[Pages S6564-S6569]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

CLOTURE MOTION

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

Cloture Motion

We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the provisions of
rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, do hereby move to bring
to a close debate on Calendar No. 1, S. Res. 377, an executive
resolution authorizing the en bloc consideration in Executive Session
of certain nominations on the Executive Calendar.
John Thune, Bernie Moreno, John Kennedy, Katie Boyd
Britt, John Cornyn, John Barrasso, Shelley Moore
Capito, Tim Sheehy, Tom Cotton, Josh Hawley, Mike
Rounds, Jon A. Husted, James E. Risch, Ted Budd,
Markwayne Mullin, Kevin Cramer, Mike Lee.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum
call has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on S. Res.
377, an executive resolution authorizing the en bloc consideration in
Executive Session of certain nominations on the Executive Calendar,
shall be brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.

[[Page S6565]]

The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from New Hampshire (Ms.
Hassan) is necessarily absent.
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 52, nays 47, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 513 Ex.]

YEAS--52

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

NAYS--47

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

NOT VOTING--1

Hassan

(Mr. HAGERTY assumed the Chair.)
(Mr. TILLIS assumed the Chair.)
(Mr. HAGERTY assumed the Chair.)
(Mr. TILLIS assumed the Chair.)
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Budd). On this vote, the yeas are 52, the
nays are 47.
Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn not having voted
in the affirmative, the motion is not agreed to.
The motion was rejected.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

Motion to Reconsider

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I move to reconsider the vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion to
reconsider.
The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I ask consent for myself and Senator
Schatz to speak for up to 6 minutes, equally divided time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. LANKFORD. I would ask for Senator Schatz and I to speak for up to
10 minutes of time, equally divided.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Rules Change

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, the Senate is stuck. We have had an
enormous number of nominations that have tried to be able to work
through this body. Quite frankly, it is the same number that we have
every time when it is the first term for a new President to be able to
work its way through the body.
But this time is different. And it is not just accidentally
different; it has been intentionally different.
I understand my Democratic colleagues have problems politically with
President Trump. I get that. Respectfully, we have differences of
opinion on that. But this time it has been different. Every single
nominee has been blocked. Every single nominee has required a vote for
a motion to proceed, 2 hours of debate, and another vote.
The current status where we are right now to just do the nominees who
are backlogged, where we currently sit right now, will take about 900
hours of floor time to be able to just do those. That doesn't include
the ones who are coming next for the next nominations. We are stuck.
If every single one of them requires this kind of time, the Senate is
no longer functioning. So what we had proposed was a pretty
straightforward proposal; that is, that we actually can move nominees
in small batches--let's say 15--once they come out of committee. So
they have had vetting in committee; they had had a hearing in
committee; they have passed out of committee; they are now coming to
the floor. In the past, those individuals were then passed by what is
called en bloc or by voice vote or unanimous consent.
It is very common to be en bloc. In fact, during President Biden's
time, there were 277 nominees who moved en bloc. Do you know why?
Because Republicans allowed them to be able to move en bloc.
Do you know what is interesting? During President Trump's first term,
more than 500 nominees moved en bloc. Do you know why? Because
Democrats allowed them to move en bloc because this was normal to be
able to do. But now we are in a new political age where nothing seems
to be normal.
So we proposed a very simple thing; that this would be helpful to do
in what is called a standing rule. It would take 60 votes to be able to
move this, and we would have a standing rule to say here is how this
could be done. Up to 15 out of a committee would come to the floor en
bloc. We would have a single vote to be able to pass those 15, very
similar to how it has been done in the past. It is just structured that
way.
This was an idea that percolated around for a while and then began to
grow. Then we had multiple of our Democratic Senators who came on board
and said that that is a reasonable proposal. In fact, it is similar to
something that we proposed a couple of years ago for several Members.
So after a while of discussion, more and more Democrats came on
board. And now we have a supermajority of Members of this body right
now to be able to vote on it today who are willing to say let's vote on
it. We have a supermajority. We have plenty of folks who are willing to
be able to step up and say that is a reasonable thing to be able to do.
The problem is, it takes consent to actually bring it to the floor. It
is just a simple issue of do we have the ability to be able to vote on
this today? If we don't, we are stuck.
Now, it only takes 60. We definitely have 60 votes in this body today
to be able to pass it. What we don't have is consent to be able to
actually bring it.
We have been asked: Well, what if we just did it next week? The
challenge is this body has just broken down trust. So we are not
confident there is not going to be a next week and a next week and a
next week. In the meantime, we are still not moving nominees. We are
still stuck.
So we have asked a very simple thing: Let's move this idea today,
where we know we have 60 of our colleagues ready to be able to pass it
today, in regular order in the process. We are just asking one thing;
that is, consent to be able to do it.
I am planning to bring that request for consent in just a moment, but
I would like to be able to yield time to my colleague Senator Schatz
from Hawaii to be able to speak on this same issue because he has also
worked very hard on rules and trying to be able to make this Senate
work.
So, with that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, he is right. He is asking for unanimous
consent, and we don't have unanimous consent. We do not have unanimity.
What we do have, and Senator Lankford is right, is now a critical
mass of people who are willing to entertain changes to the way that we
process nominees. That is a pretty big deal. That is a pretty big deal.
This would be the first major bipartisan rules reform, I think, in a
political generation, maybe several political generations. And it is
not your usual suspects of moderates who might be able to get you guys
to 60 but a pretty wide swath of U.S. Senators on the Democratic side
to try to reform the rules on a bipartisan basis. And we are achingly
close to doing this like adults.
It is not lost on me on 9/11 and after the terrible political
assassination of Mr. Kirk that we have a special obligation to
demonstrate that politics is a substitute for violence and not a
precursor to violence. We have to demonstrate that we can be adults.
So we were achingly close to a deal, but I am afraid that my
colleagues on the other side of the aisle have run out of patience.
I understand the overall argument about the number of nominees who
are in a backlog. I understand that argument. I am not talking about
that. I am talking about they just want to go today. They want to leave
today. People have flights today. It is Thursday, and it is not 5 p.m.

[[Page S6566]]

So were we to work a weekend to try to land this airplane, that would
be beneficial to the country, to the body, to Republicans and Democrats
alike. We are actually very close, and Senator Lankford knows that. I
think he is as frustrated as I am about how achingly close we are to
behaving like adults.
I don't know who it is or what the dynamic was, but about an hour
ago, everybody just said: Nah, I don't care how close we are. We are
just going to do this because we are going to start to lose Members. We
are going to start to lose momentum. The weekend is hard. Maybe we are
going to get yelled at from the left; you are going to get yelled at
from the right; and we can't withstand that so we just have got to go
through with it. It is a damn shame.

Maybe this exercise builds a little muscle memory for at least
exploring how to have a bipartisan negotiation. Maybe there is some
silver lining to this. Maybe there is some understanding that this
institution actually matters, especially in this polarized and divided
time. But I have to tell you, I am deeply disappointed at the extent to
which Members on our side of the aisle and your side of the aisle put
themselves in a position of some political peril to try to stabilize
the country and be the ballast that everybody needs across America.
We were trending well. We were trending well. I know how negotiations
go. They go up and down. They go sideways. They stall a bit. People get
a little irritated. But we really were trending well. And I am
legitimately shocked that we are like 94 percent of the way there, and
somebody just woke up and said: Do you know what? Never mind. We are
going to do the thing we were planning on doing originally.
So hope springs eternal, but this is a deep disappointment. And it
didn't have to be this way. All we had to do--and I am going to offer
this consent later, but I want everybody to understand what this
consent means. I am going to ask unanimous consent that the cloture
vote upon reconsideration with respect to Executive Calendar No. S.
Res. 377 be at a time to be determined by the majority leader, in
consultation with the Democratic leader, no earlier than Monday; and
that if cloture is invoked upon reconsideration, the postcloture time
be deemed expired.
What does that mean? It means that you would have kept your
optionality to go nuclear on Monday and not have lost a thing. The
leader would have been able to go nuclear on Monday if negotiations
never went anywhere, if they went sideways, if they tanked, and no time
would have been lost.
So the imperative to kind of get this done on a certain timeframe, we
tried to respect and said: Fine. We will just deem the 30 hours
expired. We will accommodate your imperative to get this done if you
needed to get it done by the end of next week. We said: Sure, keep
negotiations open. And we ran a hotline on that, and it cleared our
hotline.
We had some very difficult conversations with Members who hate this
idea. But just to keep the aperture open to renegotiate and to preserve
the majority's prerogative to move forward with some pace, we
accommodated that.
I thought, Great. We are trending well. We are going to wake up in
the morning; we are going to get on some conference calls; and we are
going to see whether there is a pathway.
I don't know whether there would have been a pathway, but I know
today that the majority party in the U.S. Senate decided to foreclose
the possibility of bipartisanship, and that is a real disappointment to
me.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I missed the conversation on the floor--
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator needs consent to speak.
Mr. MERKLEY. I ask unanimous consent to speak--for 3 minutes for
each.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you, and thank you to my colleague from Oklahoma.
The issue we are addressing needs to be addressed. The nomination
process is entirely broken. People are sick and tired of bringing their
expertise to the Senate and basically being an automaton in a
nomination factory. So that is why there is great sympathy for us
working together to resolve this.
I put forward a somewhat different version of the world from my
colleague from Oklahoma and said: Let's do a block of time where
multiple people can be debated simultaneously. That alone speeds things
up by six to eight times because it is not 2 hours or 120 minutes per
nominee. Let's create a motion where we go directly to that block of
time, and because of the block of time, you don't have to have cloture
on it in order to vote. Let's speed up how we hold those votes.
I felt we could get to wiping out the backlog through some of the
agreements that were done before August and by accelerated
consideration and preserve the ability to vote on each nominee.
I had concerns about the en bloc because I think we have a
constitutional responsibility, if there is a bad apple, to weigh in on
that and be accountable to our constituents on whether we favor or
disfavor that individual. So I proposed an amendment.
I do appreciate my colleague working to arrange to have a vote on
that amendment that said 10 Members in the minority, or minority-
majority, could sign a petition to have someone pulled out of a group
of 15 if they felt that person merited more scrutiny or presented
particular problems.
I heard about kind of the distrust that that might be used to
dismantle an entire block of 15, so I am open to modifications of that
that could address that. But I was one of the people who said, as
written initially, I couldn't vote for unanimous consent to just adopt
it. But to consider it on this floor--yes, I can vote for it to be
considered on this floor because that is what we should be doing. We
should be bringing rules ideas to this floor to be wrestled with in
order to make this Chamber work better.
And so I appreciate that the plan wasn't to just try to get UC on the
proposal but to get UC to consider it. Why shouldn't we all agree to
that? So I am not sure where the reservation is, the holdout. I have
heard that there are folks who like the idea of a supernova nuclear
option and therefore want to blow up normal consideration of a standing
order, of a new proposal standing order.
But I just--I guess, having missed the presentation, if I missed it,
from the majority leader, I would say maybe we should take an hour and
try to resolve that or adopt what my colleague has said, to iron out
the details over the weekend--because it is a big deal. It is a big
deal to go nuclear. It is a big deal to adopt a new idea that hadn't
been widely circulated until the last few days.
So I cast my heart and my vote with the idea of let's try to figure
this out.
I thank the President.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.

Unanimous Consent Request--S. Res. 384

Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, I want to bring a unanimous consent
request, but I would say I represent--every single Republican is in
agreement to this. Every single Republican was ready today to be able
to move on what was an agreed-upon bipartisan agreement--not by all;
understanding that. But, again, we have a supermajority of Members of
this body that are being blocked by a small group of the minority party
saying they don't want to allow consent to vote on it--just to vote on
it. So we are stuck.
So, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the
Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the Lankford
resolution, S. Res. 384, which is at the desk. I further ask that there
be up to 30 minutes of debate on the resolution, equally divided
between the two leaders or their designees; further, that following the
use or yielding back of that time, the Senate vote on an amendment from
Senator Merkley, if offered, and following disposition of the Merkley
amendment, the Senate vote on the resolution, as amended, if amended,
with no further intervening action or debate, with 60 affirmative votes
required for adoption of the resolution.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Husted). Is there an objection?
The Senator from Hawaii.
Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, reserving the right to object--and I won't
belabor the point except to say, if you have 60, 65, 70 votes for
something, just

[[Page S6567]]

file cloture. Right? That is what you do. If you have got the votes,
you just sort of move through the process of taking the vote.
What they are asking for is unanimity, and we don't have it. And so
if you are interested in enacting this on a bipartisan basis, there is
a process for doing that. It is available to you. But, again, it is
more a matter of running out of patience than running out of time. We
are leaving probably this evening, and then we have Friday, Saturday,
Sunday off--not off. I understand people work weekends. Whatever. But
not here, let's say. And then our first vote will be 5:30 on Monday.
There is time. There is just no desire to go through the process.
Right?
So it is true--I am not actually sure that you would have 60 votes
for that, but there is a way to test it, and that is to file cloture on
a new standing order or a new resolution or whatever the procedural
pathway is.
What Senator Lankford is asking us to do is to have unanimity for a
rules change to have the Senate not vote on individual nominations.
Right? That is 15 at a time, and you have to go yes on all of them or
no on all of them. And I don't love that idea, but I was willing to
entertain it as a sort of matter of principle to try to sort of
stabilize this body. But they have run out of patience, not run out of
time. So, therefore, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
The Senator from Hawaii.

Unanimous Consent Request--S. Res. 377

Mr. SCHATZ. Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the cloture
vote, upon reconsideration, with respect to Executive Calendar No. 1,
S. Res. 377, be at a time to be determined by the majority leader in
consultation with the Democratic leader, no earlier than Monday,
September 15; further, that if cloture is invoked upon reconsideration,
the postcloture time be expired; finally, that it be in order for the
majority leader to make a point of order prior to the cloture vote upon
reconsideration of Executive Calendar No. 1, S. Res. 377.
This would buy us the time we need and not cost the leader anything.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, reserving the right to object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I would just say to my colleagues on the
Democratic side: How much time is enough? How much time is enough?
The proposal that we are voting on, or want to vote on, and just
asked consent to get on has been around for 2 years--introduced by
Democrats. They had a hearing in the Rules Committee. It has been
around for 2 years. In fact, what we are supposed to vote on today is
less expansive than the bill that was discussed in the Rules Committee,
the Democrat Rules Committee--a proposal made by Democrats. We don't
include judges in this. Your proposal did.

We are asking you to vote on a Democrat proposal, and you are saying:
No, we won't even vote on it; we won't even get on it.
Give me a break. Two years is not long enough? How about 8 months--8
months of this? Eight months of this. Look at that chart. Zero. Every
President going back to 41, George H.W. Bush, has had a majority--a
supermajority--of their nominees approved here in the Senate by
unanimous consent or voice vote. Look at that: 98 percent--98 percent
for Bill Clinton, 90 percent for George W. Bush, 90 percent for
President Obama, 65 percent for Trump 1, 57 percent for Biden. Not
trending in the right direction, which argues for everything that is
being said here today about we need to fix a broken process. But that--
that is an embarrassment. Zero.
Show the other chart. We have a second chart here. This is what we
are talking about. We have to fix this, guys, and we have had plenty of
time to do it. Eight months. Eight months. This is what we left on
before the August break was this issue. So now we are 6 weeks into it.
We have had all week. I have been saying all week: We are going to vote
on this on Thursday one way or the other; we are going to change this
process in a way that gets us back to what every President prior has
had when it comes to the way that these nominees are treated here in
the U.S. Senate--by both sides, Republicans and Democrats; both
Presidents, Republicans and Democrats. This is the way it has been
handled. Look at that. Zero. President Biden had 530 of his nominees
confirmed by voice vote or unanimous consent.
This, ladies and gentlemen, has to be fixed. We offered you a
proposal that had your fingerprints on it. It wasn't even your
fingerprints; you initiated it. And all we are saying is: Give us a
chance to vote on it. And even some of your own Members--the Senator
from Oregon said: I want an amendment. We said: Fine, you can have an
amendment vote.
But we need to vote. We need to fix this. And, yeah, we could drag it
out over the weekend, and you could start adding more conditions and
more ideas. The good idea fairy will start to circulate around here and
we will have a whole bunch more conversations and it will drag on and
nothing will get done.
It is time to move. It is time to quit stalling. It is time to vote.
It is time to fix this place. And the ideal way to fix it would be in a
bipartisan way: Democrats and Republicans coming together behind a
proposal that makes all the sense in the world and that both sides
agree, frankly, is the right solution to do this.
We looked at them all. We looked at all the options. We had some very
good people who spent the month of August examining how to fix this
process in a way that would get us to an outcome that preserved the
institutional prerogatives of the Senate, that preserves advice and
consent of the Constitution, but gets away from that embarrassing
statistic and the fact that we are spending all our time.
Do you guys like the fact that we are a personnel department, that
the Senate spends two-thirds of its time on nominees? We have cast over
500 votes this year in the Senate, more than any Senate in history at
this point in the term of the Senate.
To finish just the nominees in the pipeline today between now and the
end of the year, we would have to cast another 600 votes--not to
mention all the intervening time periods and filing cloture and
everything else. That is what this means: another 600 votes. We have
cast over 500 in the first 7 months of this session. We have to cast
more than that in the last 3\1/2\ months just to get the pipeline
cleared, which doesn't mean all the additional noms that are coming
through--or judges.
This is a broken process, folks. That is an embarrassment. That is
what you gave us.
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, would my colleague yield for a question?
Mr. THUNE. No, I won't yield.
We are going to fix this. We are going to start to fix it today, I
hope. And I would hope that when we have people in good faith put
forward an offer, that you would, at least, let us get on that good
offer--a solution, a solution that is bipartisan, initiated by
Democrats 2 years ago, which has been talked about ad infinitum, ad
nauseam, just this week alone--not to mention in the 6 weeks going back
to the end of the July work period.
So, Mr. President, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
Mr. THUNE. I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.

Vote on Motion

The question is on agreeing to the motion to reconsider.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. BARRASSO. The following Senator is necessarily absent: the
Senator from Oklahoma (Mr. Mullin).
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr.
Fetterman) and the Senator from New Hampshire (Ms. Hassan) are
necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 52, nays 45, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 514 Ex.]

YEAS--52

Banks
Barrasso
Blackburn
Boozman
Britt
Budd
Capito
Cassidy
Collins
Cornyn
Cotton
Cramer
Crapo
Cruz
Curtis
Daines
Ernst
Fischer
Graham
Grassley
Hagerty

[[Page S6568]]

Hawley
Hoeven
Husted
Hyde-Smith
Johnson
Justice
Kennedy
Lankford
Lee
Lummis
Marshall
McConnell
McCormick
Moody
Moran
Moreno
Murkowski
Paul
Ricketts
Risch
Rounds
Schmitt
Scott (FL)
Scott (SC)
Sheehy
Sullivan
Thune
Tillis
Tuberville
Wicker
Young

NAYS--45

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

NOT VOTING--3

Fetterman
Hassan
Mullin
The motion was agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

Point of Order

Mr. THUNE. Mr. President, I make a point of order that, consistent
with the precedent of the Senate established November 21, 2013, the
threshold for cloture on an executive resolution for the en bloc
consideration of nominations with a calendar number on the Executive
Calendar, other than those on level 1 of the executive schedule under 5
U.S.C. 5312 or article III judges, is a simple majority.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The precedent set on November 21, 2013,
applied only to the consideration of the nomination, not to multiple
nominations and not to executive resolutions of any kind. The point of
order is not well taken.

Appealing the Ruling of the Chair

Mr. THUNE. I appeal the ruling of the chair and ask for the yeas and
nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
And the question is, Shall the decision of the Chair stand as the
judgment of the Senate?
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr.
Fetterman) and the Senator from New Hampshire (Ms. Hassan) are
necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 45, nays 53, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 515 Ex.]

YEAS--45

NAYS--53

NOT VOTING--2

Fetterman
Hassan
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The yeas are 45, the nays are 53.
The decision of the Chair is not sustained.

Vote on Cloture Motion Upon Reconsideration

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question now occurs on the motion to
invoke cloture on Executive Calendar No. 1, S. Res. 377, upon
reconsideration.
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. DURBIN. I announce that the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr.
Fetterman), the Senator from New Hampshire (Ms. Hassan), the Senator
from Arizona (Mr. Kelly), and the Senator from Michigan (Mr. Peters),
are necessarily absent.
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 53, nays 43, as follows:

[Rollcall Vote No. 516 Ex.]

YEAS--53

NAYS--43

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

NOT VOTING--4

Fetterman
Hassan
Kelly

Peters

The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote the yeas are 53. The nays are 43.
Pursuant to the precedent of September 11, 2025, the motion is agreed
to.
The motion was agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic leader.

Rules Change

Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, I just want everyone here and in the
country to understand what our Republican colleagues just did.
For the third time this year, Republicans just resorted to the so-
called nuclear option in the Senate, weakening the Senate even further
and turning this Chamber into a conveyor belt for unqualified Trump
nominees--a conveyor belt for unqualified Trump nominees.
Make no mistake. This move by Republicans was not so much about
ending obstruction, as they claim; rather, it was another act of
genuflection to the executive branch.
Democrats have shown very clearly we are willing to negotiate. We did
that at the end of the last work period. We were doing it today. But
what Republicans have done is chip away at the Senate even more to give
Donald Trump more power and to rubberstamp whomever he wants, whenever
he wants them, no questions asked. That is not the Senate's job.
We are supposed to debate and take votes on nominees, especially when
the executive branch is grossly breaking norms by sending us woefully
unqualified, unscrupulous, and, in some cases, deeply dishonest
individuals for powerful and important positions.
By going nuclear today, Republicans are saying: We don't want to do
our jobs. They are saying: Whatever Trump wants, we will do it.
Make no mistake. Because of the harmful step Republicans took today,
the historically bad nominees Donald Trump has sent to the Senate all
year long will get even worse.
Republicans now own even more than they had before: the terrible
nominees who are about to sail through this Chamber, the special
interests will get even richer, and the American people will be the
ones who are hurt the most.
This is a sad, regrettable day for the Senate, and I believe it won't
take very long for Republicans to wish they had not pushed the Chamber
further down this awful road.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Georgia.

24th Anniversary of the September 11, 2001, Attacks

Mr. WARNOCK. Mr. President, today is a solemn day in the memory of
our Nation. May we pause at the beginning of my remarks to remember
those who passed into the light on September 11.

[[Page S6569]]

(Moment of silence.)
Amen.

Political Violence

Mr. President, I rise tonight in deep sadness for a nation that is
increasingly beset by political violence.
Yesterday, political activist Charlie Kirk was killed while speaking
to students on a college campus--a place that is set up for the
exchange of ideas.
He was just 31 years old, a husband, a father of young children. I
pray for his wife Erika and for his children who must now make their
way without him.
And his death comes on the heels of the devastating assassination of
Speaker Emerita Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman of
Minnesota, victims of premeditated political violence. This should
shock the conscience of every American, and it should cause all of us
to rise up and say: Enough.
Let me be clear. I disagreed with Charlie Kirk on just about
everything, but I rise tonight not in spite of those differences but,
in a real sense, because of those differences. I rise to say that he
had a right to speak, to think, to change his mind or not, to engage
with others, to participate in the free exchange of ideas, to argue it
out.
That is what it means to live in a democracy. That is who we are. We
Americans engage in loud, heated, and sometimes rambunctious debates,
not as a precursor to violence but to avoid violence. And we must learn
to disagree without becoming violently disagreeable.
Let me be clear. There is nothing more anti-democratic than political
violence. Democracy is about creating space for competing voices and
countervailing visions about who we are as one people, and that debate
in the public square is what has made us better over time.

So while pushing back--sometimes hard--against those with whom we
vigorously disagree, we must, with the same voice and vigor, defend
their right to be--their right to be heard, to be free.
Our American family is held together by these democratic ideals, but
I am afraid that what we are seeing increasingly around us is the
tearing of those threads that bind us together--``e pluribus unum'';
out of many, one--the ability to see past our political differences and
see in the humanity of the other a glimpse of our own.
So we must condemn what happened to Charlie Kirk, whether we are on
the right or on the left, because condemning that heinous crime is not
about the difference between right and left; it is the difference
between right and wrong. And what happened yesterday was wrong.
Whatever the motivation, this we know: It was wrong. And we have to say
that clearly and without hesitation.
I serve as pastor of the Ebenezer Baptist Church, the spiritual home
of Martin Luther King, Jr. We all know that Dr. King was a victim of
gun violence. What fewer people remember or know is that in 1974, his
precious mother Alberta Williams King, the wife of the pastor of the
church, Martin Luther King, Sr., was shot and killed in our church one
Sunday morning while playing ``The Lord's Prayer'' on the organ.
Martin Luther King, Sr., was asked what he thought about all of this,
and I am struck and inspired by his words. Having lost his precious
wife on a Sunday morning, having witnessed his son struck down, Martin
Luther King, Sr., said:

I will never let any man pull me down so low as to hate
him.

He said:

Hate is too heavy a burden to bear.

He is right, and that is why in this moment, we must condemn
political violence. But we must also condemn hate and hate speech. You
cannot condemn one without condemning the other.
Hate is itself a kind of violence that kills the spirit and corrupts
the soul of a person and of a nation. That vicious cycle of violence
and hate, of hate and violence can only lead to the demise of our
country and the destruction of our humanity.
So in this defining moment, may we resist the seductive sirens of
those who are trying to convince us that we are at war with one
another. Amidst our fierce debates, I submit that at the end of the
day, we are all we have got--we the people. All we really have is one
another. And a democracy is the imperfect institutionalization of that
moral insight. All we have is one another. You either have a democracy,
or you have political violence. You cannot have a democracy awash in
political violence.
So every single day, let us choose democracy, choose what the Apostle
Paul called the more excellent way--the way of love.
Love comes alive in the complicated story of a diverse people who
refuse to give up on one another. It takes strength to love. It takes
courage to love. It takes patience and persistence to love.
God grant us strength and courage. God grant us patience and
persistence for the facing of this hour and for the living of these
days.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arkansas.

____________________