opioids will be set back by cuts to substance abuse treatment.
  After promising that Medicaid would not be touched, that our 
healthcare would not be harmed, they cut it by $1 trillion--trillion 
with a ``t''--to fund tax cuts for wealthy people, by the trillions. 
And when your hospital closes because it loses millions in Medicaid 
dollars, it won't matter whether you were personally on Medicaid. Your 
hospital will be gone. You and everyone else will have to drive farther 
to find an emergency room, to have a baby, to get dialysis, or to be 
treated for a stroke. The quality of your care will decline. Your 
access to care will diminish, especially reproductive care but every 
kind of care. Most of us will pay more--a lot more--for the care we 
receive, but some will go without care altogether.

  In the richest nation on Earth, we will move farther away from 
universal quality care to a period of even greater scarcity, even 
shorter lifespans, even lesser quality of life. And again, for what? 
More tax cuts for wealthy people who don't need them and who already 
have all the care that they need?
  Now we have reached No. 2. No. 2 of the top 10 most destructive acts 
of the administration: Trump's undermining of the rule of law. The 
assault on the rule of law began almost immediately with the pardon of 
1,550 people who committed one of the most serious offenses in the 
Nation's history: attacking the U.S. Capitol to stop the peaceful 
transfer of power.
  In granting pardons to hundreds of offenders who used violence that 
day against police officers, Donald Trump sent a powerful message to 
his followers that they may use violence on his behalf and he would 
have their back; that he would insulate them from the law and from 
accountability, and more than that, that he would promote them, 
advocate for them, appoint them to high positions in a new Justice 
Department, a Department oriented not toward justice, not devoted to a 
rule of law but devoted only to him. In Trump's Justice Department, we 
are no longer a nation of laws but a nation of men to be rewarded or 
punished according to the President's whims.
  A mayor of New York, charged with corruption, has his case dismissed 
not because of any prosecutorial misconduct or lack of evidence but 
because he is useful to the President on an unrelated policy matter.
  In Trump's Justice Department, the absence of evidence or lawful 
predication is no bar to initiating a criminal investigation when a 
political pretext will do. He is using the Department as both sword and 
shield: a sword to pursue his enemies and a shield to protect his 
friends and to protect no one--no one--more than himself; a President 
given immunity by Supreme Court Justices he appointed--acting like a 
convicted felon because he is a convicted felon--now engaging in the 
most blatant graft and corruption, accepting gifts and gratuities, 
airplanes and commissions, in the hundreds of millions,

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in the billions, and without any fear of investigation, let alone 
prosecution.
  The inspectors general are gone. The watchdogs are gone. Only the 
dogs are left to feed on the carrion that was the rule of law.
  When courts try to restrain the Trump administration's illegality, 
his Departments ignore their orders. We saw it with the Alien Enemies 
Act. We see it with the unlawful impoundment of FEMA funds, with the 
lawless withholding of State funding, with attacks on foreign 
assistance appropriated by Congress, with racial profiling and illegal 
renditions to foreign prisons without due process or, frankly, any kind 
of process.
  Which brings us to No. 1--the No. 1 way in which Donald Trump and his 
administration are wrecking this country--and that is by destroying the 
very idea of America.
  Our Nation was formed as an improbable experiment, an experiment 
based on the unproven idea that people possessed sufficient virtue to 
be self-governing, that we did not need to be ruled by a tyrant. From 
that humble and daring beginning, the idea grew that a country so 
constituted, so organized could not only rule itself but could attract 
the best and the brightest, the most industrious of souls from all over 
the Earth and make them Americans; that there would be no caste system 
in America; that, here, anyone with the drive, the talent, and the 
intellect could prosper; that there were no limits to what we could 
achieve.
  That idea that became America was our most powerful appeal, our 
calling card at home and around the world. It has driven people to our 
shores. It has inspired people in dark prison cells in Iran, in labor 
camps in China, in gulags in Russia, and in impoverished places 
everywhere to dream of America--what it stands for and what it might 
mean to them if only they were so lucky, so very lucky, to one day move 
to this great place called America.
  And Donald Trump's destruction of that idea, the idea of America as 
the last best hope of mankind, is the worst offense of this 
administration.
  During Ronald Reagan's final speech as President, he spoke of a man 
who wrote to him of the uniqueness of America:

       You can go to live in France--

  The man wrote--

     but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in 
     Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German, a 
     Turk, or a Japanese. But anyone, from any corner of the 
     Earth, can come to live in America and become an American.
       Other countries--

  Reagan said--

     may seek to compete with us; but in one vital area, as a 
     beacon of freedom and opportunity that draws the people of 
     the world, no country on Earth comes close.
       This--

  He said--

     is one of the most important sources of America's greatness. 
     We lead the world because, unique among nations, we draw our 
     people--our strength--from every country and every corner of 
     the world. And by doing so we continuously renew and enrich 
     our nation. While other countries cling to the stale past, 
     here in America we breathe life into dreams. We create the 
     future, and the world follows us into tomorrow. Thanks to 
     each wave of new arrivals to this land of opportunity, 
     we're a nation forever young, forever bursting with energy 
     and new ideas, and always on the cutting edge, always 
     leading the world to the next frontier. This quality is 
     vital to our future as a nation. If we ever closed the 
     door to new Americans, our leadership in the world would 
     soon be lost.

  That was Ronald Reagan. But now we have Donald Trump, a President 
who, more than any other in our history, ``clings to a stale past.''
  I can forgive the President for his reckless tariff policies, for his 
sycophantic hires, or his foolish tax giveaways to the rich, but I will 
never forgive him for the damage he has done and for the damage he 
continues to do to the very idea of America, for how the rest of the 
world now views this country, and more critically, more 
catastrophically, how we have come to view ourselves. Tackling 
immigrants to the ground, people who are landscapers or farmworkers or 
restaurant workers or garment workers, let alone beating them while 
they lay there, as agents did to the father of three U.S. marines, it 
is not how Americans treat the hard-working people who come here in 
search of a better life.
  Using the military against our own citizens, sowing chaos and 
division in our own cities is not consistent with the idea of America. 
This is not an America confident of its future and of its place in the 
world, able to inspire people around the world, able to see the best in 
ourselves.
  On a day that Benjamin Franklin watched our Nation being formed, on a 
day he witnessed George Washington preside over the Constitutional 
Convention, seated in a chair with an image of the Sun embossed on its 
top, Franklin pulled some of his colleagues aside and remarked to them 
about how artists often have a difficult time distinguishing between a 
rising and setting Sun in their art.

       I have often--

  Franklin said--

     and often in the course of this session . . . looked at that 
     [emblem] behind the President, without being able to tell 
     whether it was rising or setting. But now at length, I have 
     the happiness to know, that it is a rising and not a setting 
     sun.

  Today, I know that a great many Americans fear that our Sun is 
setting, but I do not believe that. I have more faith in America than 
that. We have overcome far greater challenges in our history than our 
present difficulties. And those who would bet against this country 
would be wise not to. Those who have are far more likely to be proven 
the losers than the winners of that bet.
  The Sun is not setting on our Republic, but eclipse-like, it is 
obscured and the actions of this administration have cast a kind of 
shadowy darkness over the land.
  Though our Sun is not setting, neither is it rising, nor would it 
rise of its own accord. In this respect, Franklin's celestial metaphor 
falls short. We have no control over the Sun. Our orbit has been 
predetermined by forces well beyond our time and understanding. We are 
powerless to change its trajectory, but we are not powerless to change 
our own.
  We are not powerless to save our country, to remember who we are, to 
once again capture the imagination, the hopes, and aspirations of a 
weary mankind. Our Sun, America's Sun will rise again and shine 
brightly unto ourselves and to all nations. But it will take all of us 
working together and well into the future to make it so.
  Until then, we must press on, doing all we can to mitigate the harms 
of the current administration until we can end them, until we can bind 
up our Nation's wounds--as Lincoln said--and begin again the sacred 
work of restoring the very best of America.
  I yield the floor.

                          ____________________