Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title 5, United States Code, of the Rule Submitted by the Federal Communications Commission Relating to "Addressing the Homework Gap...
Mr. President, it has been well over a decade since the term ``cryptocurrency'' entered our lexicon. Like many innovations, cryptocurrencies were at first seen as a novelty--something used by few and understood by even fewer.
But that changed quickly. More people began using and purchasing digital assets, innovation took place, and crypto demonstrated its staying power.
Stablecoins are an important part of the crypto ecosystem. Many digital asset advocates believe in holding Bitcoin, given its price fluctuations and growth in value over the last several years.
Stablecoins, however, have a value that is pegged to an asset, usually the U.S. dollar. They offer the speed and security of the blockchain with the stability and usability of a dollar bill, and they are a business and consumer friendly way of making payments.
Hundreds of billions of dollars of stablecoins are in circulation today. The vast majority are dollar denominated. But in the United States, stablecoins have operated in a legal gray zone. Stablecoin issuers trying to follow the rules can't be sure what rules to follow.
The Biden administration chose to regulate crypto companies by arbitrary enforcement measures. Regulators filed numerous lawsuits against crypto firms. These hostile actions led a number of U.S.-based companies to consider moving out of the United States altogether.
I think we all agree the United States should be the world's leader in financial innovation. Stablecoins should be ``Made in the U.S.A.'' But we can't lead in innovation if there is no clarity for the innovators.
The GENIUS Act provides that clarity. It is the first step in bringing digital assets into our financial system by setting a clear framework for stablecoins. To be clear, Americans are already using stablecoins and will continue to use them with or without this legislation. What this bill does is establish a framework that protects consumers and safeguards national security while promoting that innovation right here in the United States.
The GENIUS Act would implement light-touch and tailored standards for stablecoin issuers so consumers can trust whom they are doing business with. Reserve requirements would give consumers confidence in the value of the stablecoins that they hold, and the bill's enforcement provisions would provide companies with clarity on what the rules are and ensure accountability for any violations.
The GENIUS Act would also protect against national security threats and money laundering. Stablecoin issuers would be held to the same standards as other financial institutions subject to the Bank Secrecy Act. They would need to monitor and report suspicious activity. They would have to comply with U.S. sanctions, and they would have to block transactions that violate State and Federal laws.
Stablecoins are operating today without any of these requirements, and not passing this bill means allowing the status quo to continue--no consumer protections, no national security safeguards, and the risk of arbitrary enforcement actions from financial regulators.
Passing this bill is also about American strength. It would create demand for the U.S. dollar and for Treasurys. That is a good thing both for our national security and for our fiscal house.
This bill is the product of bipartisan consensus building. I am proud of the process that this has gone through, and I am grateful to Senators Lummis, Hagerty, Gillibrand, and Alsobrooks for their leadership on this issue and their work on the bill. Chairman Tim Scott has also been a critical member of the team.
The Banking Committee held a 3-hour markup during which the committee considered 40 amendments to the bill. That bill was reported out by a vote of 18 to 6, with 5 Democrats supporting it.
But the work didn't end there. Bill sponsors have been meeting for weeks--including nights and weekends--since the markup to address changes that made this bill better.
Today, we are voting on the sixth--sixth--version of the GENIUS Act, drafted with input from both Republicans and Democrats. And if Senators would like the opportunity to make further modifications to the bill, I encourage them to vote for cloture. Once we are on the bill, we can discuss changes here on the floor. We have had an open process on this bill so far. So why stop now?
The GENIUS Act is by no means the last word on digital assets. I expect the Senate will continue to work in this space, including work toward market structure legislation to address features of the crypto market that are not captured solely by stablecoins.
But the GENIUS Act is a first step toward bringing digital assets into our financial system and promoting American leadership and financial innovation. We have the opportunity to move the ball forward today. I encourage my colleagues to take it.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Democratic leader is recognized.
Mr. President, Donald Trump's trade war is a gut punch to the American people. It is the biggest tax hike on families in half a century.
If Donald Trump is going to tax the American people, they have a right to know precisely how much. So, today, I am introducing legislation with Representative Raskin requiring retailers to show consumers precisely how much tariffs are increasing the prices of their products. It is no different than when your utility bill shows fees or a receipt shows if a service charge is included or not.
Specifically, the legislation that Representative Raskin has introduced in the House and I am introducing in the Senate requires large retailers to display in a ``clear and conspicuous'' way the amount that tariffs contribute to a good's final pricetag.
Our bill is about transparency. It is about being straight with consumers. It is about informing the consumers how Donald Trump's tariffs will impact the family budget. And retailers should like it because these increases in prices are not their fault; it is Trump's fault, with his tariffs.
So let the public know. And that is a secondary benefit that will make the public even more angry, and they may call their Republican Senators and Congressmen and say join with Democrats and pass some of our legislation that would repeal some of these tariffs.
The White House growls that companies with the audacity, they said-- audacity--to be honest with consumers about the cost of tariffs are being hostile and political. But this is not hostile or political at all; it is simply being honest with consumers. It is clarity. It is transparency.
It is a smart policy, so of course the White House opposes it because they don't want people to know how much these tariffs are damaging them. It is estimated that if the present tariffs go into effect, the average family will pay $4,000 more. Well, we want to let them know how much the price is increased for food, for housing, for gasoline, for groceries, for prescription drugs.
Last week, for instance, Ford announced they are increasing the price of at least three models by as much as $2,000, in part because of Trump's tariffs. Under our bill, that $2,000 price hike should be spelled out to consumers as in reality what it is--a tariff tax.
Americans deserve to know who is picking their pockets. Our bill will make clear to the American people that Donald Trump's tariffs are a painful tax eating away at their hard-earned money. It will make clear to the American people that Donald Trump's promise to ``lower costs starting on day one'' is a mirage, a fiction--a cruel fiction--all for a chaotic tariff policy that is sending our economy into a tailspin.
On those tariffs themselves, today, Donald Trump is set to announce a new supposed trade deal between the United States and the UK, the United Kingdom. We are still waiting to get the details, but this much is clear: Whatever Donald Trump's announcement with the UK looks like, it isn't a triumph of strategy; rather, it is a product of chaos. And with this President, if past is prologue, who knows if this deal will actually stick.
This is the Trump administration's credo: government by chaos. Just look at how Donald Trump is dealing with Canada, and it tells you everything you need to know about how untrustworthy his UK announcement is. First, Donald Trump says yes on tariffs with Canada; then he says no. Then he insults Canada, calls it the ``51st State.'' Moments later, he meets with Prime Minister Carney and says ``Canada loves us and we love Canada.''
No one knows what Donald Trump will say next. If this were a roller coaster, the whiplash would paralyze everybody involved. So American businesses and American consumers have no faith that the President has a design. Whatever is in front of his face that day, whatever pressure there might be on him, he reacts. And it doesn't matter if he said the complete opposite thing a day or a week earlier.
Early this morning, members of the President's own Cabinet are already lowering expectations of the deal, saying it is only ``an agreement in concept''; ``there's a lot of details to be worked out.'' And we know what happens when that happens, particularly in a Trump administration.
Donald Trump's new trade deal with the UK seems to be built entirely on quicksand. It is likely to be built on quicksand. He blows with the political winds. When people say he is too reckless, he backs off. When there is criticism of him backing off, he reintroduces the bill. So it would be hard to take anything the President says about this deal seriously because, in all likelihood, he will change his mind again.
Mr. President, on anti-Semitism, this morning, the Anti-Defamation League issued a new report illustrating a disturbing trend I have been warning about: the rise of anti-Semitism in America. Specifically, this report looked at anti-Semitism toward Jewish Members of Congress, which has dramatically risen--something I can attest to firsthand.
Social media has become a breeding ground for anti-Semitism. But it is not just elected officials. Social media has become an easy way for hate groups to organize and proliferate their message against all sorts of communities and individuals. They go after Jewish-owned businesses. They go after synagogues. They go after families. They direct anti- Semitic slurs even against individuals who might not be Jewish.
We must not allow anti-Semitism to grow unabated in America like wild weeds. As the great poet Conor Cruise O'Brien said, anti-Semitism is a light sleeper. When there is trouble, somehow anti-Semitism always pops its head up--the Jewish people being made scapegoats, as we have been for centuries. It must be confronted at every instance. It must be rooted out.
We all play a part in fighting back against the forces of intolerance. People of all backgrounds, faiths, beliefs, and opinions have a duty to stand up and speak out against hate, no matter where it comes from.
Mr. President, now, on the Trump budget, if you asked AI to come up with a Federal budget that utterly screws over average Americans, do you know what the AI would come up with? Donald Trump's latest budget proposal. So, today, let's look at Trump's so-called skinny budget a little more closely. It is hard to believe that this is a serious proposal.
If enacted, the Trump budget would completely gut public safety, something they say they want to strengthen. Trump's own FBI Director, Kash Patel, one of the most loyal Trumpites, testified in the House yesterday that the FBI can't meet its mission to keep Americans safe with the cuts in Trump's budget.
If Kash Patel, one of Donald Trump's most loyal acolytes, says this budget won't work, who else is going to come out against it? How can we take this budget seriously? If Patel is against it, so will be many other Cabinet officers, publicly or privately. How carefully was it even done? Did the people who put it out know they are slashing the FBI? The budget has sloppy and reckless written all over it, and even Kash Patel agrees.
That is not all. The Trump budget would also strangle American families. It is an all-out assault on American healthcare. Under Donald Trump's budget, America's housing crisis would go from bad to worse.
Hell will freeze over before Democrats entertain anything remotely close to Trump's budget. This budget proposal is dead on arrival in the Senate, and anything close to it will go nowhere as well.
Mr. President, on Medicaid and the CBO, the Republicans right now are struggling with a very basic idea that the truth sometimes hurts. In their case, the truth is that Republican policies are so deeply unpopular with the American people. Republicans are realizing that, and it has left them paralyzed.
Now that Republicans actually have to produce a bill, reality is catching up with them. No more bland words. No more: Don't worry; we will protect you. The budget shows what they are actually up to.
Yesterday, the CBO reported that no matter which scheme of Medicaid cuts Republicans are likely to choose, the result will be that millions will become uninsured. Republicans can try any which way to make their bill work, but their numbers just don't add up. There is no way for Republicans to accomplish their massive tax giveaways without devastating millions of working and middle-class people.
Even if the Republicans pass a fraction of their proposed Medicaid cuts, it still means millions will lose their healthcare. And for what? So that billionaires can get another tax break that they don't need at a time of high inflation and a possible recession? That is the definition of cruelty.
This is the fundamental problem Republicans are facing right now as their infighting continues--that their policies are deeply, deeply unpopular with the American people--not just blue State Republicans but purple and red State Republicans too. Telling the American people that you want to ax their healthcare so that extremely rich people can pay less in taxes is a horrible message that virtually hardly anyone in America agrees with, but that is precisely what Republicans are trying to do. So it is no surprise they are eating their own tails trying to figure out how to proceed.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican whip.
Mr. President, this week, I had an opportunity, as part of Veterans Appreciation Week, to speak with incredible Wyoming veterans from all across our State. I thanked them for their service and also took the opportunity to listen closely to their concerns.
On Tuesday, Senator Cynthia Lummis and I hosted a telephone townhall meeting with Veterans Affairs Secretary Doug Collins. Also, Col. Tim Sheppard, who is executive director of the Wyoming Veterans Commission, joined us on the call.
The call was very productive and informative. Wyoming veterans shared their experience directly with Secretary Collins. They shared with us what works with the VA and how improvements can still be made. We heard many ideas for improvement. Suggestions ranged from changes to online scheduling to more flexibility for out-of-State appointments.
Secretary Collins took this feedback seriously. He himself is a veteran. He knows that the VA is too bureaucratic. He is committed to fixing it. So I am proud to partner with him to deliver the care that our veterans deserve.
On Wednesday, here in Washington, I met with 16 Wyoming Vietnam veterans. They came to town to visit their
This weekend in Wyoming, we will be holding ``Welcome Home'' events across the State in Afton, Riverton, Sheridan, and Wheatland. It is a welcome home many veterans from Vietnam never really received. It is sad to report but true. This weekend, we honor all of our Wyoming veterans.
Wyoming has one of the highest per-capita rates of veterans in America. The pride in those individuals runs deep.
It is an honor to represent them here in the Senate, and I am going to continue to listen to the concerns of our veterans and work to improve the care they need and continue to honor their sacrifices.
Mr. President, on another matter, in 2024, in November, on election day, voters demanded more economic freedom and less government overreach. President Trump and Republicans in Congress heard them. The State of California did not.
California wants to export its radical and impractical electric vehicle mandate to all 50 States. California's mandates are a progressive power grab. They dictate what cars and what trucks Americans can buy and can drive. These mandates aren't limited to California; they are calculated to control the policy of the entire Nation.
Congress must now act to protect the rights of the American people to drive the gas-powered vehicles they want to drive. Last week, House Republicans--with 35 House Democrats joining all of the Republicans-- voted to defend that freedom and to defeat this California mandate, and it is now up to the Senate to finish the job.
California mandates spread far and wide. They affect 133 million Americans--nearly 40 percent of the population of this country. Here is why: Twelve States copy the California mandate to ban gas-powered cars by 2036. Ten States copy the California mandate to ban gas-powered trucks by 2036. These include large-population States, like New York.
Even the junior Senator from California admits that California's liberal mandates affect the entire country, and he says he is very proud of it. The American people think differently.
The Washington Post reported last month that ``Americans are losing interest in EVs.'' That is the quote. The Washington Post: ``Americans are losing interest in EVs.'' Interest in owning an EV has dropped 8 percent since 2023.
The message is clear: Americans don't want these EVs even when the government tries to bribe them--bribe them--into buying them and using them. People want to buy the car and truck that works best for them and where they live and the life they lead.
The average price of an electric vehicle is $62,000, which is $16,000 more than comparable gas-powered vehicles. The California mandates that the Democrats are pushing would raise prices even more. It would also limit options.
This isn't progress. This is a policy that punishes working families, punishes farmers, punishes truckers, punishes the people that live in rural areas.
Worse, EV batteries rely on China. Eighty percent of EV battery components come from China. Republicans here in the Senate are fighting to end America's dependence on China. The California mandate supported by the Democrats makes that dependence even more dangerous. It risks our safety, it risks our security, and it risks our strategic independence.
The Biden administration used its final days in office to grant California permission to export its EV mandate across the country. They did this just 1 month before President Trump took office. They had already lost the election. They already knew the American people rejected what they stood for. Yet they still tried to push this onto the American people, and are trying to push it today.
This is midnight meddling. Senate Republicans are ready to use the Congressional Review Act to stop it. We will protect Americans' rights--the rights to purchase a gas-powered vehicle. That is what we are fighting for, and we have every right to do so.
California's mandates have already taken root in a dozen States. They affect 40 percent of all the new light-duty vehicle registrations and a quarter of the new heavy-duty vehicle registrations nationwide. They clearly affect the kinds of vehicles which will be manufactured and sold in America. These California mandates affect the cost and the availability of gas-powered cars and trucks all across the country, even in the States that do not adopt the mandates.
To my Democrat colleagues who will tolerate California controlling what Americans can drive: Do you think the American people really support what you are trying to shove down their throats? No, they don't.
No wonder the Democrats lost the election.
Are the Democrats willing to strip consumers and small businesses of their right to choose the vehicles that work for their needs and for their budgets? Do Democrats want to continue to protect the failures and the fallacies of the Green New Deal? Or for once, will the Democrats join Republicans who are trying to protect working families?
It is no surprise, then, that Republicans have become the party supporting and protecting the rights of working families. People have rejected the Democrats.
The Senate also needs to reject the cheerleading by these climate extremists for more regulations by unelected bureaucrats, but that is what the Democrats are here supporting. The Senate should use the Congressional Review Act to reject this Joe Biden midnight madness. By doing so, we would be protecting consumer choice, protecting affordability, and protecting congressional authority.
It is time to put Americans, Mr. President, back in the driver's seat.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Democratic whip.
Mr. President, the U.S. Department of Justice is a powerful Agency. The Attorney General heads it. Throughout the United States, there are over 90 U.S. attorneys who are the Federal prosecutors--a powerful position, a position that can make or break an individual or a corporation. Two of the most important and the most powerful are the Southern District of New York and the District of Columbia.
I come to the floor today to speak in opposition to the nomination of Ed Martin to be U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. I urge my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans: Closely examine this nominee's record.
Ed Martin's commentary and affiliations leave no doubt that he is unqualified to serve as the top Federal law enforcement individual for our Nation's Capital City. Nearly every day, new, disqualifying information surfaces.
Recently, ProPublica published a troubling report detailing Mr. Martin's conduct in multiple cases involving Eagle Forum, a conservative organization which has its roots in my home State of Illinois, formally led by well-known activist Phyllis Schlafly.
Within a year--within a year--of Mr. Martin becoming the head of the Eagle Forum, the board of directors of that organization fired him, in 2016, and they stated the reason: mismanagement and poor leadership.
A majority of the board also filed a lawsuit to bar him from any association with the organization. Instead of arguing his case in court, according to the ProPublica publication, Mr. Martin secretly orchestrated a social media campaign attacking the presiding Illinois judge.
Ironically, that judge, John Barberis from Madison County, IL-- directly across the river from St. Louis--was the only Republican judge sitting in that county at the time.
Mr. Martin went so far as to buy a laptop computer for a former colleague so that she could attack the judge on Facebook and ghostwrote posts for her.
Mr. Martin, who seeks to be the top Federal prosecutor in the District of Columbia, urged her to ``turn up the heat with others'' on the Facebook page of this judge and to ``[c]all what [the judge] did unfair and rigged over and over'' again--Mr. Martin's instruction to his colleague.
This outrageous effort to intimidate a judge is a clear violation of ethical
In the Eagle Forum lawsuit, a judge held Mr. Martin in contempt of court, citing his ``willful disregard'' of a court order that barred him from interfering with the organization.
Remember, this is the President's choice to be the head U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, and he is being held in contempt of court for willful disregard of a court order that barred him from interfering.
A jury found Mr. Martin liable for defamation of Phyllis Schlafly's daughter, Anne Schlafly Cori--a jury decision finding him liable for defamation--for, among other things--he shared a post on Facebook falsely claiming--listen to this--Mr. Martin shared a Facebook post falsely claiming that Anne Schlafly Cori should be charged with manslaughter in her mother's death.
Mr. Martin also has a disturbing history of downplaying the January 6 insurrection in the U.S. Capitol. He has made it a habit to attack the law enforcement officers who protected the Vice President, who sat before this Chamber, Members of the Senate, Members of the House, thousands of staffers, and visitors.
Those law enforcement individuals put their lives on the line for me and for all of us, but Mr. Martin doesn't see it that way.
He was at the U.S. Capitol on January 6 when he posted on social media, and I quote word for word what he said on January 6 about what was going on in this insurrection in the Capitol. Here is what he said:
In August 2023, he excused violence by January 6 rioters, saying:
Ed Martin, seeking the U.S. attorney's post for the District of Columbia, said of the January 6 rioters:
He continued:
Ed Martin, the top law enforcement officer in the District of Columbia--that is his quote.
He had the audacity to call Michael Fanone, a 20-year veteran of the Metropolitan Police Department who was nearly killed on January 6, ``a fake cop.''
``[A] fake cop.''
This disgusting and dangerous rhetoric puts at greater risk officers who already put their lives on the line every day to protect you and me and our families. This lack of respect for law enforcement is inconsistent with his goal to be the presiding U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
According to Mr. Martin, January 6 rioters who beat the cops are ``patriots''--his word; ``victims''--his word. He has also attacked prosecutors who were assigned to work on January 6 cases.
Incidentally, until he was selected for this position, he had never been a prosecutor. The top position in the U.S. Department of Justice in terms of U.S. attorneys--the District of Columbia--the man for the job never had any experience as a prosecutor.
He has also attacked the prosecutors who were assigned to work on January 6 cases. What does he call those prosecutors? ``Terrorists.'' His word. He said:
Ed Martin.
Just as alarming, Mr. Martin has close ties to Timothy Hale- Cusanelli, a January 6 rioter and Nazi sympathizer.
Look at this picture. In 2024 alone, Mr. Martin interviewed Mr. Hale- Cusanelli at least five times. In one of these interviews, Mr. Martin said:
Friends with a Nazi sympathizer. This is who the President believes should be the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
Ed Martin now claims that despite these five interviews that we know of, he was not aware of Mr. Hale-Cusanelli's anti-Semitic commentary or penchant for donning a Hitler mustache until after he had presented him personally with an award last July.
But Mr. Martin's own words demonstrate the opposite. Just weeks before this award ceremony, where Martin gives this man who dresses up as Hitler an award, Mr. Martin excused his dressing up as ``goofing around'' and claimed he is being ``smeared and slurred'' by allegations of anti-Semitism.
Documents filed in Mr. Hale-Cusanelli's criminal trial, he was a January 6 rioter, show that he has a long history of saying horrifying things. Let me give you one of Mr. Hale-Cusanelli's quotes, this man who was referred to as an ``extraordinary leader'' by Ed Martin.
Here is what he said:
Hale-Cusanelli. He also claimed that he ``would kill''--this is so disgusting. I hate to put it in the Record, but it has to be. He also claimed he ``would kill all the Jews and eat them for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and he wouldn't need to season them because the salt from their tears would make it flavorful enough.''
This is the person that Ed Martin, the would-be prosecuting attorney for the District of Columbia, called ``an extraordinary man, an extraordinary leader.''
In a letter sent to the Judiciary Committee opposing Mr. Martin's nomination, 11 separate national Jewish organizations, representing more than 1 million people, wrote that Mr. Martin's associations are ``not only dangerous--they reveal a pattern of behavior incompatible with the responsibilities of a US Attorney, a role meant to uphold justice and [to] protect all communities, including Jewish Americans, from hate and extremism.''
On top of all of this, Mr. Ed Martin has failed to disclose to the Senate an unprecedented number of required requests for information. Of approximately 2,200 writings and remarks that he was required to submit to the Senate Judiciary Committee, he omitted at least 700--over 30 percent of his known record.
This includes his failure to disclose that he made nearly 150 appearances on networks funded and directed by the Russian Government, and interviews on Infowars--do you remember the term ``Infowars''?-- hosted by a man named Alex Jones, the rightwing conspiracy monger who falsely claimed that the Sandy Hook massacre of those little kids was false.
Just yesterday, my Judiciary Committee discovered more than 300 additional items that Mr. Martin failed to provide to the committee. This is the fifth time that Mr. Martin will be required to update his disclosures to the committee. This nominee is treating the Senate's constitutional obligation to provide advice and consent on his nomination with utter contempt.
Just to put this in context, omitting over 700 items, we discovered 300 more that he failed to disclose, in the previous history of the committee--all the staff have looked closely--when it comes to omissions, Mr. Martin wins the trophy permanently. Why? Because the most in any previous case before was fewer than 10, his is over 700 failures to disclose before the committee.
Mr. Ed Martin has his own history of making his own discriminatory comments. He baselessly called his fellow panelists on CNN ``black racists,'' and he later claimed, with no evidence, Mr. Martin said, ``[I] got fired because of the crazy Black ladies on CNN that demanded I be fired because I didn't take their nonsense.''
The fact that Ed Martin feels the need to note the race and gender of the people who cross him speaks volumes about his character. And in a speech that Martin did not disclose to the Judiciary Committee, we discovered he made the following statement:
Just last year he said in an interview:
Ed Martin said--
How dare Ed Martin pass judgment on someone else's religious faith?
The serious concerns about Ed Martin's nomination have only been heightened by his conduct as an interim U.S. attorney. One of his first official acts after his appointment was to
He has also baselessly threatened to investigate numerous nonprofit organizations, educational institutions, lawmakers, and others simply because he disagrees with them politically.
The top prosecutor in the Nation's Capital should be focused on fighting violent crime and terrorism, not threatening our First Amendment rights.
Mr. Martin's record makes it clear that he does not have the temperament, the judgment, or the experience to be entrusted with the power and responsibility of being U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia.
I urge my Democratic and Republican colleagues to oppose his nomination.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. President, I rise today to seek unanimous consent to confirm Casey Mulligan, the President's nominee to be the chief counsel of the Office of Advocacy at the Small Business Administration.
I will make that motion in just a moment, but first, let me explain why I am doing this. This week is National Small Business Week, a week to recognize the achievements of our Nation's entrepreneurs.
As chair of the Small Business Committee, I have a front row seat to the successes and challenges of our small business owners, and I have the privilege of being a champion for Iowa entrepreneurs.
Our small businesses are more vulnerable to burdensome government regulations. Over the past few years, the cost of regulations for small businesses has been out of control. The previous administration created more than 1,100 final rules costing $1.8 trillion. The Biden administration's regulatory costs were 600 times higher than that of the first Trump administration and 3.7 times higher than that of the Obama administration.
I have been encouraged by President Trump's efforts to freeze and roll back regulations. SBA Administrator Loeffler and the White House are working hard to eliminate burdensome and unnecessary regulations, but to be truly effective, small businesses need a Senate-confirmed chief counsel to continue this mission.
The Office of Chief Counsel for Advocacy has been vacant, without a Senate-confirmed occupant for nearly a decade. This key role ensures small business interests are protected.
Having served as the top Republican on the Small Business Committee for years now, I truly understand the need for this position to be filled immediately, and we are fortunate that President Trump nominated a highly qualified individual for this role.
Dr. Casey Mulligan's unique mix of academic success and real-world small business experience makes him the best candidate for the job. A Harvard graduate, Dr. Mulligan received his Ph.D. in economics from the University of Chicago where he currently serves as an economics professor.
In addition to his academic role, Dr. Mulligan also owns two small consulting and economic research businesses. He has also conducted extensive research on the economic effects of regulation on small businesses.
At the SBA Office of Advocacy, Dr. Mulligan would serve as a champion for small businesses nationwide as the Agency undergoes much needed changes to policy and direction.
Advocacy's role remains true regardless of party, to ensure that a strong chief counsel stands up for the little guy and warns regulators when small firms will be harmed.
Dr. Mulligan understands Main Street and the importance of examining all costs imposed on America's entrepreneurs.
I urge my colleagues to consent to the confirmation of Dr. Mulligan as chief counsel of the Office of Advocacy at the SBA.
I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nomination, Calendar No. 59; that the Senate vote on the nomination without intervening action or debate; that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action and the Senate resume legislative session.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Reserving the right to object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. President, I would like to speak on this motion to confirm Casey Mulligan to be chief counsel of the Office of Advocacy.
In the last 3\1/2\ months, we have seen an unprecedented assault by the Trump administration on America's small businesses.
Elon Musk and DOGE have taken a chain saw to SBA. They have done away with 43 percent of its staff and an estimated 2,700 people, and I say ``estimated'' because SBA won't share who has been fired and who has been retained with the public or with the U.S. Senate. We don't know.
We requested a meeting with DOGE in February and have yet to hear back. The little we do know about what DOGE is doing at SBA is gleaned through media reports rather than through their responses to our congressional requests.
Because of this administration's utter contempt for accountability and its shameless lack of transparency, we don't know if SBA has sufficient staff on hand to carry out its day-to-day operations.
We don't know which congressionally authorized and funded programs have been illegally shut down. We don't know which SBA field offices will remain open to serve small business owners where they live and work. And yet, the Senate Republicans want us to rubberstamp their slash-and-burn tactics and confirm this SBA nominee by unanimous consent with a total disregard from the Trump administration to tell the U.S. Senate what is going on inside of the SBA.
They have the SBA inside one big ``witness protection program.'' We can't get them to tell us anything about anything.
And they want us to come out here by unanimous consent and to start to confirm appointees to the SBA to further dismantle programs that are essential to small businesses all across our country?
And let me say this: My Republicans do not see how the Trump administration is turning Main Street into ``Pain Street,'' and it is in their home States. Small businesses are being forced to absorb skyrocketing costs because of President Trump's destructive tariffs. They are terrified of losing customers, as consumer confidence levels take a historic nosedive. They are listening with shock and disbelief.
Small businessmen and women across the country have to have their bottle of Pepto Bismol right next to them every single day, not knowing what the impact is going to be of the Trump tariffs on their small businesses across the country.
And by the way, there are 34 million of those small businesses right now, and we have got a Small Business Administration that won't even talk to the U.S. Senate, much less to those small business people who are terrified right now.
They, right now, are terrified. They are shocked, as President Trump tells American consumers that they are going to pay luxury prices to shop at mom-and-pop shops in the United States.
Does anyone in this administration understand the harm they are causing to small businesses?
I can tell you at least one entity that does: the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.
Last week, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce called on the Trump administration to develop a tariff exclusion process to prevent irreparable harm to small businesses and to stop the country from falling into a recession. The U.S. Chamber is speaking on behalf of chambers of commerce all across this country--every city and town. They are speaking for them. They are saying: Protect small businesses from the Trump tariffs.
That is the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. That is what we should be debating out here on the floor right now--a bill to protect all small businesses from the Trump tariffs.
Instead, we are talking about confirming someone who absolutely should
So this is not the right time, and he is not the right person to have this job. Confirming Dr. Mulligan will only further President Trump's radical, damaging attack on small businesses and their workers.
And with that, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
Mr. President, I rise in strong opposition to today's resolution to overturn an FCC rule that provides greater flexibility to ensure that every student has the access to the internet that they need.
We have known for a long time that internet access is critical for education. Students need Wi-Fi to connect with classmates and teachers, work on group projects, do research, and even just hit the ``submit'' button on some assignments. Yet too many Americans can't access reliable internet at home. It is called the ``homework gap,'' and it is leaving thousands of kids behind.
This disparity only worsened during the pandemic, when the homework gap became a full learning gap for thousands of students. Many kids without internet at home had to sit in McDonald's parking lots so they could Zoom into class. As part of the American Rescue Plan, I worked with my colleague from Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey and former FCC Chairwoman Rosenworcel to launch the Emergency Educational Connectivity Fund, or ECF. This $7 billion program provided nearly 18 million students at over 10,000 schools and libraries with hotspots, routers, and other equipment for students and educators to connect to the internet at home. Maryland schools and libraries received over $145 million through this program to help bridge the homework gap in my State.
Even as we worked to provide support for students on an emergency basis, we worked with the FCC on modernization of the E-Rate program to ensure it meets student needs. The new FCC rule allows schools and libraries to loan out Wi-Fi hotspots to students and educators at home so we can continue to address the homework gap. But now, the Republicans want to repeal this commonsense reform and take away hotspots from low-income and rural families.
This is a backwards step at a time when access to the internet is more important than ever. And because the new rule simply allowed the use of existing E-Rate funds more flexibly, the repeal of this rule does not save a dime. A vote to repeal this rule is a vote to limit the FCC's ability to address a critical need for students and to put a stop to good work being done by schools and libraries to support learning. This was an issue before the pandemic and remains an issue today.
We all know that access to the internet is essential. We have worked on a bipartisan basis to expand broadband access, but we have a long way to go. The FCC modernized E-Rate to ensure that students are not disadvantaged by lack of access to broadband at home, whether that is because they are in a rural area with no connection or because it is unaffordable for their parents. This is a commonsense measure, and I urge my colleagues to vote against its repeal today.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. All time is expired.
The clerk will read the title of the joint resolution for the third time.
The joint resolution was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading and was read the third time.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The joint resolution having been read the third time, the question is, Shall the joint resolution pass?
I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wyoming (Ms. Lummis), the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Risch), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).
I announce that the Senator from Nevada (Ms. Cortez Masto), the Senator from Illinois (Ms. Duckworth), the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. Fetterman), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Klobuchar), the Senator from Connecticut (Mr. Murphy), the Senator from California (Mr. Padilla), the Senator from New Hampshire (Mrs. Shaheen), and the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Smith) are necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 50, nays 38, as follows:
The joint resolution (S.J. Res. 7) was passed as follows:
Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act: Motion to Proceed
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will resume consideration of the motion to proceed to S. 1582, which the clerk will report.
The bill clerk read as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oklahoma.
Mr. President, I spent last weekend along our southern border, again, as I have done many weekends, to be able to get down to the border in different areas. Last weekend, I went down to the San Diego-Tijuana border area.
In that area, there are 1.3 million people living in San Diego. That city bumps right up against our border with Tijuana. Tijuana, Mexico, has over 2 million people living in that town.
There is a 30-foot fence that actually separates the two there. That is a double-section fence. It is incredibly important to be able to manage that border, not only for the crossing of traffic illegally but also for the crossing of legal traffic. One of the largest ports and traffic movement of people and cargo in the world is right there, and it is an incredibly important location for us.
I went there to be able to see the implementation of the new authorities and the things that the President is actually implementing there that have so precipitously dropped the movement of illegal immigration and have dramatically increased the number of interdiction of drugs that are moving through that area. That literally benefits the entire country.
What I found when I visited with the folks from CBP was that morale was up and the chaos is down. I found folks who are there that are law enforcement professionals actually doing law enforcement. When I visited with some of those same folks before, during the Biden administration, they were being treated like hotel check-in staff that were being asked to actually just move people into the country as fast as possible. Now, they are actually able to do their jobs, to actually enforce the law, and to do what they signed up to do. And they are eager to be able to protect the Nation and know full well the threats that we are facing.
In that area in San Diego, we have had more of what are called special-interest aliens move through that area of our border than any other area of our entire 2,000-mile-long border with Mexico. People from Russia, China, from Central Africa, from Uzbekistan, and from multiple other places fly into Tijuana and then literally drive up to the gap in the fence and walk across, right into the United States.
At least, that is how it used to be. That is not what is happening anymore.
So I wanted to be able to talk through with this body a few of the things that I saw there and the work that is still undone.
One, that section of the gap in the fence is right there at Tijuana, on the eastern side of San Diego. That gap is still there, but something has changed. Construction is beginning to be able to close that gap, and it is incredibly important. It is one of the first places that CBP and Border Patrol took me to and pointed out to say: We need this gap closed. It is very important that we actually get this gap secured because it is in a very remote area, difficult to traverse, and it is dangerous for our Border Patrol folks to have to be able to chase someone through that area.
In fact, while I was in that area, around that gap, I literally watched one of the Lakota helicopters come in and to be able to identify someone who was literally cutting through that area and smuggling right through that zone. The good news is things are different now, and that person was caught because we have the manpower in place to be able to catch them.
And that person will be deported immediately. That is also a big change that has actually occurred.
So things are different in what is actually happening there, and I am grateful to be able to see the chaos going down and the morale and the enforcement going significantly up. That gap in the fence will be closed in the days ahead. And as one of many requests the Border Patrol has: just help us have a deterrent in this area so that we can better patrol and be able to chase folks down that are violating American law.
They need additional personnel as well. I will talk a little bit about that in a moment. They need additional resources to be able to do their tasks, and they need additional authorities to be able to make sure they can fully execute the law that is put in front of them.
Something that was interesting--the multiple times I have been to the border the last several years--often the Border Patrol would tell me they can't put checkpoints up anymore. They used to have checkpoints on the major highways as they were headed north away from the border, and they would check vehicles for people being smuggled and drugs being smuggled into the country and other contraband. They weren't able to do that because they were asked to actually go to the border to facilitate people coming in, and so they could no longer do those checkpoints.
Guess what. Those checkpoints are back up again. They are actually stopping people on the highways now to be able to check and see if there are drugs there that have found their way across the border and are moving north, and they are interdicting narcotics again there.
They are able to actually process a lot faster turning people around, to have the people at the checkpoints, and to be able to do the enforcement because the numbers are so precipitously lower than what they used to be.
What does that mean side by side? A year ago, we had some days we had 12,000 people a day illegally crossing our southern border--12,000 people a day.
Last week, most days were around 200. In fact, for the first time that I can remember in a very long time, when I checked in at the Border Patrol station and was talking with them about where things were going and how things were going and what has changed, as we walked past the area they would typically check in unaccompanied minors, that room was empty. I can't remember the last time I walked past, and there were zero unaccompanied minors that were there.
The border is being enforced. It is bringing some sanity to our southern border. It is an enormous help and change. But there are a couple areas for cartels that are obviously moneymaking organizations-- they are very focused on what they are going to do next.
Literally, right there at the port of entry, they discovered a tunnel being dug directly under the port of entry to be able to smuggle drugs and people in.
Now, our teams were able to find it, identify it, and they are going to shut it down, but the cartels continue to be able to move and to be able to find other ways. We should make no mistake, just across the border from San Diego, there are three active criminal cartels that are ruthlessly killing each other. They are ruthlessly killing anyone that would try to cross the border without paying their fee, and they are determined to bring violence to Northern Mexico and chaos to the Southern United States and push as much drugs as they possibly can into our country. We should make no mistake about that.
They are determined to be able to do that, and we should do whatever we can to be able to stop that violence and that chaos.
The other thing that came up over and over again was now that the southern border--the land border--is being shut down, the cartels are not only drilling tunnels now, but they are also putting folks on jet skis and in Panga boats, taking them out into the Pacific and trying to be able to come around the maritime barrier and be able to drop off somewhere around the California coast.
Just this week, we had a smuggler that was smuggling folks in a Panga boat just on that exact route that capsized in the Pacific, and multiple people died. Our Coast Guard went and responded and rescued multiple people as well. Those folks will be processed, and they will be returned right back to Mexico again.
But that is the kind of danger these folks face to be able to come across. The cartels don't care about the people that they are moving. They just care about the dollars. They don't care about America. They just care about pushing drugs on us so that they can make more and more money.
I had the opportunity to be able to do a ride-along with some of the Coast Guard and be able to see firsthand some of the things that they are doing. They need additional resources. This body should pay more attention to the Coast Guard. They are not only important for our national security or foreign threats coming at us but for our port security and rescues that are off coast, but they are also being pushed really hard right now by the cartels trying to be able to smuggle drugs and people into the United States. The Coast Guard needs this body to be able to stand alongside of them so they can do their job.
They are remarkable people that are literally out there every single day, working to be able to help our country, and I was exceptionally grateful to get time with them to be able to see what their day looks like, how things are going, and the important work that they are doing.
As the Border Patrol is seeing fewer coming across the land border, the Coast Guard is seeing more. So we have got to pay attention to all areas of our border.
I did note a couple things that I have read. That was interesting for me to actually go down and to be able to see because I have seen all these media reports, all these different pieces of fake news that are coming up or all these different challenges about what the Trump administration is doing at our border.
I could highlight a bunch of them, but let me highlight a couple of them that came up. I have heard over and over again that the Trump administration is not honoring due process. They are not honoring due process. They are ignoring the Constitution to be able to do that.
Interestingly enough, just last week, President Trump's DHS released an extensive release that they called 100 days of fighting fake news.
One of the items that they listed as the fake news that they are fighting is that aliens don't go through a process. Their statement: They do, according to the Constitution.
Secretary Rubio also made that same statement on ``Meet the Press'' as well, saying everybody goes through due process--everyone has a process.
Illegal aliens do not have rights like American citizens. No one is denying that. That is a fact. But there is a process they are being taken through. The law is being followed. I watched it personally.
When people come across our border illegally, here is what is actually happening along our border. They are arrested. They are being instructed by law enforcement that they violated American law, that they are not legally present, and they are being immediately turned around and sent back to their country. That is the legal process.
For individuals that were coming in from China--and I saw several that were actually being processed through that--they are being detained. Then they are being put on the next plane out.
Special interest aliens aren't being released into the country anymore like they were under the Biden administration by the thousands. They are now being sent back to their countries, as they exactly should be, following the exact legal process that should be done.
And I saw for the first time in a very long time a legal process being done that if you cross our southern border and you have been deported before--which is why we don't just grab them at the border and turn them around. We actually get fingerprints, get information from people in the processing. If you are coming a second or a third time, I watched the prosecution by U.S. attorneys actually prosecuting individuals there through that process, getting them a felony and then putting them on a bus back to Mexico again.
They are following the law. They are going through exactly what the process is doing. They are doing the legal process.
I also heard over and over again this fake news about our military going down and our military taking over our border. I actually got a chance to be able to meet some of our military down there. They are doing pretty remarkable work along our border.
We have got engineering groups that are there that are helping beef up that border wall, finding areas where folks are finding ways to be able to scale a 30-foot wall, finding ways to be able to strengthen that wall to make sure that never happens again.
That is some of our military engineering groups doing that.
I watched that Lakota helicopter that I mentioned before. That Lakota helicopter is actually a military helicopter. Their job is not to arrest. That is Federal law enforcement on the ground who is doing it, but they are able to be an extra set of eyes in the air to be able to identify folks that are getting around those gaps in the wall, smuggling in people and smuggling in drugs so our Border Patrol can focus in on those areas.
I watched members of our military sitting at a workstation with the Coast Guard at the port area, helping monitor the different cameras that are in our port area, looking for those jet skis and those Panga boats that are smuggling in people and drugs.
They are doing a great job. I am grateful those folks are there. But this body needs to have a further conversation about how do we move more Coast Guard folks there so that they can take on that job, allowing our military to go back to doing their first job. How we can actually reinforce some of the resources that are needed so that our military can do their first task, and our DHS folks can do their first task?
So, yes, it is more fake news that our military is there actually being law enforcement. They are not being law enforcement, but they are helping our law enforcement to make our law enforcement even more effective.
I am grateful to be able see the numbers drop so much, allowing our law enforcement to go back.
If I can just make this one last statement: I won't ever forget standing at that port, which is incredibly busy--lots of trucks coming through, lots of Customs screenings and everything, all the things that are happening--and I asked the Customs folks there: What has changed?
They said: We are able to catch a lot more drugs now than we were able to catch because we have got more time to focus in on catching those drugs.
This is going to make a huge difference in America for us to be able to focus on illegal activity coming across our border. When those numbers drop, we are able to go more after what is the worst of the worst coming into our country.
I am grateful to see the work that is happening on our southern border. We all should go see it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Mr. President, colleagues, when Donald Trump returned to the White House a few months ago, there were a whole lot of people throughout California and beyond that knew that California had a target on its back.
For more than half a century, we have been trailblazers in a number of policy areas but especially in the fight for environmental protections and public health protections.
And for the last decade, we have been proud to--shouldn't have to-- but proud to stand up to each and every one of Donald Trump's attacks on our clean air and clean water, not just through his rhetoric but through his actions.
So while the particular procedural battle that we find ourselves in today over the Clean Air Act waivers may be new, the larger war on California's climate leadership and progress is not new.
Thanks to the Clean Air Act, for 50 years, California has had the legal authority to set its own emissions standards to protect the health of our residents and our natural resources. This authority was granted by Congress on a bipartisan basis in recognition of California's unique air quality challenges but also its capabilities as policy leaders.
But today, Republicans are threatening to distort the Congressional Review Act and the CRA process in an effort to slow down our progress.
Now, one of the most outlandish things I have heard from my Republican colleagues these past few weeks--as it pertains to these Clean Air Act waivers--is that they are concerned that these waivers and other regulations would stifle the California economy, that ``the market is not ready,'' or I have heard some say that they are concerned this could raise prices on consumers.
Really? These are the same Republican Members who have stayed silent on Donald Trump's imposed universal tariffs that are actually already increasing prices. So now you are worried about increased costs for American families. Where have you been these last several weeks?
But I have some good news for you: In case you haven't heard, California has proven this argument wrong already. In recent years, you have heard me reference, time and again, that California was the fifth largest economy in the world.
Well, as of a couple weeks ago, California is now the fourth largest economy in the world. Imagine that. Policy leadership, climate leadership, and economic growth, they don't have to be mutually exclusive. We can and must focus on doing both.
Now, California didn't get there by just holding on to technologies of the past. We did so by innovation and investments in clean technologies. So we are proving that you can be for clean air and for business and economic growth.
But I want to be clear in this discussion that it is not just why Republicans are trying to undermine California's climate leadership, it is worth emphasizing the concerns of how they are going about it.
This session, Colleagues, I have the honor of serving as the ranking member of the Rules Committee. I want to make sure that everyone understands what this proposal, this proposed abuse of the CRA process, would actually do here, because, you see, the Clean Air Act was passed under regular order.
So if Republicans want to amend the Clean Air Act to address California's legal authority, bring it up for a vote. But Republicans aren't bringing it up for a vote because they don't have the votes to do so under regular order.
So, instead, they have to try to figure out a back door to avoid the legislative filibuster. They want to kill California's Clean Air Act authority with a lower 51-vote threshold. In plain English, they are trying to change the rules of the Senate in order to please Donald Trump and the Big Oil lobby.
So let me share another bit of news for you in case you have not heard it: The Senate Parliamentarian has already decided that this is not allowed by Senate rules. The Parliamentarian's determination--which I am happy to share with anybody who is interested and has not seen it. The Senate Parliamentarian's determination came after the independent and nonpartisan Government Accountability Office said that the EPA and Republicans were twisting the rules in their efforts to target California twice.
There was a bill introduced around the time of the GAO's findings and before the Parliamentarian's findings, a Republican bill sponsored by the now chair of the Energy and Natural Resources Committee and the Environment and Public Works Committee, the fact sheet for this bill says--and I quote:
Republican bill, Republican fact sheet, that is the purpose of the bill because they know that you can't do this through the CRA process as some are now proposing to do. And yet there are others in the Republican conference that are insisting on moving forward.
So let me remind all of us on both sides of the aisle, the Senate has never overruled the GAO or the Parliamentarian on a CRA question. So it is clear to me that this is about more than just California's climate policies and leadership. This would set a major new precedent that blows way past the bounds of the Congressional Review Act.
It is not an insignificant change to the rules. It is not an insignificant precedent that you would be setting. If successful, it would open the door to ignoring the Parliamentarian on any ruling that you don't like.
And if Republicans can ignore the Parliamentarian on the CRA, then why not the tax rule that they are working so hard on, or healthcare, or anything else?
But luckily, I am holding out some hope because I have come across some remarks by several Senate Republicans with respect to the impact on the rules.
You see, earlier this year, the majority leader said that ignoring the Senate Parliamentarian would be ``totally akin to killing the filibuster. We can't go there.''
This is on the public record.
The junior Senator from Utah said that ``a red line for'' him ``is overruling the Parliamentarian.''
The senior Senator from Maine said she would ``never vote to overturn the Parliamentarian.''
So for other Members who have not taken a position on whether or not they would overrule the Parliamentarian or not, the recognition of it being akin to eliminating the filibuster, that is a redline that maybe you don't want to cross, maybe you do want to cross, but I will call attention to the fact that the redline is here now, and each Member of this body has a decision to make.
The Parliamentarian has ruled that this effort cannot be done on a 51-vote threshold. And if you choose to go forward and overrule the Parliamentarian, just know, there is no going back. All bets are off.
With that, I would like to yield to the ranking member of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee, my colleague and friend from Rhode Island.
I am actually happy to yield to Senator Schiff from the California delegation. OK. He is happy with me going, so I will go.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. President, first, both of my colleagues from California are here, and I want to thank them for coming to the floor today to talk about this important matter in which Republicans want to appease their donors, and they want to break basically two Senate rules in order to get there--not just one, but two.
The underlying matter here is about a law, the Clean Air Act, which falls in the jurisdiction of the Environment and Public Works Committee. So that is why I am here.
A different law, the Congressional Review Act, creates a fast-track procedure in the Senate to disapprove Agency rules.
For the most part, that Congressional Review Act, the CRA, is focused on rules during a short period immediately after they are made final and
As soon as an Agency finalizes the rule, it submits the rule to the Government Accountability Office and to both Houses of Congress. That starts a 60-day review clock. That CRA also provides a lookback period where a Congress can reach back into the final 60 days of a previous Congress and review rules from a prior administration.
The waivers go way back before the CRA period. Generally, there is no question what constitutes a rule under the CRA. There are different acts that the government can do. There are decisions; there are rules; there are laws.
A rule is a specific thing under the CRA. Sometimes there are problems. Sometimes Agencies don't submit actions to Congress that have typically been deemed rules, and sometimes, as here, they submit as rules actions that have never previously been considered rules.
GAO polices whether the submitted action was, in fact, a rule. That is the law. That is a GAO legal responsibility. GAO has weighed in about 60 times in the history of the Congressional Review Act. When GAO determined that the action involved was a rule, the action was then deemed submitted and the review clock started.
When GAO determined the action was not a rule, that was the end of it. Congress stood down. No one--no one--moved a CRA resolution of disapproval following a negative finding by the GAO. Never.
Which brings us to this first oddity. In 2023, Members asked GAO whether an EPA Clean Air Act waiver decision for California was a Federal rule for purposes of the CRA. GAO said, no, correctly, because it wasn't.
Like every other time, that settled that. And GAO's ``no'' comported with the text of the CRA and the waiver provision originally in the Clean Air Act that created the California exception and 50 years of Agency precedent treating waivers as decisions, a different type of adjudication which the Administrator Procedure Act distinguishes from rules.
EPA itself, across multiple administrations, Republican and Democrat, never, never called waivers rules under the CRA, not even under the first Trump administration.
Then, in February, after much lobbying by the oil industry, the Trump EPA submitted notices of three waiver decisions, one from more than 2 years ago, far beyond that 60-day lookback period. Upon a request from the three of us, the two Senators from California and myself as ranking member, GAO confirmed its previous 2023 opinion not long ago--this is not ancient history--and found that notwithstanding EPA's politically motivated submissions to try to get into that CRA window, the California waivers simply are not rules. So the CRA does not apply.
GAO pointed out to EPA that the waiver notices, on their face, indicate that they are decisions rather than rules. But that wasn't enough, so we had to go to the Parliamentarian, who heard arguments and debate from both sides, and the Parliamentarian affirmed GAO's decision.
I will offer the opinion that it was not even a close call because the unblemished record has always been that this is not a rule over decades.
The Parliamentarian ruled that Clean Air Act waivers do not qualify for expedited consideration under the Congressional Review Act. Every other time the Senate has reached this point, every other time, Members have respected the decision of the Parliamentarian and that ended the matter. Not this time.
This time, a faction in the Republican Party wants to overturn decades of precedent, ignore the GAO and the Parliamentarian, who are the lawful guardians of this process, and steamroll forward in violation of the plain text of the Congressional Review Act by deploying the nuclear option.
Once there is precedent that anything an Agency does can be considered a rule, the time and scope limits of the Congressional Review Act have no meaning. Any Agency action ever could be swallowed up in the new Congressional Review Act definition.
Think about how the Trump administration might abuse this. At least one Member of this body previously asked GAO if FDA's decision to allow pharmacies to dispense mifepristone qualified as a rule for the purposes of the CRA. GAO said no, and it ended there. If we overrule GAO and the Parliamentarian on the waivers, nothing stops the Trump FDA from submitting the decision as a rule and Members from introducing a disapproval resolution and proceeding through this new loophole.
Everyone knows by now that President Trump has a beef with a whole host of media outlets, some of which are licensed by the Federal Communications Commission. What is to stop the FCC from submitting, say, CBS's license as a rule? And Members from introducing a disapproval resolution? Is this really the path we want the Senate to go down?
A future Democratic administration could submit every oil and gas lease issued since 1996 as a rule and pursue disapproval of them under the Congressional Review Act.
Colleagues, we have already given away too many article I powers to the executive branch, do we really want to give the executive branch this power to submit anything and everything as a rule and allow Members to hijack the floor with CRA resolutions? That would be a new way for this Senate to work.
Then there is the question of overruling the Parliamentarian, the nuclear option. The import of overruling the Parliamentarian extends way beyond Congressional Review Act resolutions. Once you have overruled the Parliamentarian on a legislative matter, there is no going back. All bets are off.
Any future majority would have precedent to overrule the Parliamentarian on any legislative matter. There is no cabining such a decision. It is tantamount to eliminating the filibuster. Once ``you give a mouse a cookie,'' it never ends.
Pretend all you want that these waivers are exceptional or that any precedent overruling the Parliamentarian would be limited. That is not the way it works. Soon, some Members will think their thing is exceptional and push to use this precedent, and on and on it will go, if you give the mouse the cookie.
You would be upending 50 years of treating preemption waivers as Agency decisions and not rules, 30 years of deferring to the GAO and the Parliamentarian on what constitutes a rule for purposes of the Congressional Review Act, and centuries of Senate precedent and procedure--all that while there is actually another path.
In 2019, the first Trump EPA used the administrative process, the Administrative Procedures Act, to withdraw a previously granted Clean Air Act waiver that permitted California to set car standards.
So I ask my Republican colleagues: Is this worth it? Is it worth going nuclear in the Senate to accomplish something that the EPA could try to accomplish under the Administrative Procedures Act on its own? Is it worth going nuclear, knowing full well the Pandora's box this will open?
I will close with the advice my colleague from California shared from the majority leader, the senior Senator from South Dakota. He said earlier this year that overruling the Parliamentarian would be--and I quote him--``totally akin to killing the filibuster. We can't go there. People need to understand that.''
So, please, do understand that, and don't go there.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Mr. President, I thank Senator Whitehouse for his remarks. He has been our environmental champion in the Congress for many years, and he led the effort to insist that the Senate follow the rules when it comes to protecting our environment and when it comes to preserving the power of the Parliamentarian.
Mr. President, this is downtown Los Angeles in 1955. It was the postwar era, with the rise of the personal automobile, the baby boom, and the rapid expansion of American cities and suburbs in the West. Suddenly, millions of families were experiencing firsthand, and for the first time, the most serious environmental impacts of unchecked industrial and manufacturing activity. Many could not walk through the streets of our cities without handkerchiefs to their face.
The iconic Ford and Chevy automobiles of the 1950s and 1960s kept their roofs shut. And, in some cases, the smog was so bad that people mistook it for a chemical weapons attack. And here is the thing: It got worse, not better, over the coming decades.
President Trump often speaks of restoring America, of making America great again, taking us back to that postwar period, with the rapid economic expansion and runaway prosperity of the wonder years. Well, his tariff wars have ended any hopes of an economic boom, and he now has the country headed in exactly the wrong direction, toward an economic bust instead.
And if he and Republicans get their way in the coming days, our Nation and our air will be on a trajectory back to 1955, all right. We will make an America where our spacious skies will be clogged and smoggy and our purple mountains' majesty will be hidden behind a haze that comes with letting oil companies call all the shots in Washington.
Back then, in reaction to these horrific air conditions, as well as devastating oil spills and other environmental hazards, California helped launch the modern environmental movement. In 1966, California became the first State to regulate tailpipe emissions to tackle this smog head-on. In fact, some of our biggest achievements and biggest actions took place under Republican Governors.
And wouldn't you take action? I mean, look at this. If this was your city, if this was your State, wouldn't you take action to deal with air pollution this bad, where you can barely make out the skyline, the skyscrapers? Where a body of lawmakers, many of whom, like me, served in State legislatures before coming to Congress, if you saw your State schoolchildren being choked by smog like this, wouldn't you see it as your job to step up, regardless of party politics? That is the fundamental right of any State and its legislature. In the face of threats against your kids and your own families, you do something.
And that is what California did and has continued to do, so often setting the standard for the rest of the country.
We in California are 1 out of every 10 Americans. We have a right to protect our citizens, our environment, our ability to live. After all, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are all impossible if we can't breathe.
In the 1960s, through the Clean Air Act, Congress granted California the ability to set standards for itself when it comes to air pollution. Under Republican President Richard Nixon, we even formed the Environmental Protection Agency. Through Democratic and Republican administrations and Congresses, that authority and promise has been upheld. Nearly 60 years of environmental protection has made the Golden State the gold standard for protecting our planet.
But now Republicans in Congress and Donald Trump are willing to ignore their own promises to punish California and to reward Big Oil. They are trying to break the Senate rules to make California's air dirtier, to make it harder and less safe for Californians to breathe, all to please the oil industry.
That is just wrong. And don't take it from me. ``We can't go there.'' That is what the Senate majority leader said about the prospect of overruling the Parliamentarian merely 5 months ago, as did his Republican predecessor, who said:
The Senate Parliamentarian, he said, is the ``final'' word.
And, please, if they try to tell you this is not overturning the Parliamentarian, you must not believe them. The Parliamentarian has ruled that this device--this mechanism--cannot be used to overturn California's waiver and its ability to set its own air standards. This ruling from the Senate's independent referee has been explicit and direct, and it should be respected.
I realize I am a newcomer to the Senate, and I will not ask my colleagues to stand on the long traditions of this institution, which I barely know, but they must stand by their commitments. They must stand by a State's right to make its own laws to protect its own citizens.
If the Senate goes nuclear overruling the Parliamentarian, there is no telling where the Congressional Review Act will be used in the future, by Republicans or Democrats.
Could the Senate merely vote to wipe out an entire 4 years of actions taken by a previous President? Will your State's regulations be next? What about your State's funding, your State's ability to administer programs like the Clean Water Act?
Precedent can be a hard thing to make tangible, but this is our history. This is what awaits us if we go down this dangerous road: air like this.
We will not stand idly by as this administration fights to make California's air unhealthy again. We will fight this. We must.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Legislative Session
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senate will now resume legislative session.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the mandatory quorum call with respect to Calendar No. 66, S. 1582, be waived.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island is recognized.
Mr. President, I rise to address President Trump's dangerous and inappropriate use of the U.S. military to carry out his immigration enforcement campaign.
Before I discuss the Trump administration's spending nearly half a billion dollars and sending tens of thousands of troops, ships, combat vehicles, and aircraft away from their real missions, I want to make clear that border security is a priority. I do not support open borders, and I believe that those who enter the United States and break our laws should be subject to deportation in accordance with the law and due process. I voted time and time again for billions of dollars of increased support for border agents, detection technology, and physical barriers where it made sense.
Mr. President, it is no secret that our borders have been under pressure for more than a decade because of a broken immigration system that congressional Republicans have consistently refused to help fix. We have considered bipartisan immigration reform bills in 2006, in 2007, in 2013, and in 2024, all of which were shut down by Republicans. The mess that we have today rests largely on their decision to put political advantage above real progress.
Now President Trump is ignoring Congress, ignoring the law, ignoring the courts, and ignoring the Constitution in order to implement an immigration policy that fails to respect due process, adversely impacts our innovation economy, and, to the point of my remarks, degrades our military.
In the name of his anti-immigrant efforts, President Trump is using the U.S. military to conduct operations on American soil that it has neither the training nor the authority to carry out. Our troops, who are already stretched thin for time and resources, are now burning time, assets, morale, and readiness for these overblown operations.
The President has declared an emergency at the border to justify using the military for civilian law enforcement--this despite border encounters currently at the lowest level since August of 2020. Over the past 12 months since President Biden's Executive actions last June, there has been a continued, significant decrease in unlawful border crossings, including a more than 60-percent decrease in encounters from May 2024 to December 2024.
In short, all along the southern border, we have seen a dramatic drop in illegal crossings and migrant encounters well before President Trump took office. A national emergency? It does not seem so.
We already have an entire Federal Agency to protect our borders and address illegal immigration: the Department of Homeland Security. DHS includes Customs and Border Protection, Immigrations and Customs Enforcement, and other law enforcement groups. I have voted consistently to give these Agencies additional resources to carry out their missions. But immigration enforcement is not and must not become a function of the Department of Defense.
Our military has long provided technical and logistical support to DHS at the border but always and exclusively in a supporting role, drawing a clear line between military law enforcement authorities. Indeed, since the Reconstruction era, U.S. Presidents have been prohibited from using the military in civilian law enforcement by a law known as the Posse Comitatus Act. This law has kept the Commander in Chief from wielding the military as a domestic political weapon, and it continues to provide an important check on the President's ability to use the military domestically against American citizens.
I understand American citizens asking if it matters which Department enforces immigration as long as the job gets done. Well, there are plenty of reasons to be concerned by the President's current approach even if one agrees with him politically.
Most alarmingly, President Trump is taking real steps to militarize immigration enforcement. Once he uses the military for this reason, it will be easier for him to use it for other purposes. And given the tenor of his public statements, it is a reasonable fear that he may someday order the use of the Armed Forces in American cities and against American citizens.
Indeed, the Brennan Center--a law and public policy institution-- recently analyzed President Trump's military actions at the border and concluded:
Beyond these concerns, there are real, immediate consequences for our troops, which we are seeing right now.
One of the military's top priorities is readiness. America faces real, growing threats from China, Russia, Iran, and other adversaries, and the Department of Defense needs to be laser-focused on preparing troops to defend our interests abroad. It is difficult to explain the border missions as anything but a distraction from readiness.
We should acknowledge the jobs that our troops are actually doing there. In the past, up to 2,000 National Guard and Reserve troops would rotate to the border each year to assist DHS and Customs and Border Patrol with basic monitoring, logistics, and warehousing activities-- non-law enforcement activities. These missions were designed to be ``behind the scenes'' to free up Border Patrol agents from administrative duties and return them back to the field to conduct their core mission of immigration enforcement.
Today, however, President Trump has surged more than 12,000 Active- Duty troops to the border to carry out a variety of expanded missions that do not look anything like ``behind the scenes.'' For example, one Marine battalion has been stringing miles and
In addition, the administration has wasted massive amounts of defense dollars by flying migrants out of the country using military aircraft. Often, they have had to return them to the U.S. mainland just a few days later. According to U.S. Transportation Command, it costs at least $20,000 per flight hour to use a C-130 and $28,500 per hour to use a C- 17. In comparison, contracted ICE flights that regularly transport migrants inside of the United States cost only $8,500 per flight hour.
President Trump's decision to use military aircraft instead of ICE aircraft to shuttle migrants across the globe to as far away as India is a gross misuse of taxpayers' dollars and servicemembers' time.
Just yesterday, we learned that the White House wanted to fly migrants on military aircraft to Libya, which is one of the most dangerous, hostile locations on Earth. Human rights groups have called the conditions in Libya's network of migrant detention centers ``horrific'' and ``deplorable.'' The plan has been canceled for now, but it is unconscionable for the Trump administration to consider sending migrants to Libya and endangering our troops in the process.
Further, the Department of Defense has informed Congress that the current surge in border missions, including troop deployment and military flights, could cost as much as $2 billion by the end of this fiscal year.
Secretary Hegseth has claimed that the border mission is so overwhelming that we will have to withdraw massive numbers of troops from Europe in order to meet the demand. Incredibly, he has also claimed that the border mission will have ``no impact'' on our military readiness.
However, we know that these border missions are harming military readiness. Last month, when the NORTHCOM commander testified before the Armed Services Committee, I asked how his forces on the border mission are maintaining their required military readiness and required training. He testified that his troops are spending 5 days a week supporting Customs and Border Patrol and other Agencies and only 1 day a week training. In other words, 20 percent--at most--of our servicemembers' time is being spent training on their critical military tasks.
In my personal engagements with commanders at all levels, they have made clear that readying their formations requires extensive time and training as well as stability for families. Border missions will not build these warfighting requirements. Border missions will distract from training, drain resources, and undermine readiness.
The Government Accountability Office, or GAO, has assessed previous support missions to DHS and found them to be detrimental to unit readiness. Specifically, in its 2021 report, GAO found that ``separating units in order to assign a portion of them to the southwest border mission was a consistent trend in degrading readiness ratings.''
In February, President Trump issued an unprecedented order to the Defense Department to begin transporting and detaining migrants at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. For decades, the U.S. Naval Station at Guantanamo Bay has housed a facility called the Migrant Operations Center that is used to temporarily house migrants who are saved at sea while traveling in unsafe vessels from Cuba, Haiti, or other nearby nations. The facility is typically unoccupied and is kept in a low-level operational readiness until needed--that is, until February.
The intended use of the center was never to house migrants flown from the United States to Guantanamo Bay. Nevertheless, President Trump ordered the military to expand the Migrant Operations Center to accommodate up to 30,000 migrants who would be brought there from the United States.
Within weeks, approximately 1,000 Active-Duty troops were sent to Guantanamo to build tents for this massive number of migrants. However, once built, the tents were found not to meet ICE standards, and to date, they have never been used and are now being dismantled. The hundreds of troops sent down for the mission have had very little to do in the meantime.
Since February, around 500 individuals identified by the administration as illegal migrants have been flown to Guantanamo Bay, and most have been detained for no more than 2 weeks. Rather than being taken to the Migrant Operations Center, about half of these migrants have been held on the other side of the island at the detention facility that was built and used for law of war detainees, such as 9/11 terrorist Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.
There are currently 15 law of war detainees remaining on Guantanamo Bay. The facilities housing these detainees have deteriorated significantly in the 20 years since they were built. The military personnel who guard these individuals also endure the same tough conditions in these dilapidated facilities. Needless to say, these servicemembers have been stretched thin.
Last fall, it was a significant morale boost for them when the remaining law of war detainees were moved to a ``newer'' facility. Naturally, it was a blow, then, to their morale when, just 1 month later, they were ordered back to the older, more decrepit facility to make way for migrants at the newer facility.
While it is crystal clear the military is in charge of the law of war detention center at Guantanamo Bay, it is not clear who is legally responsible for the migrants being held there. Longstanding law dictates that U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement maintain ``custody and control'' of migrants, but in the detention center, the military maintains control.
This leads to questions about who is in charge and who is accountable. When I have asked those questions, the answers have often been contradictory, and that is disturbing.
To investigate these issues, I traveled to Guantanamo Bay in March with several colleagues, including Senators Shaheen, Peters, King, and Padilla. We conducted a firsthand examination of the missions underway there and met with military servicemembers, ICE officers, and DHS officials to fully understand the costs and military readiness impacts of these missions. The trip raised many new questions and concerns.
I have grave doubts about the legality of removing migrants from the United States to Cuba, a foreign nation, and detaining them there. There are at least a dozen open cases and court orders impacting the Guantanamo mission. The detention center has only been used for law of war detainees, and it is reckless to equate migrants with international war criminals. I was also outraged by the scale of wastefulness we found there.
It is obvious Guantanamo Bay is an illogical location to detain migrants. The staggering financial cost to fly these migrants out of the United States and detain them at Guantanamo Bay--a mission costing tens of millions of dollars a month--is an insult to American taxpayers. President Trump could implement his immigration policies for a fraction of the cost by using existing ICE facilities in the United States, but he is obsessed with the image of using Guantanamo no matter the cost.
I am also frustrated that my Senate colleagues and I had to fly to Cuba to get answers to the questions that Secretary Hegseth and Homeland Security Secretary Noem have been ducking for months. By avoiding questions, they are putting servicemembers and officers on the ground in the position of trying to make sense of contradictory and political orders without any guidance or support from the Pentagon or DHS headquarters.
Since coming into office, the Trump administration has expanded the role of the military in immigration enforcement in other troubling ways. The movement of migrants from the U.S. to Guantanamo Bay is unprecedented, and the buildup of 12,000 Active-Duty troops at the southern border, including the Army's 10th Mountain Division
For example, on March 30--shown in the photograph here--a military flight traveled from Guantanamo Bay to El Salvador with foreign nationals on board, including seven Venezuelans. To my understanding, not a single DHS official or civilian was on the flight, meaning that military personnel maintained both custody and control of the migrants, contrary to longstanding DOD policy and practice.
Here, as I said, is an image of that plane unloading in El Salvador. As you can see, the crew does not appear to include any DHS officials or civilian law enforcement personnel--only uniformed troops, who are physically handing migrants to the Salvadoran police.
This flight would clearly have been in violation of various immigration laws and policies, recent judicial orders, and the Posse Comitatus Act, as the military carried out a core law enforcement function of deportation without any DHS official present. After the fact, the administration tried to explain itself by saying it used ``counterterrorism'' authorities rather than law enforcement authorities. I am not aware of any counterterrorism authorities that would authorize such a flight.
Accordingly, last month, I sent a letter to the Department of Defense Office of Inspector General, asking that office to conduct an inquiry into the incident and any laws or Defense Department policies that may have been violated. I expect the IG to exercise his independence in carrying out this inquiry, and I am disturbed that the administration continues to put servicemembers in legal and physical jeopardy through these reckless orders.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that this letter be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
I am also concerned about the Trump administration's dubious creation of ``National Defense Areas'' along the southern border in the last several weeks. These National Defense Areas, first designated in New Mexico and later expanded into Texas, were created when the Department of the Interior transferred land, including the Roosevelt Reservation--a 60-foot-wide strip along the border--to the Department of Defense. So now, large swaths of the border are considered military installations.
The administration has created these zones so that, when a migrant crosses the border in those areas, prosecutors can charge them with both entering the United States illegally and trespassing on a military installation. In effect, the National Defense Zones evade the longstanding protections of the Posse Comitatus Act by allowing military forces to act as de facto border police, detaining migrants until they can be transferred to Customs and Border Protection. In the administration's telling, this approach permits military involvement in immigration control without invoking the Insurrection Act of 1807.
This is both unprecedented and, indeed, a legal fiction. Again, as the Brennan Center report found:
The administration is also considering using military bases to detain thousands of migrants inside the United States. Unlike in past emergencies, when military bases near the border were used to hold migrants during large surges, this administration is seeking to use installations deep within the country, including in New Jersey, Indiana, Delaware, California, and Virginia. One could be forgiven for extrapolating that these bases are being selected to hold round-ups of migrants in major cities.
The President is not taking these military actions out of necessity; he is testing the boundaries of our legal system and, in my view, violating them. If left unchecked and unchallenged, he will go much, much further in employing the Armed Forces in to enforce domestic immigration laws, traditionally a civilian law enforcement function.
For years, Mr. Trump has publicly expressed his desire to use U.S. military personnel for domestic law enforcement. During the last campaign, he repeatedly claimed that, if elected, he would order the National Guard and Active-Duty military to carry out mass deportations of undocumented migrants. He even said that he would deploy the military to conduct local law enforcement in cities and that troops could shoot shoplifters leaving the scene of a crime.
The President's defenders often say that he is joking or exaggerating when he makes such claims, but we know these are not idle threats. In his first 100 days in office, he has declared multiple national emergencies and has invoked the Alien Enemies Act of 1798 to
The administration is expanding its operation one step at a time, and President Trump's deployment of forces to the border, the military deportation flights, and the establishment of National Defense Areas can be interpreted as setting the stage to invoke the Insurrection Act and order the military to carry out domestic law enforcement inside the country.
In fact, we have seen the situation before. In June of 2020, then- President Trump, infuriated by protesters in front of the White House and across the country, ordered his staff to prepare to invoke the Insurrection Act to allow him to deploy Active-Duty military forces to patrol the streets of DC and other cities. Then-Defense Secretary Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley talked him out of it, but the President clearly views this as a serious option.
Beyond the immorality of Trump's desire to deploy military domestically, to do so would simply be illegal. As I mentioned, the doctrine of posse comitatus is sacred in our Nation to separate the military from direct law enforcement responsibilities.
The use of National Guard or Active-Duty troops should be reserved only to those rare circumstances where civilian law enforcement has collapsed and State leaders have specifically asked for Presidential assistance. Their deployment should never be at the sole discretion of a President, as President Trump has demonstrated that such power begs abuse.
Ultimately, U.S. military members are trained to engage the enemies of the United States abroad with deadly force, not to arrest migrants on the southern border or to deport them from U.S. cities. The military has a sacred role in our country, but the public's trust is easily lost, and a pillar of our society is cracked when the Commander in Chief uses the military recklessly.
Our constitutional system is fundamentally designed to separate military and civilian roles, reserving police powers for law enforcement agencies and endowing the military with the superior weaponry and firepower necessary to fight and win the Nation's wars. When we allow the military to be used in the routine exercise of the police power, the Nation teeters on the brink of autocracy and military rule. One need not be a student of history to see how easily this backsliding can occur. It is all around us in the world today.
Trump's clear intent to use the military in potentially illegal and certainly inappropriate ways for his own political benefit is antithetical to the spirit of our American democracy. Such power is the hallmark of authoritarians around the world.
President Trump and Secretary Hegseth must use common sense, follow the law, and immediately cease the military border deployments and deportation flights.
And, my colleagues, particularly my colleagues in the majority, should demand the same and hold the administration accountable for its actions.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wyoming.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to complete my remarks and ask that Senator Hagerty have 7 minutes to complete his remarks before the vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I rise today because the United States is behind when it comes to digital assets.
American digital asset innovation has faced a challenging environment, with talent, investment, and development often relocating to more welcoming international jurisdictions like Singapore, Switzerland, and the UAE. These countries have created clear frameworks, specifically designed to attract blockchain ventures while the United States has generally maintained a less defined regulatory landscape that has inadvertently encouraged this exodus of opportunity and expertise.
This week, we have the opportunity to start to change that, and we must grab the reins and ensure that all Americans are able to take charge of their financial futures.
The last White House blocked us, but now we have a President who not only sees the immeasurable value digital assets have but is willing to firmly secure America's leadership in this space.
Before he even took office, President Trump announced he had tapped David Sacks to serve as the White House AI and Crypto Czar, ensuring we maintain America's competitive edge, and issued a blitz of Executive actions targeting heavy-handed SEC tactics slowing down progress.
Under President Trump, we have seen a significant shift in the executive branch's attitude toward digital assets. It is night and day what we experienced under the Biden administration. President Trump's promise to make America the digital asset capital of the world wasn't just lip service; it was a strategic vision--recognizing that dollar- backed stablecoins represent a critical opportunity to extend American financial influence in an increasingly digital world--and a call to action. Decades from now, students will read about the foresight of the President and the 119th Congress in moving this issue to the forefront.
I want to make clear that this is not a partisan issue. I have spent years--years--working with Senator Gillibrand of New York to ensure that we have crafted a bipartisan proposal that can get across the finish line--a lot of late nights, early morning phone calls, thousands of hours of our staffs going back and forth on policy.
I want to thank Senator Gillibrand and her team for all their hard work, for working with my team in good faith, and for always pushing to make this legislation stronger.
We have incorporated feedback from both Democrats and Republicans-- many, many, many, many Democrat amendments. We have been working for days--recently, days--to bring this bill to the floor and to satisfy our colleagues across the aisle. I truly appreciate everyone who has engaged on this issue. We have the opportunity now to be in the driver's seat and install commonsense regulations that are tailor-made for American-based digital asset companies. The digital future is something to embrace. We are witnessing the dawn of a modern 21st century economy that can benefit all Americans through technical innovation.
This Congress, I joined with Senator Bill Hagerty of Tennessee to cosponsor his Guiding and Establishing National Innovation for U.S. Stablecoins Act, or the GENIUS Act--legislation which provides robust consumer protections without sacrificing innovation. And now, thanks to Leader Thune's leadership, the hard work of Senator Hagerty, Chairman Scott, Senator Gillibrand, and our shared commitment to maintaining U.S. leadership in this space, we can begin the bipartisan proposal and move it one step closer to becoming law.
At its core, the GENIUS Act protects consumers through mandatory 100- percent reserve backing with U.S. dollars and short-term Treasurys, the monthly public disclosure of reserve composition, and strict prohibitions against misleading marketing.
Put simply, this isn't just another bill. It is a comprehensive framework, ensuring America leads the next generation of financial technology in stablecoins.
Just minutes ago, an American was elected Pope. His name will be Leo XIV--an American leading one of the strongest religious organizations in the world. We should also be leading in financial innovation.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Mr. President, I want to compliment my colleague from Wyoming for the wonderful introduction that she gave. That means that I don't need to give the many, many pages of speech that I had planned. But I would like to come to one final point, and that is for the benefit of my colleagues today.
I want to take a broader view of what we are actually voting on. What we are voting on is ``cloture.'' That is a term
My Democratic colleagues supported this, coming through a committee on a bipartisan basis. In fact, we had a vote of 18 to 6, a very strong movement out of committee.
Since that time, we have made a number of changes at their request. They have come back again with more requests. We are considering those changes as well. But for us to even begin to implement these changes, we are going to have to get on this bill in order to debate it and in order to incorporate the changes that have been negotiated.
I look forward to working with my colleagues should they choose to move forward on this bill. And if they don't, I want the American public and I want everybody watching today to understand that this is a vote to kill the crypto industry here in America, and it is a shame.
This is our first opportunity to deliver groundbreaking legislation to America that puts America squarely in the most competitive place we possibly could be, to lead in the area of innovation where we need to be leading. Otherwise, this would be a vote to push all of that offshore. It is a vote for our strength.
I want to thank the Senators who have helped so much: Senator Scott and Senator Lummis from our side. And I want to thank Senators Gillibrand and Alsobrooks from the Democrat side. I want to thank everybody who has worked so hard on this. And I hope that we will be able to move forward, actually get on this bill, and complete our work.
I yield the floor.
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:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to speak for up to 2 minutes.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator is recognized for 2 minutes.
Mr. President, we made some great progress this past week. I greatly--greatly--appreciate the work that we have done in a bipartisan manner.
I want to thank my fellow colleagues across the aisle: Senator Warner, Senators Lummis, Hagerty, Chairman Scott, Senators Alsobrooks and Lisa Blunt Rochester. They really have been working hard to get a good product, and it was done in good faith. And I really want to thank my Republican colleagues for doing this.
The reason you are hearing some hesitancy is the legislation of this scope and importance really just cannot be rushed, and we need time both to educate our colleagues and people.
We are not shutting down. We don't want to shut this down to the point where we are ending all this work that we have put into it. We want to bring this economy and this innovation to the United States, and I am asking for that time.
I want to be clear that you do have enough Members across the aisle who want to see this passed in a good manner. So what I am going to be asking for is that we collapse today's vote and Monday's vote into a single vote on Monday.
I believe there is a pathway for us to actually get this done, get good language, and have a bipartisan win for this country.
All this agreement is asking for is simply to combine today's and Monday's vote. It would not add or reduce any floor time compared to just taking this vote today. So I ask for unanimous consent to do that.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Objection is heard.
By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum call has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the motion to proceed to S. 1582, a bill to provide for the regulation of payment stablecoins, and for other purposes, shall be brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The bill clerk called the roll.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Moran) and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).
I announce that the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Smith) is necessarily absent.
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 48, nays 49, as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.
Mr. President, I change my vote to no.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On the motion, the yeas are 48, the nays are 49.
On this vote, three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn not having voted in the affirmative, the motion is not agreed to.
Mr. President, I enter a motion to reconsider the vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The motion is entered.
Gaza
Mr. President, I want to say a few words about an issue that people all over the world are thinking about, are appalled by but, for some strange reason, gets very little discussion here in the Nation's Capital or in the halls of Congress, and that is the horrific humanitarian disaster that is unfolding in Gaza.
Today marks 68 days and counting since any humanitarian aid was allowed into Gaza. For more than 9 weeks, Israel has blocked all supplies: no food, no water, no medicine, and no fuel. Hundreds of truckloads of lifesaving supplies are waiting to enter Gaza, sitting just across the border, but are denied entry by Israeli authorities.
There is no ambiguity here. Netanyahu's extremist government talks openly about using humanitarian aid as a weapon. Defense Minister Israel Katz said:
Starving children to death is a weapon of war, is a clear violation of the Geneva Convention, the Foreign Assistance Act, and basic human decency. Civilized people do not starve children to death. What is going on right now in Gaza is a war crime committed openly and in broad daylight and continuing every single day.
There are 2.2 million people who live in Gaza. Today, these people are trapped. The borders are sealed, and Israel has pushed the population into an ever smaller area. With Israel having cut off all aid, what we are seeing now is a slow, brutal process of mass starvation and death by the denial of basic necessities.
This is methodical; it is intentional; it is the stated policy of the Netanyahu government.
Without fuel, there is no ability to pump fresh water, leaving people increasingly desperate, unable to find clean water to drink or to wash with or to cook properly. Disease is once again spreading in Gaza. Most of the bakeries in Gaza have now shut down, having run out of fuel and flour. The few remaining community kitchens are also shutting down.
Most people are now surviving on scarce canned goods, often a single can of beans or some lentils shared between a family once a day.
The United Nations reports that more than 2 million people out of a population of 2.2 million face severe food shortages. The starvation hits children the hardest. At least 65,000 children now show symptoms of malnutrition and dozens have already starved to death. Malnutrition rates increased 80 percent in March, the last month for which data is available after Netanyahu began the siege, but the situation has severely deteriorated since then.
UNICEF reported yesterday that ``the situation is getting worse every
Without adequate nutrition or access to clean water, many children will die of easily preventable diseases, killed by something as simple as diarrhea. For the tens of thousands of injured people in Gaza, particularly the countless burn victims from Israeli bombings, their wounds cannot heal without adequate food and clean water. Left to fester, infections will kill many who should have survived.
With no infant formula and with malnourished mothers unable to breastfeed, many infants are also at severe risk of death. Those who survive will bear the scars of what they are going through now for the rest of their lives.
And with little medicine available, easily treatable illnesses and chronic diseases like diabetes or heart disease is now a death sentence in Gaza.
What is going on there is not some terrible earthquake; it is not a hurricane; it is not a storm. What is going on in Gaza today is a man- made nightmare, and nothing in my view can justify this.
What is happening in Gaza will be a permanent stain on the world's collective conscience. History will never forget that we allowed this to happen and, for us here in the United States, that we, in fact, enabled this ongoing atrocity.
There is no doubt that Hamas, a terrorist organization, began this terrible war with its barbaric October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 innocent people and took 250 hostages. The International Criminal Court was right to indict Yahya Sinwar and other leaders of Hamas as war criminals for those atrocities.
Clearly, Israel, as any other country that was so attacked, had the right to defend itself against Hamas. But Netanyahu's extremist government has not just waged war against Hamas. Instead, they have waged an all-out barbaric war of annihilation against the Palestinian people. They have intentionally made life unlivable in Gaza.
Israel, up to now, has killed more than 52,000 people and injured more than 118,000--60 percent of whom are women, children, and the elderly. More than 15,000 children in Gaza have been killed.
Israel's indiscriminate bombardment has damaged or destroyed two- thirds of all of the structures in Gaza, including 92 percent of the housing units--92 percent of housing in Gaza has been damaged or destroyed. Most of the population now is living in tents or other makeshift structures.
The healthcare system in Gaza has been, essentially, destroyed. Most of the territory's hospitals and primary healthcare facilities have been bombed. Gaza's civilian infrastructure has been totally devastated, including almost 90 percent of water and sanitation facilities. Most of the roads have been destroyed.
Gaza's educational system has been obliterated. Hundreds of schools have been bombed--schools have been bombed--as has every single one of Gaza's 12 universities.
And there has been no electricity in Gaza for 18 months--no electricity.
Given this reality, nobody should have any doubts that Netanyahu is a war criminal. Just like his counterparts in Hamas, he has a massive amount of innocent blood on his hands.
And now, Netanyahu and his extremist ministers have a new plan--on top of everything else that has been done, they have a new plan--and that is to indefinitely reoccupy all of Gaza, flatten the few buildings that are still standing, and force the entire population of 2.2 million people into a single tiny area where hired U.S. security contractors will distribute rations to the survivors.
Israeli officials are quite open about the goal here: to force Palestinians to leave for other countries ``in line with President Trump's vision for Gaza,'' as one Israeli official said this week.
Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich said this week that ``Gaza will be entirely destroyed'' and that its population will ``leave in great numbers.''
For many in Netanyahu's extremist government, this has been the plan all along. It is called ethnic cleansing.
This would be a terrible tragedy no matter where in the world it was happening or why it was happening, whatever the causes of it might be. But what makes this tragedy so much worse for us in America is that it is our government, the U.S. Government, that is absolutely complicit in creating and sustaining this humanitarian disaster. It didn't just happen; we are a significant part of creating this humanitarian disaster.
Last year alone, the United States provided 18 billion in military aid to Israel. This year, the Trump administration has approved 12 billion more in bombs and weapons. And for months, Trump has offered blanket support for Netanyahu. More than that, he has repeatedly said that the United States will actually take over Gaza after the war, that the Palestinian people will be driven, forcibly expelled, from their homeland, and the United States will redevelop it into what Trump calls ``the riviera of the Middle East,'' a playground for billionaires.
Think about it: 2.2 million desperate people who have been bombed and starved and driven from their homes are now about to be forcibly expelled from their territory into God knows where so that Trump and his friends can build a riviera for the billionaire class.
This war has killed or injured more than 170,000 people in Gaza. It has cost American taxpayers well over $20 billion in the last year. And right now, as we speak, thousands of children are starving to death. And a U.S. President is actively encouraging the ethnic cleansing of over 2 million people.
Now, given that reality, one might think that there would be a vigorous discussion right here in the Senate. Do we really want to spend billions of taxpayer dollars starving children in Gaza? A real vigorous debate. I want to hear why that is a good use. We have people sleeping out on the streets of America two blocks from the Nation's Capital. You tell me why spending billions of dollars to support Netanyahu's war and starving children is a good idea. I would love to hear it.
We are not having that debate. Let me suggest to you why I think we are not having that debate and that is because we have a corrupt campaign finance system that allows organizations like AIPAC to set the agenda here in Washington with regard to what happens in the Middle East.
In the last election cycle, AIPAC's PAC and super PAC spent nearly $127 million combined on campaign contributions. And the fact is that if you are a Member of Congress and you vote against Netanyahu's war in Gaza, AIPAC is there to punish you with millions of dollars in advertisements to see that you get defeated.
One might think that in a democracy there would be a vigorous debate on an issue of such consequence. But because of our corrupt campaign finance system, which impacts us in so many ways on this issue, people are literally afraid to stand up because if they do, suddenly, you are going to have all kinds of ads coming into your district to defeat you.
Sadly, I must confess that this political corruption works. Many of my colleagues will privately express their horror at Netanyahu's war crimes but will do or say very little publicly about it. History will not forgive our complicity in this nightmare. The time is long overdue for us to end our support for Netanyahu's destruction of the Palestinian people.
We must not put another nickel into Netanyahu's war machine. We must demand an immediate cease-fire, a surge in humanitarian aid, the release of the hostages, and the rebuilding of Gaza--not for billionaires to enjoy their Riviera there but rebuilding Gaza for the Palestinian people.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Ohio.
Mr. President, I have been in the U.S. Senate now for a total of 125 days. I have seen some outrageous comments over the last 125 days. My colleague has been here exactly 12,000 days more than I have. Let me just set the record straight.
On October 7, 2023, families, mothers, fathers were sitting at home, enjoying a peaceful existence in one of the most difficult places on Earth to live. They had a day planned of joy at a festival.
What you just heard for the last 15 minutes could be summarized as the absolute propaganda of Hamas. Let me just be clear. This war was started by Hamas. It could end today by Hamas if they released every last hostage, including an American citizen.
We are sitting here in the U.S. Senate and not even saying a word of the fact that there is a U.S. citizen being held hostage by a terrorist group in the Middle East. That is outrageous. That should be at the top of the agenda. Why have civilians been killed in Gaza? Because they hide weapons in hospitals, in schools, in homes.
Hamas is the enemy, not our greatest ally, which is Israel. I was just there 2 weeks ago. Two weeks ago, I was there. There is almost no Israeli that hasn't seen a mom, a dad, a son, a grandson, granddaughter that hasn't been either injured or killed to protect their country. The fact that we are disparaging our greatest ally at this level is completely outrageous.
I had plans to go home, see my wife and kids, but I rose today because I cannot stay silent after listening to that kind of nonsense spewed here in the U.S. Senate. It is a disgrace, and we should not ever forget that Israel is just fighting the war that we would otherwise fight.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. President, if the Senator had heard my remarks, I talked about the need to release the hostages and I talked about who started the war, which is the terrorist organization called Hamas, led by war criminals. There is no debate about that.
But what the Senator did not tell us is whether or not he thinks it is a good idea for U.S. taxpayers to be spending billions of billions of dollars on an extremist government in Israel whose stated policy is to starve children; whether or not he thinks it is a good idea to cut off all humanitarian aid getting into Gaza right now--no medicine, no clean water, no healthcare facilities open.
So the issue is not who started the war. Everyone knows who started the war. The issue is whether you commit war atrocities, criminal war acts by punishing an entire people for the acts of a terrorist organization.
Did Israel have the right to defend itself? Yes, nobody denies that.
Did it have a right to kill over 50,000 people--60 percent of whom are women, children, and the elderly? No.
Did it have a right to injure 112,000 people, to destroy almost every housing unit in Gaza, to bomb hundreds of schools at every university in Gaza? No.
Israel had a right to defend itself, but it does not have the right to engage in ethnic cleansing and to starve children.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.
Gun Violence
Mr. President, I want to come to the floor today to talk about a success story but, potentially, a success story interrupted.
Back in 2022, we all were shocked to watch news playing out during an afternoon that we were here, working in the Senate, of another mass shooting--this one of just unthinkable size and scope--in Uvalde, TX. I was actually sitting in the Presiding Officer's chair when I saw word of the shooting scroll across my smartphone screen.
Gratefully, in the wake of that shooting, a group of us--Republicans and Democrats--were able to come together and set aside the differences that we had and still have on the issue of gun violence in this country. We decided not to argue about an assault weapons ban, for instance. Instead, we decided to work on finding the least common denominator, as we called it, and tried to find a set of commonsense changes to our gun laws and commonsense investments in our communities that would, hopefully, together, try to put a downward pressure on what, up until then, had been annual spiking rates of homicides and mass shootings.
It is just true that, in this country, you are 10 times more likely to be shot in your school, in your neighborhood, at a movie theater than you are in any other high-income, developed nation. That is a choice. That is not bad luck. That is not happenstance. That is because, in America, we decide to have a ton of weapons in the hands of very dangerous people. We also don't spend enough time trying to unwind some of the reasons young people, in particular, get into lives of really risky and potentially violent behavior.
So we came together in 2022, and we passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. It was a big bipartisan vote. It wasn't close. The final tally was 65 to 33, with nearly two-thirds of the Senate voting in favor of this commonsense gun safety measure. It wasn't anything close to what I see as being necessary in order to tackle this epidemic in this country, but it was significant. It was five changes in gun laws: supporting State red flag laws; stopping domestic abusers from getting their hands on guns; putting in a short but meaningful waiting period when young people are hastily buying an assault weapon; making it easier for law enforcement to go after drug trafficking rings. It was five meaningful changes, but it was also a big investment, a big investment in the kind of services that can help interrupt violence.
A lot of my Republican friends said: You know, we don't believe it is the guns. We think it is mental illness.
Well, I don't agree, but this is how you put together a compromise. So we passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which included a landmark $14 billion investment, most of it in mental health, most of it directed toward kids' school-based mental health, but there were also significant investments in school safety--just hardening schools to make it harder for a shooter to get inside and community anti-gun violence initiatives, which is the work that local community groups are doing in North Carolina and Connecticut and all across the country to just try to wrap services around people who might be at risk of gun violence or to stop that cycle of violence once the first shooting happens.
So we passed this legislation, and we crossed our fingers. We said: Let's hope that we are right and that these changes in gun laws and these investments we are making in our communities will make a difference.
Well, what happened after we passed that law was absolutely stunning: the biggest 2-year decline in gun violence in the history of recorded statistics in the United States of America. That is extraordinary. That is extraordinary. I am not going to sit here and claim that the entire reason was the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, but it was a big part of the reason because we did make it harder for bad people to get their hands on guns. We did deliver the kinds of services that are necessary. You are seeing this downward trajectory, but let me just put the numbers on it.
In 2023, there were 659 mass shootings in America. In 2024, there were 500. That is a 24-percent, 1-year decline in mass shootings. That means that there were 160 mass shootings that didn't happen and 160 communities that were not terrorized in 2024. And this bill had a lot to do with it. Overall gun deaths went down from 2023 to 2024 from 19,000 to 16,700. That was a 12-percent reduction. We have never in this country's history seen 1-year declines in gun homicides in the neighborhood of 12 percent. Certain cities saw astronomical declines. In Hartford, we saw a 39-percent drop in homicides from 2023 to 2024. This year--this year, 2025--Hartford is on track to have the lowest recorded instances of gun violence--those are homicides and nonfatal shootings--since 2006. New Haven saw a 39-percent drop in homicides. As I think I said, overall, in Connecticut, we had 167 homicides in 2023. In 2024, we had 63. It is wild.
This happened in Baltimore, and this happened in Chicago. In most of the major cities in this country and in rural areas as well, we saw this dramatic, dramatic decline. So it is just something to celebrate because it is not easy to get that kind of consensus. It is not easy to get that kind of consensus, and we should celebrate the fact that there are literally thousands of people--largely young men--who are alive today because of the bill that we passed.
But this progress is in threat of being interrupted, and the reason is that the Trump administration has reversed course. I want to talk specifically about how they are undoing the progress of this bill, but their attempt to try to reverse the broader progress that we have made on reducing gun violence is pretty comprehensive. Let me just give you a handful of the ways in which the Trump administration is trying to make our communities less safe.
First, they closed the Office of Gun Violence Prevention. This was something the Biden administration set up to try to better implement the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. This wasn't a terribly political office. It was just trying to coordinate all the work being done across Agencies to reduce violence in our communities. Trump would have taken this office in a different direction, but he didn't. He just shuttered it. There is no Office of Gun Violence Prevention anymore in the Federal Government.
On March 20, the administration announced that they are going to start a process of restoring firearms rights to individuals who have had them taken away because they had serious criminal records. This is likely illegal.
That same day, Trump's Department of Justice filed a motion in Federal court, trying to overturn a decision to say that silencers are not protected by the Second Amendment, trying to say that no State legislature could ban or regulate the use of silencers, and silencers are broadly used by killers, by criminals who are trying to hide the fact that they are engaged in criminal, lethal conduct.
On April 7, the DOJ announced that it was repealing a policy from the Biden administration that said simply this: If you are a gun dealer and you are engaged in illegal conduct, we are going to pull your license, and we are not going to give you two or three or four shots. We are going to have a zero tolerance policy for gun dealers who are selling guns on to the black market. That is a policy most Americans would see as common sense, but the DOJ announced that it was going to let off the hook gun dealers who are violating the laws.
Now, throughout the last 100 days, the Trump administration has been sending all sorts of signals that they are deprioritizing the work of the ATF. Most recently, on April 9, they announced that the Army Secretary would now be the acting head of ATF. This was basically telling ATF agents: We don't care about your work. We are not going to have a full-time ATF head. We are putting somebody with a big, other important job in charge of the ATF. You are not going to have any real supervision or direction.
It was just a signal of the deprioritization of the enforcement of our gun laws that caused, the next day, the second highest ranking official at the ATF, who had served admirably for 35 years, to resign in protest.
Then, maybe most unconscionably and most cruelly, just a few days ago, the ATF took down the memorial wall dedicated to victims of gun violence. I mean, there were names up there, tributes to moms and dads, brothers and sisters who had been killed in episodes of gun violence. That was really important to hundreds of families out there who knew that their loved ones' names were part of that wall. Now the wall comes down. For what? Just to send another signal that the administration doesn't care about attacking gun violence.
But I really wanted to come to the floor today to talk about the two most important assaults that the Trump administration has made on our work to try to keep our communities safe. Those are the twin announcements that the administration made that they were going to end two of the key streams of funding for community groups in the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act.
First, the administration announced it was ending $1 billion in grants under the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act to invest in school mental health and then that they were ending $800 million of DOJ grants to try to drive down violence through supporting community efforts to do that work.
This makes no sense. I understand we have a difference. The President and I have a difference on what our gun laws should be. But there is consensus--I thought there was consensus--that we should support investment in mental health. I thought there was a consensus that we all believed that there were good community groups that were doing totally apolitical work, not related at all to gun laws, to try to interrupt cycles of violence.
The reason that these numbers have been going down is not just the changes in gun laws. The reason that our communities are safer all across the country is that we are finally putting real money into school-based mental health, into children's mental health, and into the groups in our communities that are keeping kids alive.
In Oakland, they have seen a stunning 32-percent drop in homicides, and it is a result of groups like Youth Alive!. This is a nonprofit that is working to prevent and disrupt the cycle of gun violence. So you go into a community, you go into a place where a shooting has happened, and you do work with the victim of that incident to make sure that it doesn't become a cycle of violence.
These are often called hospital-based violence intervention programs. When there is a shooting, you have a social worker or a community anti- gun violence worker that goes to the hospital. That is often when the communities are the most angry, the friends of that victim may be planning for revenge, and you do the work to stop that cycle of violence.
It was working in Oakland. Youth Alive! was preventing gun violence. Last year, of the 113 clients they served, only 1 of them was injured a second time. Yet, in the middle of a 3-year $2 million grant that Youth Alive! was getting, it was suspended, terminated. They are going to have to lay off their staff. That program is being shut down in Oakland. And I will just tell you, I would bet you homicides are going to start going back up in Oakland.
Baltimore has seen a similar massive decline in gun violence, a 43- percent reduction since 2010--what a success story in Baltimore, one of the most violent communities in terms of rates of gun violence in the country, a 43-percent decline.
Center for Hope is a group in Baltimore that provides prevention and healing services for children who have been the witnesses or victims of gun violence. They were getting, again, a $2 million grant to work with the victims of gun violence to try to heal those communities and, again, stop that cycle of retributive violence that often happens in places like Baltimore.
Donald Trump cut their grant. So in the middle of the grant, they are losing $1.2 million, and they are going to have to lay off 7 employees.
Center for Hope runs 6 of the city's 10 Safe Streets sites. These operate in the pockets of Baltimore where you see the most shootings. Because of these Center for Hope sites--these Safe Streets sites-- between 2023 and 2024, four of the sites run by the Center for Hope saw zero homicides. Now they are having to lay off people. Guess what is going to happen. Those shootings are going to go up again.
We had to work really hard to find this consensus on a very difficult issue. It is illegal, what the President has done. He is not allowed, under the Constitution, to decide unilaterally to cancel spending that has been authorized and appropriated by Congress. So maybe the first and most important thing to say about what the President has done to cancel mental health grants and anti-violence grants is that it is illegal. He can't do it, and it is likely that a court will turn these grants back on.
But it is also such bad policy. It is cruel and inhumane, but it is also illogical. We literally are seeing the fruits of the labor of these groups, and not just in saving a life or two. You are talking about a 30- and 40-percent reduction in violence in these cities. And what will happen is unmistakable. You stop funding these groups that are doing the mental health work in the schools, that are doing the anti-gun violence work, and these rates will start to go back up again.
That is illogical, but it is cruel as well because what the President is doing, for instance, in cutting off the school mental health grants is that he is cutting off existing grants. It is not that he is announcing: I am not giving any new grants.
There are schools all across this country that have set up new mental health clinics because of the grants they got. They were 5-year grants, and 1 or 2 or 3 years into those grants, Donald Trump is shutting those programs down. So there are literally going to be thousands of children--traumatized children, children with serious mental illness, with cycles and histories of abuse in their households--who have created this relationship with an adult--this adult who is helping them address their potential tendency to act out in violent ways due to their mental illness, their trauma. And one day, these kids are going to show up at school, and that adult is going to be gone. That trusted adult that had created that bond, that relationship that is helping that child, that is keeping that school safe--that relationship, that bond is destroyed because in cutting these grants off with no warning, there is no way, in the middle of a school year, for a school mental health clinic to find the money under the mattress.
It is illogical. It is going to drive up gun violence rates. And it is cruel to
I guess the final thing to say is this: We are putting ourselves out of business. We are putting ourselves out of business. What is the point of passing a law by a 65-to-33 vote if the President of the United States can just ignore it? As I said, that is illegal, and the courts will likely tell him: You can't shut off the funding that we appropriated and authorized.
This should matter to Republicans and Democrats. Every single one of my Republican colleagues worked really hard to get this job, worked really hard to become a U.S. Senator. Those of us who worked on these bipartisan pieces of legislation worked really hard to pass them. What is the point of running for the U.S. Senate, what is the point of working to forge this compromise if the President can just ignore it?
By the way, if Donald Trump gets away with it, mark my words, a Democratic President will do the same thing. If this becomes standard practice, if our laws just become advisory, then there is no reason for any of us to show up any longer. Why do you work so hard, why do you care so much about getting to this place if you don't care when the President just ignores the laws that we pass?
It is very hard to find consensus here, especially on an issue as important and as politically sensitive as gun violence. So when we do find that consensus, on behalf of the kids and the families out there who are begging us to work together to save lives, we should protect that consensus.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
