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June 2025 →

SenateFloor Session

June 12, 2025

Speeches 47Members 27Roll Calls 4

Congressional Record ↗Watch on C-SPAN ↗

Senate Floor VideoThe Senate does not publish its floor video for embedding. C-SPAN keeps the whole day.Watch on C-SPAN ↗

Bills Debated

01Genius Act
S. 1582 →1 member spoke
02Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act
S. 1467 →1 member spoke
03Condemning the Violent Antisemitic Attack in Boulder, Colorado, and Expressing Support for the Survivors and Their Families
S.Res. 278 →1 member spoke

Roll Calls

S. 1582Vote to See ResultGENIUS ActOn the Cloture Motion S. 1582
S. 1582Vote to See ResultGENIUS ActOn the Amendment S.Amdt. 2307 to S. 1582 (No short title on file)
S. 1582Vote to See ResultGENIUS ActOn the Motion (Motion to Waive All Applicable Budgetary Discipline Re: Amdt. No. 2307)
S. 1582Vote to See ResultGENIUS ActOn the Motion to Table S.Amdt. 2310 to S. 1582 (No short title on file)

Speeches and Other Business

01Halt All Lethal Trafficking of Fentanyl Act (Executive Session)
2 members spoke
02Trump Administration (Executive Session)
1 member spoke
03Broadband (Executive Session)
1 member spoke
04Judiciary (Executive Session)
4 members spoke
05Tribute to Christian Jaspersen (Executive Session)
1 member spoke
06Vote on Long Nomination (Executive Session)
2 members spoke
07Alex Padilla
1 member spoke
08Alex Padilla
1 member spoke
09Alex Padilla
1 member spoke
10Alex Padilla
2 members spoke
11Alex Padilla
1 member spoke
12Alex Padilla
1 member spoke
13Alex Padilla
1 member spoke
14Alex Padilla
1 member spoke
15Alex Padilla
1 member spoke
16Alex Padilla
1 member spoke
17Alex Padilla
1 member spoke
18Alex Padilla
1 member spoke
19Alex Padilla
1 member spoke
20Alex Padilla
1 member spoke
21Alex Padilla
1 member spoke
22Alex Padilla
1 member spoke
23Alex Padilla
1 member spoke
24Alex Padilla
1 member spoke
25Alex Padilla
1 member spoke
26Alex Padilla
1 member spoke
27Alex Padilla
1 member spoke
28Alex Padilla
1 member spoke
29Alex Padilla
1 member spoke
30Tribute to Erica Wheelan Heyse
1 member spoke

Routine Business (34)

01Senate
02Executive Calendar (Executive Session)
2 members spoke
03Snap (Executive Session)
04Silencers (Executive Session)
05Nomination of William Long (Executive Session)
06Nomination of William Long (Executive Session)
3 members spoke
07Legislative Session
6 members spoke
08Legislative Session
1 member spoke
09Executive Calendar (Executive Session)
1 member spoke
10Cloture Motion (Executive Session)
1 member spoke
11Legislative Session
1 member spoke
12Executive Calendar (Executive Session)
1 member spoke
13Cloture Motion (Executive Session)
1 member spoke
14Legislative Session
1 member spoke
15Executive Calendar (Executive Session)
1 member spoke
16Cloture Motion (Executive Session)
1 member spoke
17Legislative Session
1 member spoke
18Vote Explanation
S. 1582 →1 member spoke
19Vote Explanation
1 member spoke
20Messages From the President
21Executive Messages Referred
22Executive Reports of Committee
23Submission of Concurrent and Senate Resolutions
24Senate Resolution 273: Recognizing the Contributions of Black People to the Musical Heritage of the United States and the Need for Greater Access to Music Education for Black Students And...
S.Res. 273 →
25Senate Resolution 274: Commending Federal, State, and Local Law Enforcement for Their Efforts in Protecting Americans by Combating Drug Trafficking and Agroterrorism and for Their Recent Actions In...
S.Res. 274 →
26Senate Resolution 275: Honoring the Memory of the Victims of the Heinous Attack at the Pulse Nightclub on June 12, 2016
S.Res. 275 →
27Senate Resolution 276: Designating June 12, 2025, as "Women Veterans Appreciation Day"
S.Res. 276 →
28Senate Resolution 277: Supporting the Designation of June as Fidelity Month for the Purpose of Rededicating the United States to the Values of Faith, Family, and Patriotism
S.Res. 277 →
29Senate Resolution 278: Condemning the Violent Antisemitic Attack in Boulder, Colorado, and Expressing Support for the Survivors and Their Families
S.Res. 278 →
30Senate Concurrent Resolution 14: Urging the Establishment of a United States Commission on Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation
S 14S.Con.Res. 14 →
31Authority for Committees to Meet
1 member spoke
32Orders for Monday, June 16, 2025
1 member spoke
33Adjournment Until Monday, June 16, 2025, at 4 P.M.
1 member spoke
34Confirmation

Daily Digest

Routine Proceedings, pages S3359-S3396 Measures Introduced
Forty-two bills and eight resolutions were introduced, as follows: S. 2043-2084, S.J. Res. 58, S. Res. 273-278, and S. Con. Res. 14.
Pages S3388-90
Measures Reported
S. 1003, to require the Federal Communications Commission to issue an order providing that a shark attack is an event for which a wireless emergency alert may be transmitted. (S. Rept. No. 119-30)
Page S3388
Measures Passed
Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act: Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs was discharged from further consideration of S. 1467, to amend the Fair Credit Reporting Act to prevent consumer reporting agencies from furnishing consumer reports under certain circumstances, and the bill was then passed.
Pages S3395-96
Condemning the Violent Antisemitic Attack in Boulder, Colorado
Senate agreed to S. Res. 278, condemning the violent antisemitic attack in Boulder, Colorado, and expressing support for the survivors and their families.
Page S3396
Measures Considered
Genius Act--Agreement: Senate continued consideration of S. 1582, to provide for the regulation of payment stablecoins, taking action on the following motions and amendments proposed thereto:
Pages S3366-67
Adopted
By 67 yeas to 30 nays (Vote No. 311), Thune (for Hagerty/Gillibrand) Amendment No. 2307, in the nature of a substitute.
Page S3367
Withdrawn
Thune Amendment No. 2308 (to Amendment No. 2307), to change the enactment date.
Page S3366
Thune Amendment No. 2309 (to Amendment No. 2308), to change the enactment date.
Page S3366
Thune Amendment No. 2310 (to the language proposed to be stricken by Amendment No. 2307), to change the enactment date. (By 45 yeas to 52 nays (Vote No. 309), Senate earlier failed to table the amendment.)
Page S3366
Thune Amendment No. 2311 (to Amendment No. 2310), to change the enactment date.
Page S3366
During consideration of this measure today, Senate also took the following action
By 64 yeas to 33 nays (Vote No. 310), three-fifths of those Senators duly chosen and sworn, having voted in the affirmative, Senate agreed to the motion to waive all applicable sections of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 and applicable budget resolutions for purposes of Thune (for Hagerty/Gillibrand) Amendment No. 2307 (listed above). Subsequently, the point of order that the measure was in violation of section 4106 of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2018, H. Con. Res. 71 of the 115th Congress, the Senate pay-as-you-go point of order, was not sustained, and thus the point of order fell.
Pages S3366-67
By 67 yeas to 27 nays (Vote No. 312), three-fifths of those Senators duly chosen and sworn, having voted in the affirmative, Senate agreed to the motion to close further debate on the bill.
Page S3367
Andres Nomination: Cloture
Senate began consideration of the nomination of Gary Andres, of Virginia, to be an Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Page S3384
A motion was entered to close further debate on the nomination, and, in accordance with the provisions of Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, and pursuant to the unanimous-consent agreement of Thursday, June 12, 2025, a vote on cloture will occur at 5:30 p.m., on Monday, June 16, 2025.
Page S3384
Prior to the consideration of this nomination, Senate took the following action
Senate agreed to the motion to proceed to Executive Session to consider the nomination.
Page S3384
A unanimous-consent agreement was reached providing that notwithstanding Rule XXII, the motions to invoke cloture filed on Thursday, June 12, 2025, ripen at 5:30 p.m., on Monday, June 16, 2025, and Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on the nomination.
Page S3396
Trusty Nomination: Cloture
Senate began consideration of the nomination of Olivia Trusty, of Maryland, to be a Member of the Federal Communications Commission for the remainder of the term expiring June 30, 2025.
Page S3384
A motion was entered to close further debate on the nomination, and, in accordance with the provisions of Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, a vote on cloture will occur upon disposition of the nomination of Gary Andres, of Virginia, to be an Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services.
Page S3384
Prior to the consideration of this nomination, Senate took the following action
Senate agreed to the motion to proceed to Legislative Session.
Page S3384
Senate agreed to the motion to proceed to Executive Session to consider the nomination.
Page S3384
Trusty Nomination: Cloture
Senate began consideration of the nomination of Olivia Trusty, of Maryland, to be a Member of the Federal Communications Commission for a term of five years from July 1, 2025.
Pages S3384-85
A motion was entered to close further debate on the nomination, and, in accordance with the provisions of Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, a vote on cloture will occur upon disposition of the nomination of Olivia Trusty, of Maryland, to be a Member of the Federal Communications Commission for the remainder of the term expiring June 30, 2025.
Pages S3384-85
Prior to the consideration of this nomination, Senate took the following action
Senate agreed to the motion to proceed to Legislative Session.
Page S3384
Senate agreed to the motion to proceed to Executive Session to consider the nomination.
Page S3384
Nomination Confirmed
Senate confirmed the following nomination: By 53 yeas 44 nays (Vote No. EX. 308), William Long, of Missouri, to be Commissioner of Internal Revenue for the remainder of the term expiring November 12, 2027.
Pages S3359-66, S3396
Nominations Received
Senate received the following nominations: Michael G. Waltz, of Florida, to be Representative of the United States of America to the Sessions of the General Assembly of the United Nations during his tenure of service as Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations. Michael G. Waltz, of Florida, to be the Representative of the United States of America to the United Nations, with the Rank of Ambassador, and the Representative of the United States of America in the Security Council of the United Nations.
Page S3396
Statements on Introduced Bills/Resolutions:
Pages S3391-95
Record Votes
Five record votes were taken today. (Total--312)
Pages S3366-67
Adjournment
Senate convened at 11 a.m. and adjourned at 6:38 p.m., until 4 p.m. on Monday, June 16, 2025. (For Senate's program, see the remarks of the Majority Leader in today's Record on page S3396.)

Executive Calendar (Executive Session)

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will proceed to executive session and resume consideration of the following nomination, which the clerk will report.

The legislative clerk read the nomination of William Long, of Missouri, to be Commissioner of Internal Revenue for the remainder of the term expiring November 12, 2027.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Iowa.

Chuck GrassleyRepublican, Iowa

On June 14, 1775, the Continental Congress passed a resolution creating what we know today as the United States Army. Since its establishment 250 years ago, tens of millions of American patriots have put their lives on the line to protect national security, defend our allies, and fight tyranny and terror from distant shores.

Today, the Army is comprised of roughly 450,000 Active-Duty servicemen, 325,000 National Guardsmen, and 176,000 members of the Reserve, making the U.S. Army the largest branch of the military.

I want to thank our brave men and women in uniform for their sacrifices to our country. Their dedication and their selflessness have made our Nation safer, and the first priority of the Federal Government ought to be our own national security.

Now, we have to think back to President George Washington's first annual address to Congress, where he said: To be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving the peace in the world.

That includes a nonnegotiable tenet of America's national security, which is ``peace through strength.''

I have said before and I want to reiterate, we must be prepared at all times to stamp out aggression because weakness is provocative. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, and a strong and capable military is the best way to do that.

In a few short weeks, we will celebrate Independence Day. I encourage all Americans to recognize and appreciate the freedoms that the Army has defended for 250 years, and I will continue to defend that in the future. And I want to thank President Trump for bringing attention to the 250th birthday of the U.S. Army with the festivities that are going on this weekend in Washington, DC.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

John ThuneRepublican, South Dakota

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Official Text ↗

Halt All Lethal Trafficking of Fentanyl Act (Executive Session)

John ThuneRepublican, South Dakota

Mr. President, later today our friends in the House will be voting on the HALT Fentanyl Act. This is important legislation, and I am glad that it will soon be on its way to the President's desk.

I don't need to tell anybody about the terrible impact of drug overdoses in this country--many of them caused by fentanyl. More Americans die of drug overdoses each year than the number of Americans who died in the entirety of the Vietnam war.

Just 3 years ago, the New England Journal of Medicine estimated we were losing 22 teenagers every week to drug overdoses. Twenty-two teenagers every week, that is like losing an entire high school classroom week after week, and no part of this country has been spared from the influx of fentanyl.

We certainly have seen it in my home State of South Dakota. Enough fentanyl was seized in Sioux Falls, SD, last year to kill 2.5 million people.

Law enforcement reports that the cartels have a presence in our area, and the price of a single pill has dropped from $40 a few years ago to just $5 per pill today, largely due to the growing supply.

As bad as this situation is today, it was much worse a few years ago. Before 2018, the fentanyl analogs that were killing so many Americans were generally classified as schedule II substances, meaning regulations were less stringent and violations carried lighter penalties.

And if a particular analog was moved to schedule I, the cartels would simply alter the chemical composition slightly, which meant the new analog wasn't subject to stricter enforcement even though it was no less deadly, but that ended in 2018 when the Trump administration temporarily reclassified all fentanyl analogs under schedule I. And Congress has extended that temporary reclassification several times because it works.

Now it is time to make that permanent. That is where the HALT Fentanyl Act comes in. It will permanently classify fentanyl analogs as what we know them to be: the deadliest kind of drugs. And it will ensure that law enforcement has an important tool to go after the people bringing this poison into our country and peddling it in our communities.

I want to thank Senators Cassidy and Johnson and Chairman Grassley for their leadership on this issue and for getting this bill to this point. I expect today's vote in the House will be broadly bipartisan, as it was in the Senate, and it will soon be signed into law by President Trump--all made possible by their efforts.

The HALT Fentanyl Act has drawn support from law enforcement officers and State attorneys general, and perhaps, most significantly, it has the support of families of numerous Americans who have died from fentanyl overdoses. And I am grateful to those families for their passionate advocacy on this issue and on passage of this bill.

The HALT Fentanyl Act is just one step in the fight against the scourge of fentanyl. In the coming weeks, we will be taking up legislation to address another aspect of the fight, securing our borders. Much of the fentanyl in our country comes across an international border so securing our borders is a key step to preventing shipments of this poison from getting into our country in the first place, and the bill we will be voting on in the coming weeks will make a generational investment in border security, including finishing the border wall and investing in personnel and technology to stop illegal aliens and illegal drugs from getting across.

Too many Americans have lost their lives to drug overdoses. And so many of those deaths were caused by a single pill containing a lethal dose of fentanyl. Republicans will continue our efforts to end this crisis and prevent illegal drugs from getting into our country and devastating our communities.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

Charles E. SchumerDemocrat, New York

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Official Text ↗

Trump Administration (Executive Session)

Charles E. SchumerDemocrat, New York

Mr. President, I don't often agree with the conservative Wall Street Journal editorial board, but they had it right this morning in their op-ed. They said:

That is what The Wall Street Journal said.

I agree, Trump has no China trade strategy.

Yesterday, President Trump shouted from the mountaintops that a trade deal with China has been ``done,'' but in reality, nothing of the sort happened.

It is typical Trump. He just makes things up that he thinks please himself and please his rightwing for the moment. In truth, Donald Trump struck a feeble truce and calls it a victory.

In fact, calling this a ``truce,'' calling it ``feeble'' would be putting it kindly. Donald Trump's actions with China and the handshake yesterday accomplished virtually nothing. China has outfoxed him, and we are just back where we started.

After months of Donald Trump trying to talk tough on China, China today has more leverage over the United States than when Trump started on this venture. Donald Trump's trade war has been a colossal failure and a chaotic mess, with virtually nothing to show for it.

Donald Trump should go back to the drawing board and start over and come up with a plan that actually goes after China, by joining with our allies instead of going to war with them, by having them be allies with us to put pressure on China. And that will make action against China much tougher and more successful, instead of what Trump did, alienating our allies and having them ally with China instead of us.

And Donald Trump should tell Mr. Navarro to get another job. This man has had terrible advice, in Donald Trump's first term and now in Donald Trump's second term.

Two months since America's supposed ``Liberation Day,'' it is clear that Donald Trump's trade strategy is not working, and his main problem is that he doesn't have a coherent strategy at all. Donald Trump's only move seems to be creating chaos. It is as if he wakes up in the morning and picks a country out of a hat. It just pops into his head, and he runs with it--no strategy, no coherence, no understanding or appreciation of what occurred the day before or might occur the day after. He has turned markets manic, and he has paralyzed business.

Business leaders you talk to, from one end of America to the other-- big business, medium-size business, small business--say they are paralyzed. They can't move because they don't know what he is going to do next on tariffs. And given how erratic and inconsistent he has been, who can blame them.

One Kentucky small business owner, a Trump supporter who runs a baseball goods company, described this trade war as ``a vacation from hell.'' To millions of American businesses, that is exactly what has happened. This is a vacation from hell, self-imposed by Donald Trump.

As the summer break begins, and families start traveling around the country, that is exactly what Americans are feeling as well: a vacation from hell, thanks to Donald Trump's tariff policies.

Official Text ↗

Broadband (Executive Session)

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.

Richard J. DurbinDemocrat, Illinois

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Official Text ↗

Judiciary (Executive Session)

Richard J. DurbinDemocrat, Illinois

Mr. President, the first few months of this administration, we witnessed unprecedented, unacceptable attacks on the Federal judiciary by President Trump and his allies.

In one particularly egregious example, President Trump demanded the impeachment of a Federal judge who ruled against the administration, and President Trump said this man was ``a Radical Left Lunatic, a troublemaker and agitator.'' That is a direct, specific quote from the President of the United States about a sitting Federal judge.

On Memorial Day, President Trump referred to members of the bench as ``USA HATING JUDGES'' and ``MONSTERS WHO WANT OUR COUNTRY TO GO TO HELL.'' That is a direct quote from the President of the United States about sitting Federal judges.

This kind of reckless, inflammatory language is part of the President's ongoing attempt to intimidate the Federal judiciary. We are supposed to take this as acceptable conduct? It should be condemned by all political leaders, regardless of your political party. But my Republican colleagues have said nothing in response to these attacks on Federal judges. It is the ``silence of the lambs.''

In April, one of my Republican colleagues had the courage to say out loud why Republicans are not speaking up. As she put it, ``We are all afraid.''

Their fear is simply emboldening this President. Last month, President Trump was asked if he needs to uphold the Constitution. In response, he said:

It was shocking to hear that response from the President--even this President--and it demonstrates just how little regard he has for our fundamental rights and our Constitution. Yet my Republican colleagues are silent.

Their unwillingness to speak truth to power calls to mind a line from ``A Man for All Seasons":

The American people have already seen and suffered through the chaos that has come from the silence of our elected officials. So long as they fail to speak up, the chaos and lawlessness will continue.

It is not only President Trump who is intimidating judges and attacking judicial independence; House Republicans are acting as accomplices, filing Articles of Impeachment against six Federal judges simply because they ruled against President Trump.

House Republicans have continued their attack on the judiciary with their reconciliation bill they passed last month. Buried in this 1,000- page bill is a provision that would strip Federal courts of their ability to enforce a contempt citation when a party fails to comply with certain types of injunctions. The contempt power is integral to the authority of the Federal courts. Without the contempt power, parties could simply disregard court orders.

Currently, Trump administration officials know that if they violate court orders, they can be held in contempt and subject to fines or even jail time. But President Trump doesn't want the courts or anyone else to stand in his way, and that led House Republicans to advance a provision prohibiting courts from enforcing some contempt citations. This would let President Trump pursue his agenda without any concern of being held accountable in the courts, and it would prevent courts from enforcing contempt citations in all manner of cases, whether the injunction issues today, tomorrow, or even 10 years ago.

Maybe House Republicans thought no one would notice this provision. Maybe they thought nobody would have the nerve to oppose the President. But I can tell you, the Senate Democrats read the provision. We noticed it. We spoke out against it all week, and we will do everything in our power to ensure it does not become law.

The attacks on the judiciary not only threaten our Constitution, they threaten the judges and their families themselves. Recent reporting has revealed a dramatic spike in threats against judges. Between the beginning of March and the end of May, 197 Federal judges were threatened. Judges and their families have received threats in the form of anonymous pizza deliveries to their homes. These deliveries are meant to show that the perpetrator knows exactly where the judges and their families live. So far, more than 100 pizzas have been delivered to more than a dozen judges and their relatives.

It is not a laughing matter. At least 20 of these deliveries were made using the name of Judge Esther Salas's son Daniel Anderl, who was murdered--murdered--at his family's home by a former litigant. Even Justice Amy Coney Barrett's family has been reportedly receiving unsolicited pizza deliveries.

Whether I agree with these judges when it comes to their philosophy is beside the point. This is frightening. Judge Salas herself has characterized the deliveries as ``psychological warfare'' that sends the message: ``Do you want to end up like Judge Salas? ``Do you want to end up like Daniel?''

These instances are sickening. They threaten not only judges and their families but judicial independence and the rule of law. They must be investigated, and they must be stopped.

Over a month ago, as ranking member of the Senate Judiciary Committee, I sent a letter to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel. I asked them to investigate the deliveries and other threats against Federal judges and provide information on steps they have taken to protect these judges and their families. I have yet to receive a response.

On Tuesday, I sent another letter urging them once again to investigate these threats against judges and highlighting the need for action. The Federal judiciary and our government can wait no longer.

Last week, I met with three Federal judges to discuss judicial security. Judge Salas was among them. Her experience is a reminder how important judicial security is and how much is at stake. Our meeting also served as a reminder of how our judges have shown tremendous courage in the face of these ongoing threats.

We should all be grateful for their public service and their willingness to don black robes and act without fear or favor. We should also be grateful for law enforcement officials protecting our judges. But it is not enough to merely acknowledge and appreciate the courage and dedication of our judges and law enforcement.

The Justice Department and the FBI must investigate and must act now. The President and his allies must stop these attempts to intimidate a coequal branch of government, and congressional Republicans need to step up publicly and stand behind these judges.

In the meantime, I will continue to stand up for the judiciary and highlight the need to protect our judges, and I will continue to stand against those who threaten our judges and the rule of law, whether from the right or the left. I hope my Republican colleagues will find their voices and join me.

I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.

Jeff MerkleyDemocrat, Oregon

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Jeff MerkleyDemocrat, Oregon

Colleagues, we are at an extraordinary time when there is a ``Government For Sale'' sign on the White House lawn. We have never seen this in the history of the United States of America.

President Trump is engaged in an extraordinary level of corruption. Let me just provide two examples.

As President, he said to the world: Come and buy my meme coin, my Trump coin, and you will be invited to a very special dinner to have access to me. And the 220 people who buy the most coins over a multimonth period, hold onto them. You will be invited.

This dinner was held 2 weeks ago, and 220 people spent an estimated $150 million in order to attend that dinner.

A meme coin is basically a nothingburger. What is it? It is not something you can do international transactions on. It is nothing you can print out and put on your wall. It is, simply, kind of a hobby coin.

People didn't pay $150 million for a digital hobby coin. They paid it because the President said: This will give you access to me and my team. And he provided that access. And he said: The top 25 buyers of this coin will get something extra special, some extra special tour. Initially, it was said it would be of the White House. Later, it was not clear if it would be at the White House. In fact, there is no transparency.

We do not have a list of who these 220 people are or what they paid. But we do know one of these individuals; that is the individual Javier Selgas. He is the CEO of Freight Technologies. He said: We bought $2 million of the Trump meme coin, and we are planning to buy $20 million of the Trump coin in order to influence the policy of how freight is treated between Mexico and the United States of America.

He was very clear about it: We are buying access, and we are buying influence.

What happens with that money? It simply goes into Trump's pocket. Is he producing an item of any value that he is selling? No. He is selling access and influence. So that is one example.

Then, he has another crypto enterprise in which he is inviting folks to use a digital coin, a different type of digital coin called a stablecoin; use it in international transactions: Give me your dollars. I will invest your dollars. I get to keep all the proceeds from those investments, and you can use my digital coin called USD1 for international business transactions.

Why would you use this coin instead of just using the dollars themselves? To make special affection on behalf of the President of the United States of America.

There is a company, MGX. MGX is tied to the Government of the United Arab Emirates. MGX said: ``We will buy $2 billion of your coins.''

That makes the $2 million from Freight Technologies or the $20 million

And what did they say they wanted? They said they wanted advanced AI chips, artificial intelligence chips. They wanted a world-leading AI center to be built in the United Arab Emirates.

Now, technically, it would be done through MGX. But who is the chair of MGX? The national security advisor for the Government of UAE.

So what transpired is UAE says: We want this AI center.

MGX, associated with the government, says: We will buy $2 billion of your digital coins.

And the President goes to the Middle East and says: Do you know what, I support establishing an advanced AI center, and we will partner with it in Abu Dhabi.

Abu Dhabi is one of the Emirates of UAE.

So here we have Freight Technologies on one type of coin saying we are buying these coins to get influence. Now you have MGX and UAE buying $2 billion of coins in order to get influence. This is the U.S. Government for sale in a way we have never seen. This is the Mount Everest of corruption.

And right at this moment, the Senate is debating a cryptocurrency bill. Isn't this the moment we should debate whether or not Federal elected officials--ourselves, the Vice President, the President, members of the Cabinet--should be offering for sale our personal coins in order for people to give us money? Because, really, it is just like somebody handing us a sack of money. That is what this is like.

Forbes magazine has now estimated that within the first few months of the Trump administration, the Trump family has built value in their crypto industry of $1 billion. If he had not been elected, it would be worth nothing. But because he is pumping it as President, both the meme coin and USD1 the stablecoin, the world is saying: If we want influence, we have to buy these coins. Just like in his first administration, folks said: If we want influence, we have to stay at his properties. We have to book his hotel rooms. We have to hold our events at his special locations, be it his golf courses or his hotel conference centers.

But those hotel rooms or booking conference centers in his first term are nothing on the order of magnitude of selling these cryptocurrency coins.

That $2 billion that Trump holds, his family holds, even if 4 percent is invested, that is $80 million a year. And with the passage of this bill, if we do not put an anti-corruption measure into this bill, the world will be saying: Just as we rented his hotel rooms when we do an international business transaction, we have to use USD1.

That is why we should be debating amendments on this bill. We have a responsibility to address the concerns of the people of the United States of America.

And from our very beginning--from the very beginning--on through the last now 250 years, we have been concerned about corruption and having our government end up for sale. If we turn the clock back to our Founders, Hamilton said we put an emoluments clause in our Constitution so our elected leaders could not be bribed:

[M]any mortifying examples of the prevalence of foreign corruption in republican governments.

It was to counter that foreign corruption that he had already witnessed in republican governments. So in establishing our Republic, with our separation of powers, with our checks and balances, with our vision of government by and for the people, you can't allow the elected leaders to take bribes or to take, if you will, tribute money to influence.

People say: Well, it is not a bribe if it is not tied to a specific act. Obviously, the CEO of Freight Technologies had a specific act in mind. He wanted to change a rule regarding freight transactions between Mexico and the United States of America. Clearly, the UAE had a specific desire in mind. They wanted AI chips, and they got them.

Maybe in a court you could not establish a direct this-for-that--quid pro quo, if you will--but certainly these companies knew what they were doing. They were buying access and influence. So in that sense it is at least a payment of money to the President of the United States to gain access and gain influence, and that is exactly the type of corruption that Hamilton said he had witnessed ``mortifying examples,'' and so we put a clause into the Constitution to say this could not be done.

All right. So we have a responsibility. We took an oath to the Constitution. Every single colleague, all 53 across the aisle, took the same oath to the Constitution. So now is the time to actually debate this issue and defend the Constitution. If you are not willing to debate an amendment to defend the Constitution, then essentially you are ignoring your oath to the Constitution; you are violating your oath to the Constitution of the United States of America.

When this bill came to the floor, the majority leader said we will have an open amendment process, and that was a factor considered by many colleagues when they voted for moving this bill to the floor, that there would be an opportunity for amendments. But now that the bill is here, suddenly, the Republican leadership that controls the floor says: No. We are closing off amendments. We are not going to allow any examination of the corruption that is present through this industry. We are not going to allow any examination of the loopholes in the regulatory framework that is in this bill. We are not going to allow any examination of the scams being enacted on ordinary citizens using these digital currency--these cryptocurrency ATMs.

I had never even heard of these ATMs. It turns out that there are over 300 of them in my State of Oregon. I have asked my colleagues on both sides of the aisle: Have you heard of these? They said no.

But one of our colleagues was very familiar with this form of scam on seniors--Senator Durbin. He has an amendment that should be considered.

So because it is so important that we take this moment and we honor our responsibility to examine these issues, I will be coming back to the floor in order to offer a point of order that this bill violates the Senate pay-go provisions and, therefore, we shouldn't be doing this bill until that is remedied. I will also be coming back to table the blocking amendment that the majority leader put in place to prevent anyone from offering amendments. So both those votes will occur about half an hour from now.

Let's get our heads together about our responsibilities as Senators representing the people of the United States. Let's get our heads together about our responsibility to the Constitution. Let's get our heads together about taking on this open sale of the government being conducted out of the Oval Office, just down Pennsylvania Avenue.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.

Jack ReedDemocrat, Rhode Island

Mr. President, I rise today to discuss S. 1582, the so- called GENIUS Act.

Several weeks ago, when the majority leader said we would have votes on amendments, I took him seriously, and I was one of the first to file. And we could have been voting on amendments--my amendments, those of my colleagues--at any time in the last few weeks, but that hasn't happened.

That is regrettable because the GENIUS Act, as it is currently drafted, is, I believe, fundamentally flawed. The GENIUS Act exposes taxpayers, consumers, and the financial system to unacceptable risk and creates venues for criminals, terrorists, and rogue governments to finance their illicit activities.

Among other things, this bill places the U.S. Government stamp of approval on Tether, the world's largest stablecoin, which is based in El Salvador and favored by North Korea, Russian arms dealers, ransomware attackers, the Iranian military, the drug cartels, and so many other criminal organizations.

The GENIUS Act takes already weak State laws and makes them weaker and applies them nationwide, making it possible for stablecoin companies to operate with near-zero capital and unable to withstand a financial crisis. It is possible for stablecoin companies to avoid getting an audit. It is impossible for the government to revoke a stablecoin company's charter, even if it turns out to be a Ponzi scheme or if an executive dips into customer funds.

The GENIUS Act buys into the belief that the billionaires running the industry know what they are doing and that the marriage of complex financial products and complex technology simply can't fail. The one thing the billionaires do know how to do is protect their interests.

But, not surprisingly, this bill leaves open the door to bailouts, which we have seen time and time again for other lightly regulated nonbanks that got into trouble, like Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, AIG, and Bear Stearns.

When there is a run on a stablecoin--and there very likely will be a run one day--the industry will turn to the American taxpayer for a bailout, and the GENIUS Act paves the way for that to happen with no limits on the Federal Reserve's authority to prop up the industry.

Finally, this bill perpetuates Donald Trump's naked corruption. It actually green-lights the name of Trump's stablecoin, USD1, and it allows Trump's handpicked regulators to write the rules of the road governing his most recent business venture.

We need to provide real guardrails that will protect consumers, real tools for our national security Agencies to address this new technology, and real authority for regulators to intervene in a crisis--real guardrails and real tools, not words on a page that give only the aura of regulation and protection with no teeth.

My amendments and those offered by colleagues on both sides of the aisle would provide these tools and authorities. However, it appears that we won't have the opportunity to consider a single one of them and improve this legislation. Because of that, I would urge my colleagues to oppose this bill.

With that, Mr. President, I yield the floor.

I suggest the absence of a quorum.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.

The bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.

James LankfordRepublican, Oklahoma

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Official Text ↗

Tribute to Christian Jaspersen (Executive Session)

James LankfordRepublican, Oklahoma

Mr. President, just like you do, I get a lot of requests in my office. I get about 150,000 emails a year. I don't know how many different requests that I get to come in for personal meetings, both instate and here in Washington, DC, but a few weeks ago I got a video request from a bow-tied 8-year-old asking for a meeting with me--a person I had never met before, but he said he wanted to be able to come in and talk to me about rare childhood diseases. And I have to tell you, you would have to see the video to be able to see the meeting request that I got in from Christian Jaspersen.

He is from Keota, OK, which no one can find here without using Google Maps, I promise you. But he was enthusiastically wanting to be able to share his story about a complex medical history and how things have gone for him. So we said yes.

Christian was born with a very rare medical condition that most of us couldn't pronounce, much less want to be able to live with. He was born with his intestines outside of his abdomen. That impacts about 1,500 babies a year. It is extremely rare.

Patients are born sometimes with their intestines or other organs outside their abdomen. You can imagine the damage that that does, even while they are still in the womb.

Well, he required a ton of surgeries. Several surgeries were required immediately after birth. Several digestive impacts on him will be felt for a lifetime. He spent 5 months in NICU after birth. He lost a significant portion of his intestinal tissue during those different surgeries. It has impacted his nutritional intake and his bowel function, as you can imagine.

There were some clinicians that had recommended to go ahead and remove all of it, and he would spend the rest of his life living on IV nutrition. But he was able to get a second opinion from Boston Children's Hospital. They left out from beautiful Oklahoma and headed for Boston for that second opinion.

They provided some alternative care for him, and he is growing and doing well at now 8\1/2\. He is not just 8; he is 8\1/2\. He credits his doctors for saving his life and allowing him to live his best life now. He still has to go back to Boston often, and there are unique challenges that he faces with insurance and with all the challenges of travel and, quite frankly, the finances that go along with that, but he is a very spunky young man with an extremely large personality.

He played the role of Christopher Robin in a youth production of ``Winnie the Pooh'' recently, and I bet people would pay to see that twice. He also has political aspirations. When I had the opportunity to be able to meet him and his brothers, Noah and Lane, and his mom Rachel yesterday, we had that opportunity to be able to sit down and talk. Christian told me all about the disease that he has struggled with, the treatments that he has had, the heroes at Boston Children's who have worked alongside of him, but he also informed me to be prepared to see him again because he will be a Supreme Court Justice in the days ahead. And he just might be.

So for Christian and for his wonderful family and for all that has happened and the heroes at Boston Children's and for the research that they have done, I have to express the gratitude of my State for all of that work because that is a lot of work to invest in that young man. And he is determined not to waste the investment that has been put into him but to live his best life and to be extremely productive in the days ahead.

I am grateful to the Oklahomans that spent so much time with him, working to guard his life in the earliest days, and for the folks at Boston Children's.

I look forward to ``Chief Justice Christian'' in the days ahead and seeing the work that he does and how that pans out for all of us as a country.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.

Official Text ↗

Nomination of William Long (Executive Session)

Ron WydenDemocrat, Oregon

Mr. President, in a few minutes, the Senate will vote on whether to put somebody who is up to their eyeballs in tax scams, corruption, and coverups in charge of the IRS. This ought to be an easy no.

It is one corruption bombshell after another with former Congressman Billy Long--fake tax credits, scam tax advice, shadowy political donations that went straight into his pocket, promises of personal favors, and no-show jobs with high-paying Federal salaries.

Yesterday came the latest revelation. My Finance Committee staff investigators determined that Long appears to be implicated in a major bribery scheme in his old congressional district. The scandal unfolded while he was in office.

Twelve people in Missouri and Arkansas pled guilty or went to jail when these crimes were prosecuted. It was a criminal case the size of the Ozarks.

Court documents identified him in one guilty plea as ``U.S. Representative #1.'' That is the guilty plea of a man named Donald Andrew Jones, D.A. Jones. Jones's prosecution involved kickbacks and other illicit payments, a network of executives, and the misuse of charity funds in Springfield, MO, his hometown. The Justice Department's summary of the case describes ``payments routed through different business entities or lobbying firms'' as well as D.A. Jones's ``advocacy services, including direct contact with elected and appointed public officials.''

The guilty plea describes multiple communications in which Jones said he interacted with Billy Long, ``U.S. Representative #1.'' It includes discussions of services performed by Long's office. It includes descriptions of interactions with Long's top adviser. It includes Jones directing political donations and offering to hand-deliver a check to Billy Long to guarantee he was immediately aware of the money's source.

For his role in this bribery scheme, Jones got a prison sentence of a year and a day behind bars.

The Finance Committee held Billy Long's nomination hearing a few weeks ago. I asked several questions in writing about this matter that were informed by certain reports brought to my investigations team. I laid out the names of all the characters and organizations involved in this massive bribery scandal.

I asked the former Congressman whether he or his campaign received payments from anybody involved. I asked whether he was an unindicted coconspirator in a Federal criminal case

Here is the answer:

Colleagues, this is just impossible to believe. We are talking about a major bribery scandal that unfolded in Billy Long's hometown--not even on the other side of the district. He is implicated in a guilty plea as ``U.S. Representative #1.'' The idea that he doesn't know anybody involved is just absurd.

I am convinced, colleagues, there is more to this story. Senators ought to ask themselves whether they want to be on the record supporting this nomination when the rest of it comes to light.

In my view, this nomination should never have come to the Senate floor. Billy Long never did any serious legislating on tax issues. He has no experience in tax policy. What he does have is experience in tax fraud.

He left office in 2023 after an unsuccessful Senate campaign. He went straight into the tax fraud industry. He teamed up with a bunch of sketchy operators selling tax deals that were sleazy at best. He got paid to promote fake Tribal tax credits by a firm called White River Energy. Neither Long nor White River can tell us what Tribe they acquired these so-called tax credits from.

The IRS confirmed to my staff that the credits were fake. They said that the promoters of them could face prosecution.

The same day a Bloomberg News article exposed this scheme, December 19--just a few days after Donald Trump announced Long's nomination--the CFO of the company got on a call with investors and told them they would soon have friends at the IRS to clean up their mess. My investigators obtained the audio. We have it on tape.

Not long thereafter, White River executives started cutting checks to Long's failed Senate campaign that had ended years before. Between their donations and others that poured in after his nomination went public, Billy Long was able to stuff $130,000 into his own pockets by repaying his personal campaign loans.

Now he has refused to answer any questions about this scheme and his role in it.

If that is not enough reason to oppose this nominee, let me talk briefly about the employee retention tax credit. This was a small business rescue program Congress created during the depths of the pandemic. But after it expired, the scamsters came in, and they turned it into a firehose of fraud.

Billy Long must have seen an opportunity, and he used his credibility as a former Congressman to sling these tax credits to anybody who would listen. We have him on tape saying that ``everybody qualifies'' for the ERTC. That is a lie. He bragged about getting money for a funeral home even though the pandemic was a boom time for that kind of business due to the number of Americans dying of COVID-19.

Finance Committee investigators obtained another recording, this time of an executive at a firm called Appreciation Financial that sold the scam-ridden tax credits. He said he made the Congressman his guest to the inauguration earlier this year. He said they had dinner and spent a few nights together. His exact quote on the subject of IRS enforcement around employee retention credits is this:

I asked Long about this at his nomination hearing in written questions, whether he knew this executive and what he promised him. There was no real answer either time.

Now, colleagues, I will say it again. That ought to be enough to vote down this nomination, but if you want more scandal, let's talk about no-show jobs at the Office of Personnel Management.

Back in March, Mr. Long was made a senior advisor to the Director of OPM. Our staff asked Mr. Long in a due diligence meeting what his responsibilities were there. He picked up a recent OPM press release, read it word for word, and then said he worked on it. When asked for additional detail or more examples of his duties, he mumbled a few things about retirement and proofreading--no other information. Now, the Congressman is a talkative guy. His brevity on this subject speaks for itself.

After that meeting, Finance Committee investigators obtained copies of internal OPM work calendars belonging to Billy Long and three persons who were hired with him. They were nearly blank--a scant meeting here and there; no evidence of legitimate work being performed.

An investigative reporter for the Talking Points Memo dug into the matter. Neither Billy Long nor OPM would provide any real answers either.

It sure looks to me like the former Congressman got high-paying, no- show jobs for himself and three others. If they were doing real work, they would have told us what they were doing. They have nothing to lose if everything is on the level.

Somebody who ripped off the taxpayer by accepting a no-show job on a maxed-out salary cannot be trusted to run the IRS. Colleagues, it is that simple.

And let's remember, this was going on just as the Trump-Musk-DOGE crowd were first breaking into OPM with the goal of terrorizing public servants and triggering mass layoffs.

So I close with just one question: How can the Senate possibly-- possibly--put this individual in charge of our tax system?

The reality is that this is all about fairness.

It wouldn't be all that difficult for the Trump administration to go back and find a tax expert or somebody with lots of management experience to run this vital Agency. We had great working relationships with the first Trump IRS Commissioner, Chuck Rettig. This is not about whether you have an ``R'' or a ``D'' next to your name. There are serious issues to deal with when it comes to the Tax Code--protecting taxpayer data, building on our improvements in taxpayer service.

The Trump administration is signaling that the wealthy have a green light to commit tax fraud, and that is outrageous, with huge implications and consequences for years to come.

The bottom line is, fairness matters at the IRS. Independence matters at the IRS. Ethics and honesty matter at the IRS. The American people aren't going to get any of that--none--from Billy Long. He is surrounded, in my view, by a cloud of corruption, and we ought to keep that away from the IRS at all costs.

Mr. President, I urge my colleagues to oppose the Long nomination that we will vote on in a few minutes.

I yield the floor.

Mike CrapoRepublican, Idaho

Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to vote in favor of the confirmation of Congressman Billy Long, who is nominated to serve as Commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service.

The IRS is responsible for helping American taxpayers understand and meet their tax responsibilities, and enforcing the law with integrity and fairness.

However, the Agency has been plagued by inefficiencies, outdated systems, and low employee morale, despite an influx of funding.

At his confirmation hearing, Congressman Long pledged to refocus the IRS on its primary mission to collect Federal taxes and placed an emphasis on prioritizing IT modernization and improving customer service.

He also stated unequivocally that politicization has no place at the agency.

American taxpayers will benefit from these initiatives, and I look forward to working with Congressman Long to ensure they are implemented, if confirmed.

I also thank Congressman Long again for his time spent working through the Finance Committee's rigorous nomination process.

Despite accusations to the contrary, Congressman Long made clear in both verbal and written responses that he

With respect to contributions made to his Senate campaign, Congressman Long has stated repeatedly that he followed Federal Election Commission guidelines.

I am confident that Congressman Long is equipped to lead the IRS as Commissioner. I encourage my colleagues to join me in advancing his nomination.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Carolina.

Thom TillisRepublican, North Carolina

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to begin the vote now scheduled for a later time.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there an objection?

Without objection, it is so ordered.

Official Text ↗

Vote on Long Nomination (Executive Session)

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to the Long nomination?

Ted BuddRepublican, North Carolina

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 senior assistant bill clerk called the roll.

Richard J. DurbinDemocrat, Illinois

I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Ossoff), and the Senator from California (Mr. Padilla) are necessarily absent.

The result was announced--yeas 53, nays 44, as follows:

The nomination was confirmed.

On page S3366, June 12, 2025, first column, the following appears: NOT VOTING--3 Gallego Ossoff Padilla

The online Record has been corrected to read: NOT VOTING--3 Gallego Ossoff Padilla The nomination was confirmed.

(Mr. SULLIVAN assumed the Chair.)

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the motion to reconsider is considered made and laid upon the table and the President will be immediately notified of the Senate's action.

Official Text ↗

Legislative Session

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the Senate will resume legislative session and consideration of S. 1582, which the clerk will report.

The senior assistant executive clerk read as follows:

Pending:

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.

Jeff MerkleyDemocrat, Oregon

I move to table amendment No. 2310, so I can have an amendment considered to the bill, an amendment that would end current and potential crypto corruption by Federal elected officials, including the President, Vice President, and all Members of Congress.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion to table.

Is there a sufficient second?

There appears to be a sufficient second.

The clerk will call the roll.

The senior assistant executive clerk called the roll.

Richard J. DurbinDemocrat, Illinois

I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Ossoff), and the Senator from California (Mr. Padilla) are necessarily absent.

The result was announced--yeas 45, nays 52, as follows:

The motion was rejected.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. There will now be up to 2 minutes of debate equally divided between the two leaders or their designees.

Lindsey GrahamRepublican, South Carolina

Mr. President, I yield back all the time on our side.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.

Jeff MerkleyDemocrat, Oregon

Mr. President, my colleagues will remember the phrase ``Senate pay-as-you-go,'' or better known as pay-go. It was initiated by my colleagues across the aisle to say each bill should be paid for, and they created a point of order to that effect.

But this bill is not paid for. It spends $115 million. Cost that. And there is no offsetting revenue of any kind. So it violates the Senate pay-go rule.

Now, I know all my colleagues like to say they are fiscal conservatives, and they wanted to stand up for this pay-go rule. Well, this is a chance to actually exercise some fiscal restraint.

Already, we have the situation where we are talking about making tax cuts permanent that will cost $50 trillion in this coming ``Big, Not So Beautiful Bill''--$50 trillion in new debt compared to current law, incredibly irresponsible. Well, here is a chance to do a small item that is fiscally responsible. Honor your previous commitment to the philosophy of Senate pay-go and vote for this point of order.

Mr. President, since all time has been yielded back by my colleague, I raise a point of order that the pending amendment violates section 4106 of the Concurrent Resolution on the Budget for Fiscal Year 2018, H. Con. Res. 71 of the 115th Congress, the Senate pay-as-you-go, better known as pay-go, point of order.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from South Carolina.

Lindsey GrahamRepublican, South Carolina

Mr. President, pursuant to section 904 of the Congressional Budget Act of 1974 and the waiver provisions of applicable budget resolutions, I move to waive all applicable sections of that act and applicable

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion.

Is there a sufficient second?

There appears to be a sufficient second.

The clerk will call the roll.

The assistant bill clerk called the roll.

Richard J. DurbinDemocrat, Illinois

I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Ossoff), and the Senator from California (Mr. Padilla) are necessarily absent.

The result was announced--yeas 64, nays 33, as follows:

The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 64, the nays are 33. Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.

The motion was agreed to.

John ThuneRepublican, South Dakota

Mr. President, I ask consent that the next two votes be 10-minute votes.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Under the previous order, all amendments pending to S. 1582 with the exception of amendment No. 2307 are withdrawn.

The amendments were withdrawn.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question now occurs on adoption of the amendment.

The yeas and nays were previously ordered.

The clerk will call the roll.

The senior assistant executive clerk called the roll.

Richard J. DurbinDemocrat, Illinois

I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Ossoff), and the Senator from California (Mr. Padilla) are necessarily absent.

The result was announced--yeas 67, nays 30, as follows:

The amendment (No. 2307), in the nature of the substitute, was agreed to.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The minority leader.

Charles E. SchumerDemocrat, New York

I ask consent to address the Chamber for 20 seconds.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

Charles E. SchumerDemocrat, New York

Mr. President, I just saw something that sickened my stomach--the manhandling of a U.S. Senator. We need immediate answers to what the hell went on.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

John ThuneRepublican, South Dakota

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to waive the mandatory quorum call with respect to Calendar No. 66, S. 1582.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.

The senior assistant executive clerk read as follows:

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the mandatory quorum call under rule XXII has been waived.

The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on S. 1582, a bill to provide for the regulation of payment stablecoins, and for other purposes, as amended, shall be brought to a close?

The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.

The clerk will call the roll.

The assistant bill clerk called the roll.

Patty MurrayDemocrat, Washington

I announce that the Senator from Illinois (Mr. Durbin), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), the Senator from Maine (Mr. King), the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Ossoff), the Senator from California (Mr. Padilla), and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders) are necessarily absent.

The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 67, nays 27, as follows:

The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote the yeas are 67, the nays are 27.

Three-fifths of the Senators duly chosen and sworn having voted in the affirmative, the motion is agreed to.

The motion was agreed to.

The Senator from Florida.

Official Text ↗

Legislative Session

Ashley MoodyRepublican, Florida

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to legislative session for a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

The Democratic leader.

Official Text ↗

Alex Padilla

Charles E. SchumerDemocrat, New York

I mentioned a few minutes ago, I had seen a video that sickened my stomach of a U.S. Senator being manhandled, we now know, by Federal agents and dragged out of a hearing room.

Now there is a second video that is even worse. He has been thrown to the ground--again, manhandled, brutally taken down, handcuffed. It was disgusting.

Anyone who looks at this--it will turn their stomach to look at this video and see what happened. It reeks--reeks--of totalitarianism. This is not what democracies do.

Senator Padilla was there legitimately in that building to ask questions of what is going on in California, which everybody wants to know answers to. We don't get answers when we ask the administration questions in one way or another. So Senator Padilla was exercising his duty as a Senator for his constituents to try and find out what happened and, instead, he gets manhandled, thrown out of the room, thrown on the ground, and handcuffed.

We need a full investigation immediately as to what happened and who did what and what is going to be done to see that this doesn't happen again to Senator Padilla or other American citizens who are seeking their right to redress. It is despicable; it is disgusting; it is so un-American--so un-American--and we need answers. We need answers immediately.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Mexico.

Official Text ↗

Alex Padilla

Ben Ray LujánDemocrat, New Mexico

Mr. President, I am sure the American people right now are just starting to see what happened to the U.S. Senator from California--the senior Senator from California--Alex Padilla. He is at a press conference in California, where the Secretary of Homeland Security is, and he wants to ask some questions, with all that is going on in California. Look, I don't know what all happened, but Federal agents took him down--took down a U.S. Senator--saying that they are doing their job.

Why aren't more people down here speaking up about this nonsense?

This is ridiculous. I would use some other language, but I would probably get tossed off the floor right now.

Growing up on a small farm and cleaning a barn, my dad taught me how to take a shovel to all the stuff that came out of the animals. You know what that is called. I know what it is called. And some of the animals that did that were males. They were bulls. And the stuff that came out of them has a few names to it. I will call it manure today.

This is nonsense. This is awful. How can these Federal agents get away with this?

Is the President of the United States telling folks to go down and start arresting U.S. Senators, taking them down to the floor? Is that what we have come to, the executive branch doing this to our colleagues?

This is a Democrat. What happens when it happens to a Republican? Will I hear from my Republican colleagues then to say: No, we should not do this, Mr. President. Back down. Back off. You are wrong.

Will someone here have the backbone to tell the President of the United States: You crossed the line. Stop it.

I am so disappointed, so disappointed. And as a Latino U.S. Senator, for this to happen to another Hispanic here--there are several of us who are Hispanics here, Democrats and Republicans. Speak up.

When one of my predecessors was here, Dennis Chavez, there were places he could not eat in this town because of the color of his skin, because he was from a State called New Mexico.

Are we going to use our voices? Are we better than this in the United States of America? Or are we going to show all the other folks in the world who choose to do this to the people who were duly elected by their people: No, just go arrest them. Throw them down on their face. Treat them like garbage.

We are better than this in America, you all. We have got to speak up. I hope, by tonight, every Democrat and Republican Member of this body has the courage to say something. This has gone too far. It is not right.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.

Official Text ↗

Alex Padilla

Jeff MerkleyDemocrat, Oregon

Mr. President, I have come to the floor to say I am extremely outraged that the executive branch's security team has shoved a U.S. Senator out of a room, has proceeded to put that U.S. Senator on the ground and to handcuff that Senator. This is what we expect to see in authoritarian nations that can't tolerate a question, and they start to attack the institutions.

What we are seeing in the United States right now, we are seeing it in the form of the President willfully breaking the law on the rules controlling the executive branch, time and time again. We see it in his attack on the press, his attack on the universities, his attack on extorting law firms. We see it in the form of him using the Trump v. United States lawsuit to say: I, the President, am above the law, and I could issue pardons to the whole executive branch, who is above the law.

That is not the way it works in a republic. At least, it is not the way it works if we are a republic.

If we, through a subservient Congress and in combination with a deferential Supreme Court, slide into this authoritarian state, then we have failed our oath to the Constitution.

It is absolutely wrong that any U.S. Senator, for attempting to ask a question, be treated in this fashion.

I double down on the call of Leader Schumer. This merits a full bipartisan investigation--bipartisan because all of us are Members of the legislative branch. All of us have taken an oath to the Constitution, and all of us should stand up for each other and certainly our ability to explore the policies of this administration.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.

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Alex Padilla

Cory A. BookerDemocrat, New Jersey

Mr. President, I never thought I would imagine having to stand here and discuss what I saw today: a U.S. Senator, in his own community, in the city in which he grew up, elected under the authority of the people, stepping forward to get answers to legitimate questions, and we see him being thrown to the ground after being removed from a room forcibly and put into handcuffs by multiple people.

This, to me, is such an abuse of authority. It is a violent act. There can be no justification of seeing a Senator forced to their knees, laid flat on the ground, their hands twisted behind their back, and being put into restraints. If you see the video, at that point, he is not fighting; he is not pushing.

But this is a pattern and a practice. This is not an isolated incident. I remind people that in my own community, in the city of Newark, we had a Congresswoman and a mayor at a facility. The mayor, invited into the gate; the Congress people, invited into a conference room; and then the mayor, asked to leave, who did leave; and then numerous agents run out to arrest that mayor. Now, the judge in this case said it was outrageous and reprimanded the Trump administration for the arrest in and of itself.

We see, time and time again, this administration trying to precipitate a response by the misuse and the abuse of force. This is more akin to authoritarian governments.

When you see a democratic nation having their executive begin to arrest mayors, begin to arrest judges, begin to arrest a U.S. Senator who is simply

We have a constitutional obligation to provide oversight to the executive; a constitutional obligation to ask questions, to make inquiries; a constitutional obligation to check and balance the authority of the executive.

So here we saw, before our eyes, a Senator in their district, in their State, asking questions, and we see him being shoved out of a room--but it did not stop there--shoved to the ground, shoved onto his belly, and have his arms pulled behind his back. This should outrage every U.S. Senator.

Adam B. SchiffDemocrat, California

Would the Senator yield for a question?

Cory A. BookerDemocrat, New Jersey

I would yield for a question while retaining the right to the floor.

Adam B. SchiffDemocrat, California

I thank the Senator for yielding.

I just watched footage of our colleague--my California colleague-- Senator Alex Padilla, being forcibly removed from a briefing by the Secretary of Homeland Security's staff. He went there to observe and to ask questions, and I watched with horror on this video, seeing these agents grab my colleague--my fellow Senator from California--grab him, push him out of the hearing, as he was identifying himself as a U.S. Senator, bringing him into a hallway, bringing him down to the ground, bringing his arms behind his back. I saw this happen to my colleague, and I am shocked by how far we have descended in the first 140 days of this administration, where we have a President calling out the military over the objection of a Governor to try to intimidate and interfere with law enforcement in California, calling out the Marines to try to inflame tensions in our city; and, now, this latest act, when a U.S. Senator goes to demand questions about the lawfulness or lawlessness of these actions, to see him tackled to the ground, brought to the ground.

What is becoming of our democracy? Are there no limits to what this administration will do? Is there no line they will not cross? We see lawlessness after lawlessness. We see threats to judges of impeachment and of physical harm. We see arrests of Members of Congress. And now this.

All of us have lived as part of a generation since World War II that was used to seeing our freedoms ever expanding. We saw walls coming down. We saw new democracies being born. We came to think that somehow this was inevitable like the laws of nature; that it was the moral arc of the universe always bending toward justice, only to see that it was not bending toward justice.

And to see this now at home; to see, in the United States of America, the executive use force like this against a Member of a coequal branch of government; to see that it has come to this already--and not a peep yet from my colleagues on the other side of the aisle, no whisper of dissent yet. I hope that changes. I hope that changes.

The Founders separated the powers between the executive and the legislative and the judiciary because they wanted to set ambition against ambition--ambition of one institution against another--to protect all of our freedom, but that requires that we go beyond our partisan affiliations and when something is wrong--dead wrong--when something is a threat to our democracy, that we call it out regardless of party. And this is wrong. This is wrong.

We ask: How do you lose a democracy? How does one lose a democracy? This is how you lose a democracy: actions like today. But even more importantly than what has just happened is what will happen in the next 24 hours. Will this be roundly condemned? Will this be roundly condemned or somehow will we just fall down some partisan line again and see another leap toward autocracy in this country?

Alex Padilla is one of the most decent people I know, one of the most dedicated public servants I know, someone of just the greatest character. We all know him well in this institution. He embodies public service. He never forgot where he came from. He came from very humble origins, and he never forgot where he came from.

And the beauty of this country is you can come from a very humble origin, and you can end up here. When I first got here, Jon Tester, a farmer from Montana and a Senator from Montana, told me about a conversation he had with John D. Rockefeller when he got here. He said Rockefeller told him: You and I came from very different places, but we both ended up here.

It is the beauty of America that Alex Padilla could end up here, by dint of his brilliance and his integrity and his compassion. And all of that is at risk. All of that is at risk right now if we let the abusive handling of this good man and so many other good men and women around the country--if we let this go without our firmest opposition, without our strongest pushback, without our strongest defense of our democracy.

With that, I ask the Senator from New Jersey whether he will yield to the Senator to my right, yield for a question.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Senator, excuse me. Let me consult the Parliamentarian for just a second.

The 10 minutes allotted to the Senator in morning business has expired. Another Senator may seek recognition in his or her own right.

The Senator from Washington.

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Alex Padilla

Patty MurrayDemocrat, Washington

Mr. President, I come to the floor this afternoon to the U.S. Senate, a place where people are elected by their constituents to come here to be their voice--every one of us, Republicans and Democrats, elected by the people whom we represent to come here and be their voice and to do the job.

What is that job? To make sure that we are being their voice and speaking out for them. And part of that has to be asking questions. Part of that has to be demanding accountability, has to be getting information so we can do the best job possible.

It is unacceptable that a U.S. Senator, in his own home State, elected by millions of people, went to ask a question for his constituents, to get an answer, and was brutally thrown to the ground and handcuffed. That is wrong, and I cannot believe that we don't have Senators on both sides of the aisle calling this out as outrageous.

This is what a democracy is about. It is about us coming to the U.S. Senate, speaking out, asking questions, getting information so we can be their voice.

What happens when that voice is stifled? What happens when that voice is thrown to the floor and handcuffed? Our democracy is lost.

I have been here for more than 32 years. I have come to this floor often to speak out, to be angry, to be a voice for my people. I have never come this close to having tears in my eyes as I speak to both sides of this aisle about this horrendous incident that occurred.

We are a democracy, but we can lose that democracy. It can be gone unless all of us speak out and forcibly reject what happened to a U.S. Senator and to send the message that in this democracy it is just, it is right, it is part of our responsibility to speak up, to ask questions, and to be able to have the knowledge we need to represent the people that we come here for.

We use our voices, we use our votes to be a part of this democracy, not violence. When violence is done by someone representing this administration in a forceful way against a U.S. Senator, how does any one of us go home and tell our constituents that they can be part of a democracy, speak out about what they believe in?

This is so wrong. This is so wrong. I hope others speak up and speak out and, as a voice, we say we want our democracy to succeed. And in order to succeed, we need to be able to use our voices and to use our votes and to ask questions without being forcibly thrown to the ground, without being arrested by speaking up.

I say to the entire country: We have a democracy. We will lose it if we can't use our voices. We will lose this democracy. None of us should be silent. None of us.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.

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Alex Padilla

Christopher MurphyDemocrat, Connecticut

Mr. President, this feels like a defining moment for the

Now, we all have townhalls, and we are all often met with constituents who oppose us, sometimes very vocally. But, speaking for myself, I don't ask law enforcement to throw my constituents to the ground and violently handcuff them because they have a different opinion from me. You know why I don't do that? Because we don't do that in a democracy. We don't do that against ordinary citizens, and we certainly don't allow the administration and the law enforcement that works for the administration to do that to a U.S. Senator.

We will enter a banana republic if we don't find a way--Republicans and Democrats--to come together around this essential question of protecting our ability and our right as Senators to speak up for our constituents.

Now, I understand that my Republican colleagues are going to need some time to gather the facts, but we already have a statement from the Department of Homeland Security that has accused Senator Padilla of being ``disrespectful,'' as if that is a rationalization for violence.

Watch the video. Even if you believe that he was ``disrespectful''-- and, given the times, that is certainly in the eye of the beholder-- that never justifies what we saw on that video: throwing anyone--never mind an elected representative of the people--to the ground to be handcuffed.

They say that he didn't identify who he was, and yet--watch the video--he clearly states:

They are going to spin this. But I am begging my Republican colleagues: Don't let them do it. Protect our ability as servants of the people to speak up for the people that we represent. Make sure that we do not normalize this kind of violence simply because the White House doesn't agree with people who dissent.

If this is how a U.S. Senator can be treated, then none of us ultimately are immune. If this is how a U.S. Senator can be treated, none of our constituents are safe.

This is a test for the country, but this is a test for the U.S. Senate as well.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Virginia.

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Alex Padilla

Tim KaineDemocrat, Virginia

Mr. President, 2 days from today, June 14, is Flag Day in the United States. It is the day every year where we celebrate the flag, but it is not the piece of cloth that we celebrate; we celebrate core American values. And the most core American value is the one that we take an oath of office to, the Constitution of the United States.

The Constitution includes a Bill of Rights, and one of the most important pieces of the Bill of Rights is the First Amendment. It was drafted by Virginian James Madison, and it talks about the fact that there can't be laws or legal restrictions against the right of the people to peacefully assemble and petition government for redress of grievances.

That right is not something we are allowed. That right is something we are guaranteed.

My colleague and our friend Alex Padilla, born and raised in Los Angeles, loves his hometown--an MIT-educated, baseball-playing engineer who returned to his home, who served on the Los Angeles City Council and now serves in this body--has some very legitimate questions about why, in an unprecedented way, the National Guard and the U.S. Marines have been deployed into his city, over the objections of the mayor, over the objections of the Governor, in a historically unprecedented way and in a way such as to escalate tensions in his town rather than to reduce them.

So he decided to go to a peaceful public assembly. It was a press conference. It wasn't a private meeting to which he was not allowed entrance. A press conference's purpose is to share information with the public.

My colleague Alex Padilla, who goes to Wednesday prayer breakfast with me every week with a bipartisan group of colleagues, attended a public event so he could ask a question about why his hometown was being besieged by the Marines and National Guard over the objection of the mayor and the objection of the Governor.

His question was a grievance. He doesn't agree with the policies of the administration. He is guaranteed in this document the right to petition government for redress of grievances as an American, which is what we are supposed to do.

The Framers of the Constitution who put this in the First Amendment did it to protect the rights of Alex Padilla and all of us, but they did it for another reason. They did it because they believed it would help democracy work better, that democracy works better when people can speak freely. Democracy works better when people can profess their religion, when the press can operate freely. And democracy works better when people can gather peacefully and share their dissenting points of view. It makes our democracy work better.

Make no mistake, the effort to manhandle our colleague to push him out of the room for asking an inconvenient question, to handcuff him, is an attempt to shut him up. It is an attempt to shut everybody up if you have a dissenting view from this administration. That is why the administration has deployed the military in an unprecedented way. They want to intimidate you.

They want to make you decide that although you were granted this as a right, they want to make you afraid to exercise the right. As I conclude, I would just say this: On Flag Day, I would encourage Americans of all kinds, find a peaceful assembly on June 14--on Flag Day--and attend it and show that you are a brave and patriotic American that embraces the First Amendment to the Constitution, and you will not allow anyone to intimidate you.

I was a missionary in Honduras in 1980 and 1981, and it was an authoritarian society. And no one was guaranteed the right to assemble or complain. You might do it and be OK one day; the next day you might be arrested; the next day you might be disappeared or even killed.

That is not who we are. We need brave, patriotic Americans to stand up, just as Senator Padilla has done, and insist upon their right to peacefully assemble and present whatever critiques or complaints they have about policies that they find to be objectionable.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Hawaii.

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Alex Padilla

Brian SchatzDemocrat, Hawaii

Mr. President, I have given a lot of speeches on this floor, and this is the least prepared but the most clear I ever will be: This is the stuff of dictatorships. It is actually happening.

A U.S. Senator was manhandled, shoved to the ground, and cuffed. He identified himself:

That should be enough. That should be enough. A U.S. Senator who is, by the way, protected by the speech and debate clause of the Constitution of the United States and a specific statute that allows him to oversee immigration facilities, and he says: I am a Senator, and I have a question.

To Chris Murphy's point, they said, well, he was being disrespectful. Being disrespectful is legal. Being disrespectful is American. Being disruptive is OK if it is just using your words and not your body. This is the stuff of dictatorships. And the thing that is making me most terrified is I see zero Republicans, except for the Presiding Officer, in this Chamber. And I understand, if it is not a member of your own party, you want some context.

There is no context that justifies this action.

Alex Padilla is not required to be impeccable in every single way in order

One of the officers who throws him to the ground as he is clearly complying, cuffs him face down on the carpet, and they say: There is no recording in here.

It is a damn press conference. It is for recording. They didn't want to hear his speaking.

And if the internet has got it accurately, the Secretary was there and delivering her remarks within earshot the whole time. She has command authority over those agents who are arresting a leader in the legislative branch.

This is not something on the internet for us to argue about. We all know what we saw. We all know what we saw. I remain hopeful that Leader Thune and other Republicans can walk us back from the brink, but I am not so sure anymore.

So as Trump's Department of Homeland Security raises the stakes and continues with a series of provocations to justify increasingly authoritarian actions, we have two obligations. One is to establish that as a legislative branch, we are not going to stand for this. And the other is those people who are peacefully protesting: Be very disciplined this weekend. Be very peaceful this weekend.

If we are going to win, we need to maintain the high ground. And I don't mean we blue; we Democrats. I mean we Americans who believe in this system of government. I have never, ever--other than January 6-- been so outraged at the conduct of an administration.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.

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Alex Padilla

Andy KimDemocrat, New Jersey

Mr. President, I have no words to describe just the absurdity of this moment and the dangers to our country and our Union. For us to be able to stand here on the floor of the Senate in this Chamber that many such important decisions have been made in, a place of deliberation--it is not only in this room that we as Senators should be able to voice the concerns that we have about the direction of our country and the problems that our Nation faces, that we get to be sworn in as U.S. Senators, that we try to do our best, that we are U.S. Senators--United States Senators--that we represent this entire Nation as a body.

And the idea that just--as I just saw the video--one of my colleagues here is thrown to the floor, handcuffed, humiliated--it is not a humiliation of that individual Senator; it is a humiliation of this body.

The shamefulness by which that was perpetrated, that the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security--shame upon those that instigated this, that followed through on this.

It is something that all of us collectively need to stand against. This isn't about partisanship. It is about what does this institution, what does this body mean and whether or not our words and our actions, as dictated by our oath that we swear to the Constitution of article I, as well, that lays out what our job is, that that is very much under threat right now.

I feel for my colleague. I don't know what is happening right now. I hope that we are able to get greater clarity about that, but what we see and what we saw on that video transpire, I hope that is something that every American in this country sees, that they see the actions that have taken place.

As someone who has worked in other nations--I worked in diplomacy and national security; I worked in nations with authoritarian leadership--I never thought I would see anything like this here at home--transpire here in the way that we saw it unfold.

Again, the humiliation befalls our body as a whole. Now the question is, What will the Senate do to stand up for ourselves? That is something that I hope every single Senator is thinking about right now.

This is not a time to put your finger up in the air and figure out which way the wind is blowing, to try to think through what type of reaction might come from the White House if we speak out against this.

This is a time for us to stand up together and stand up for each other and for this institution. And not just right now. It is about: What credibility do we have as a body going forward?

And I know, I get it. I am new here. I am one of the newer members here. I came here--I wanted to serve in this body because of what it stood for. I wanted to serve in this institution because I believe that this is an institution of incredible honor, integrity.

And even at this challenging moment in this country's history, we need this body to be able to come together.

So I call on all of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle to condemn this action, to stand united with one voice, standing up for ourselves. Otherwise, we will just cast ourselves to the margins of irrelevance in this Nation right now.

What point is it for us to stand up and show up to work every day if this is the kind of treatment that can befall any of us in this day, right now, in this country? I am outraged, and I hope others are too.

This is not a time to be silent. This is a time for us to be united and show the rest of the country what this institution means. Otherwise, we might as well go home. I, for one, want to fight for my colleague, fight for each other, fight for the Senate, and fight for our democracy.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Arizona.

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Alex Padilla

Mark KellyDemocrat, Arizona

Mr. President, I have to say this week stood out for me personally with some positive notes and some real downers.

The week didn't start great. We saw the President of the United States--for the first time, I think, in possibly my lifetime--send troops without a request from the Governor into a State because people were protesting.

And, sure, some could make an argument that maybe a few protesters got over somebody's perceived line, but they were largely peaceful protests.

What the President did is beyond his authority. It is illegal. And it was not a good start to the week, I have to say.

I also have to say there was some positive things this week. I got to meet your grandson. I think he said he was 15 years old. He got to go to the Air and Space Museum, a place that I love, a place that makes our country stand out in the best of ways. It shows what we can do when we work together, when we bring the full force of the United States behind doing things that are positive.

We sent people to the Moon in the 1960s. Your grandson got to see some of that hardware over at the Air and Space Museum.

But I also have to say that the end of this week was rather outrageous and horrific, and it was brought to the American people, I strongly believe, because of the attitude of this President and his ability to just work outside of the boundaries of what most Americans feel are in accordance with our values and our ethics.

What happened today to Senator Padilla was outrageous. It was violent. It is a scary thing to see happen in the United States of America.

Alex Padilla is a great guy. He is thoughtful. He is passionate. He is just trying to serve his constituents in the best way he knows how by doing the thing that is in our Constitution--freedom of speech, article I--by exercising his constitutional rights and his rights as a U.S. Senator to ask some questions of government officials. He was doing his job.

His job is oversight, oversight of the Department of Homeland Security. This is in a Federal building, and this didn't happen in isolation. The Trump administration has arrested a mayor and a Member of Congress and a labor leader.

The other day, I think, I mentioned the one highlight of this week, which was your grandkid, and the low light--besides this, at the end of the week--is what happened at Fort Bragg the other day: the President of the United States going to a U.S. military base and using soldiers as political props.

That is not who we are as a country. And I have to say, what I saw today is leading us down a dangerous path, and we cannot retreat to partisan corners. Senator Schatz mentioned that, other than the Presiding Officer, I don't think there are any other Republicans

This is wrong. This is not putting our country first. And I have to say, I hope we can turn things around here in the coming weeks. But in my lifetime, and certainly in my time in public office and in my time serving this country, I have never seen anything like I have seen this week.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.

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Alex Padilla

Elizabeth WarrenDemocrat, Massachusetts

Mr. President, this is a horrifying moment in our Nation's history. Today, U.S. Senator Alex Padilla was violently removed from a public briefing for asking questions on behalf of the people he represents, people in California who deserve answers about the brutal crackdown on protesters.

I have watched the video, as many of you have as well. Let me just describe what it shows. Officers pushed Senator Padilla backward, out of the room, as he said the words: I am Senator Padilla. I have questions for the Secretary.

He was then shoved to the ground. When the Senator complied with the officers and went on his knees, he was forcibly pinned onto his stomach. He was ordered to put his hands behind his back. He can be heard on the video saying he is trying to comply with their orders. Officers then put handcuffs on the Senator while he was lying on the ground. His staff was then told to stop recording the handcuffing.

He was put in handcuffs for asking a simple question. He was put in handcuffs for doing his job as a U.S. Senator. He was put in handcuffs for standing up for the Constitution of the United States. He was put in handcuffs for representing the people of California.

Now, if you are not yet convinced that President Trump and his administration are trying to suppress free speech, then just watch the video. Watch the video. If you are not yet convinced that President Trump and his administration are trying to undermine the foundations of our democracy, watch the video. If you are not yet convinced that President Trump and his administration are hellbent on punishing people with differing opinions than those of the President, then watch the video.

And here is the really chilling part. Make no mistake, what happened to Senator Padilla today is happening every day all across this country. Every day, DHS agents are throwing people to the ground and violently handcuffing them while they are not resisting, detaining them for exercising their First Amendment rights of free speech. Every day, Donald Trump is making this Nation look more and more like a fascist state.

If this is how Federal agents treat a U.S. Senator who peacefully asked questions of this administration, then we all have to ask: How far will they go? How violent will they get?

I know my Republican colleagues can see what happened today was wrong, but will any Republican Senator speak up for our democracy?

They know Senator Padilla's character. They know that Senator Padilla is a kind man, a man who is concerned for his children, a man who is concerned for his home, a man who has dedicated his life to public service, a man who is a patriot.

Where are our Republican colleagues? Where is the Republican Senate? Where are you? Stand up and speak out.

This is a continuation of what we have been seeing: Intimidate every other check on Presidential power in this country. Fire the civil service. Get rid of those people. Threaten to imprison judges. Criminally charge House Members who try to visit an ICE facility. Arrest Senators who ask questions.

This is not a drill. This is an assault on our democracy. I am calling on my Republican colleagues to join us in demanding a bipartisan investigation into this incident.

What happened at this press conference was disgraceful. It was un- American. And every Member of the U.S. Senate should condemn it and condemn it now.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon.

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Alex Padilla

Ron WydenDemocrat, Oregon

Mr. President, I was on my way to the floor to talk about clean energy policy this afternoon, but I have to join my colleagues in addressing the shocking video out of Los Angeles. I have now looked at it. If you are following at home, our colleague Senator Padilla was carrying out his constitutional responsibilities to conduct oversight and defend the people he represents. At that time, he was physically accosted and shoved out of a press conference, pushed to the ground, and handcuffed at a press conference being held by Kristi Noem.

It is a horrifying video, truly horrifying. And I am of the view--why I especially wanted to come to the floor--it is not about it happening to a U.S. Senator. Here is what it is about: If they will do this to a sitting U.S. Senator in front of a room full of media, imagine what is being done to powerless people in secret.

In Portland, in my hometown, we have had firsthand experience with this kind of activity--faceless, unidentifiable agents with guns staring down peaceful protesters. In Portland, it was a ``wall of moms.'' My neighbors--we all said then it is un-American, and I say it again this afternoon: What we have seen on our screens is un-American. It doesn't have the support of the American people, this kind of anti- democratic conduct.

I will close simply by saying this: This has to change. Peaceful Americans cannot have this kind of abuse rained down on them for the next 3\1/2\ years. It has to end now.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.

Official Text ↗

Alex Padilla

Maria CantwellDemocrat, Washington

Mr. President, I come to the floor to join my colleagues to express outrage over the actions taking place in Los Angeles when our dear colleague Alex Padilla, Senator Padilla, was thrown out of an event where he was just simply trying to express his opinion on behalf of the millions of Californians that he represents.

It is so interesting to me that this situation happened because not that long ago in the State of Washington, in Olympia, we had a bill signing, and it is no secret in the State of Washington that a guy named Tim Eyman is probably the antithesis of what our Governor Bob Ferguson believes.

He fights him on all sorts of initiatives to the people about policies that Mr. Eyman wants to express. So he is a noted individual in our State.

So Mr. Eyman shows up at a press conference to basically protest a bill that the Governor is going to sign.

And he gets into the Governor's office, and he stands right behind our Governor. One of our legislators, who basically wants the Governor to know that this individual, who he disagrees with--doesn't support this bill--has now snuck into the Governor's press conference.

So what does our Governor do? He turns around, and he looks at Mr. Eyman, and he says, ``Oh, why are you here?''

And he said, ``I'm here to protest this.''

And the Governor turns around and delivers his remarks. Because, you know why? Because our Governor was not afraid what Tim Eyman said. Our Governor didn't think, You throw him out of the building, and he is just a constituent.

It is not like he is a State rep. It is not like he got elected by people. Our Governor was not afraid to let this voice be heard. But somehow, ICE and Homeland Security are afraid of the voice of Alex Padilla. They are afraid of Alex Padilla's presence in a room.

Now, how can that be in the United States of America that a Senator elected by the people of his State, who simply wants to go to a public meeting and have his voice heard on behalf of his constituents, is handcuffed and thrown to the ground?

It is not acceptable. Our colleagues on the other side of the aisle need to say, ``This is not acceptable.''

Are we trying to freeze the voice of dissent? Are we trying to say that we cannot understand what true public policy discourse is about? I think we

And in this case, to have a U.S. Senator handcuffed and thrown to the ground is disrespectful. It is an atrocity. We need to understand how this is happening and if this administration or this side of the aisle thinks that is the way you treat the voice of a U.S. Senator expressing dissent.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.

Official Text ↗

Alex Padilla

Angela D. AlsobrooksDemocrat, Maryland

Mr. President, I stand today, and I am shaking. I am so angry. I am so enraged with the treatment that I witnessed today of my colleague Senator Padilla. This is not the America--this is not the America--that each of us comes here each day to stand on behalf of.

There are some who are saying they don't recognize this America, and I want to ring the bell today for all who are watching, for all who are listening. We have now crossed a line.

This is a dangerous day in the history of our country. When a Senator who was in a Federal building, where he had a right to be, to do an oversight responsibility on behalf of the citizens who have elected him to the Senate of the United States, and when he was there to carry out his duties, he was there peacefully, and he decided to ask a question.

And in Donald Trump's America, asking a question and pushing back caused him to be manhandled for the whole world to see--manhandled, treated like a person who had come off the street. The thuggish behavior that I saw today is absolutely unacceptable.

To put hands on this peaceful man, who is not only a Senator, he is a father, and he is a husband. He is a person. He is a venerable part of our society, who was there on behalf of the people who have elected him and who was treated violently today.

You could see his hands up in the air. You could see his hands up in the air. And that was not enough. He was taken to the ground, and he was handcuffed.

And what was the explanation that was given?

It was an explanation that any reasonable person can look and know will be a full-on lie: that he looked like an attacker.

Well, if this doesn't cause every person under the sound of my voice to shudder today, I don't know what to say about it, because today it is Senator Padilla, and--do you know what?--tomorrow, it can be any one of us.

This is not what democracy looks like. This is anything but a democracy. The right to free speech is sacred in our country. The right to free speech is sacred, and today we watched it violated in horrible ways that we will account for.

We, as a country, if we continue along this road, I tell you, we will account for it. It was Dr. Martin Luther King who said that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it does bend toward justice.

This injustice cannot stand. This cannot stand. And I tell you, America, let's be careful. We cannot continue along this road. We absolutely cannot. We must continue to encourage and allow free speech. It is the right of every person in this country.

Today, I am sickened, and I am angry, and something must happen. These people must be held to account for what happened to Senator Padilla today.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.

Official Text ↗

Alex Padilla

Lisa Blunt RochesterDemocrat, Delaware

Mr. President, you can see and feel and hear the anger, the disappointment, and the concern for the future of our country.

Senator Alex Padilla is probably one of the first people that took time to sit down with me as a freshman Senator to prepare me for this job. He serves this body and his State with intelligence and with grace and with poise. So to see my colleague pushed, manhandled, taken to the ground, arms put behind his back--this person who anyone who meets will say is more of a gentle giant than someone who deserves that kind of treatment.

It blows my mind. I think that is the thing. I am shocked. I am numb. I am angry. I think part of it is because Senator Padilla is a Senator, but there are people every day right now across this country who are facing this kind of concern about their treatment when peacefully trying to exhibit the voice of America. But also, for him, he was just doing his job of oversight.

Similarly, some of us also have spoken up about LaMonica McIver from New Jersey, also a Member of Congress doing her job--oversight.

If we don't have that ability as Senators and Congresspeople, what does that mean for all of the citizens of this country?

So in this moment, this is a pivotal moment. This is an opportunity for our leadership here in this Chamber as well as the other Members on the Democratic side and the Republican side to say: This is unacceptable. That is really what this is about.

When the incident happened, we were all on this floor, and I remember seeing the video and the shock that I felt. It literally took my breath away. And I turned to other Members on the floor to say: Have you seen this? And they had not seen it. I walked across the aisle to my Republican colleagues. Republican colleagues had not seen it. And there was a sense of shock as well.

So what remains to be seen is what we do with that shock, what we do with that indignation, what we do with the fact that Alex Padilla was doing his job on behalf of his constituents and on behalf of this country. That is what remains to be seen: Where do we go from here?

You have heard folks talk about free speech, peaceful assembly, the ability to do our job of oversight, but ultimately what this is about is the foundation of this country.

I am just shaking my head. I am shaking my head, but I am also resolute in the fact that we were called here for this moment. As bad as things may be, as bad as they may seem, we were called here for such a time as this, and the question is, What do we do with this time?

So I ask my colleagues again on both sides of the aisle to speak up against not only this incident but the incidents that we are seeing across this country. I ask my colleagues to come together on behalf of not only the American people but the democracy on which this country stands.

I will continue to stand with Alex Padilla. I will continue to stand with those folks around this country who are facing this same kind of unacceptable behavior.

Lastly, I would also mention that we do have a role and a responsibility. There are three branches of government. Thank God for the courts right now holding it down. But this moment is the moment. There won't be a light switch that says ``Oh, democracy is gone.'' That is not how it happens. I have heard my good friend Chris Murphy talk about that, that it is piece by piece, moment by moment, we see it chipped away.

Well, we have an opportunity and a responsibility to make sure we do not let this slip away.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Delaware.

Official Text ↗

Alex Padilla

Christopher A. CoonsDemocrat, Delaware

Mr. President, having just viewed a video of my friend and colleague Senator Alex Padilla being manhandled, thrown to the ground, and handcuffed after identifying himself as Senator Alex Padilla and attempting to ask a question of Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem in Los Angeles, I am shaken, I am angry, and I am gravely concerned about our path forward in this body and our Nation.

Democracy is a gift hard won and hard earned by the sacrifice of millions who have served, fought, and died, some in moments of tumult and challenge on the beaches of Normandy, on the fields of Gettysburg.

From the very beginning of our Nation until this moment, millions of Americans have stepped forward and said: I will risk it all so that my children and those I do not know can live free lives. Knowing the burdens of tyranny, knowing what it meant to live under the heel of a King, our forefathers risked everything.

In nations around the world that I have visited on your behalf as a Senator, people yearning for freedom and people recently free have come and spoken about how much the American example means to them.

Earlier this year, I was at a global security conference, concerned about what was happening in our Nation, about our division in the dialogue, and I heard three young parliamentarians from other countries talk about how hard they were working.

Part of our job as Senators is to ask hard questions. It is to pose challenges. It is to test the Cabinet of the President, to visit Federal facilities, to ask questions that are sometimes uncomfortable or unwelcome. Just this week, I was at three committee hearings and had three members of the Cabinet in front of me. Did they want to answer my questions? Probably not, but they did.

If a Senator of the United States who identifies himself as a Senator--in at least the video I just saw--gets handled this way, gets thrown to the ground and handcuffed, what is happening to those who have no such title or voice? If this gentle and decent and caring man is treated this way, what is happening along the margins in the dark spaces in the places we cannot see?

So I call on my Republican friends and colleagues to look hard at this moment and say: What comes next? What comes next? Are we to be at risk of arrest if we threaten to ask a question or deign to interrupt? Is our very service here as Senators hanging in the balance in this moment? As we all learn more of the facts of what happened in Los Angeles, the future of what will happen here in our country and in the world will wait on your answer.

Was this an overresponse? Was this a misuse of force? Was this a disrespect of the very Senate itself? Is this a moment when, as our Founders who wrote the Federalist Papers dreamed, my colleagues in the Senate will show their loyalty to the role, to the check and balance, to the independence of the Senate, more than they will show their loyalty to their party and their President and demand an answer, an apology, and a different path forward? Or is this a moment when all of us will watch this video of our friend--a member of the Judiciary Committee, a representative, a Senator of Los Angeles and the State of California--being roughly mishandled and say: Huh, too bad. At least it wasn't me.

If we answer this moment with silence, we will be damned, and our children and the world will say: They didn't really mean it.

The members of my family who served in the U.S. military knew that signing on that line meant being willing to give everything, and I believe and have been told that they understood that service to be in service of freedom--not in service of any particular President or party, any particular State or moment, but in service of democracy.

Democracy is a fragile flower, and around the world, people look to what we do to know what they should do. There are petty, tin-pot dictators, authoritarians, and strongmen around the world who will watch this video and be encouraged and think this is the way to silence their critics.

I can't image a Member of this Chamber who knows Alex Padilla, who has had the blessing of sitting with him in moments when he is asked questions or engaged in discourse, who thinks of him as anything other than a reasoned, reasonable, mild-mannered Senator. But even if he were not, even if he were outspoken, loud, aggressive, annoying, the title ``Senator'' and the role we have should entitle him to ask a question at a press conference. If the result is this mistreatment, heaven help us all, and heaven help our democracy.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.

Official Text ↗

Alex Padilla

Cory A. BookerDemocrat, New Jersey

Mr. President, I want to thank the Chair.

Clearly, the voices of my colleagues and I are calling this what it is, which is a crossroads for this body.

One of our Members--it matters not what their party--who was in their State was forcibly removed when he was asking for accountability from the executive branch. He was taken out of that room forcibly by multiple men, who then--even when he identified himself, even when he was pulled out of that room, he was then forced to the ground, pushed upon his face, his hands wrenched behind his back, and he was put in restraints.

This is a crossroads for this body. This is not a partisan issue; it is one about who we are as a body. Will we let the abuses of the executive branch physically take a Member of this body and drive them to the ground and put them in restraints?

And why? Why? Well, we are starting to get answers already. Here is Tricia McLaughlin, who is the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security. This is her statement.

The statement concludes that:

We know this is not true because we hear with our own ears on the tape Senator Padilla identifying himself; further ``disrespectful political theatre'' is not a justification to remove a U.S. Senator in their own State at a public press conference and violently push them out of the room, drive them to the ground, put them on their stomach, and handcuff them.

Disrespectful behavior? This is our democracy. You have a right to speak up. You have a right to free speech. You have a right to stand and do the job that you swore an oath in this Chamber to do, to uphold the Constitution of the United States of America. And one of your jobs is to provide a check and a balance to the administration. One of your jobs is to give accountability to the administration.

I know the other 99 Members of this body, and if disrespectful behavior is a justification for violent reprisal from the administration, how many Members of this body--how many Members of this body--would be subjected to that?

This is a farce of a justification and, therefore, we are at a crossroads. Will my colleagues on the other side of the aisle--will my Republican colleagues--justify the treatment of one of the Members of this body, justify the violence against one of the Members of this body, justify a Member of this body being thrown upon the ground and put in handcuffs--for what? For disrespectful behavior.

If you think it stops with one, you are inviting it for the all because it does not. You are inviting it for every Member of this body.

If the Obama administration or the Biden administration said that a Senator on the other side of the aisle was being disrespectful and threw that Senator violently onto the ground and put him into handcuffs, this body would be full of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle condemning what the Biden Justice Department did or the Obama Justice Department.

This should not be about partisanship; this should be about patriotism. This should not be about tribalism; it should be standing up and being a leader in this moment.

This is wrong. This violence is wrong.

But let me be more personal. I tried to understand why this particularly upset me, and I think my colleague from Delaware spoke to that because of Alex Padilla's reputation in this body of being a kind and gentle person. We all know him, the goodness and the decency that he has. He is not one of the louder Senators. He is not one of the performative Senators. He has a reputation, as my colleague from Delaware said, on both sides of the aisle for being a gentle man.

But I think what was really hard for me to see was that a Member of this body was driven to his knees and made to kneel before authorities. That is what got me. I think when I saw him driven to his knees forcibly, something there got me.

You see, we know Alex Padilla's story. It is an unusual story for this body. His family came here as Mexican immigrants. His father was a short-order cook. His mother cleaned homes. They did those jobs that don't always

They raised their son to serve. He went to MIT. They raised their son to work hard, to show grit, to rise. They got to watch their son become a city councilperson in L.A. They got to watch their son ascend to be the secretary of state for California. They got to watch their son come to this body.

And this son of Mexican immigrants who cleaned homes and served food, this man with equal dignity in this body, today, was driven violently to his knees as if made to kneel before the authority of the executive because he was so-called disrespectful. That should offend the consciousness, not just of the other 99 Members of this body, it should offend the conscience of this country because if you can make Alex Padilla forcibly kneel before this executive, when does it stop?

He is a U.S. Senator. And if you can force him to kneel to his knees violently, when does it stop? What does it say to other Americans who want to speak up? What does it say to other Americans that want to exercise their constitutional duty? What does it say to other Americans this weekend when they want to peacefully protest? What does it say to other Americans from humble backgrounds who know poverty, that if a U.S. Senator who stands up to do his job can be made to heel, driven to his knees, violently handcuffed, what does it say? What message does it send?

Everybody in this body should see that this is a crossroads. They treated a Member of the U.S. Senate violently after he identified himself; dragged him out of the room, threw him upon the ground, and put him in handcuffs. Every Member of this body should object to that. Why? Because the statement was that he was disrespectful. That is unacceptable. That is offensive. That is un-American.

So why is there silence right now? Why aren't my colleagues saying--I don't care if it is a Republican, a Democrat, or an Independent, when you drive a man to his knees in the United States of America, that is wrong, that is wrong, that is wrong. This is a test. This is a crossroads. This is a day in which the character of this body will be defined.

Alex Padilla, a man of infinite decency, generosity of spirit, who, whether you disagree with him or not, is so well-liked in this body, who today, in a time of understandable outrage in Los Angeles, went to be with his constituents to get answers. And when he walked into a room and saw a Cabinet Secretary and raised his voice to ask questions, he was met with violence. They heaped upon him indignities. They drove him to his knees and then to his face and they put him in cuffs.

Well, they didn't just assault the physicality of Alex Padilla, they did not succeed in assaulting his dignity. I know he rose off that ground with the same dignity he had before they threw him upon it. What they assaulted today is the dignity of this body. What is in question now is a truth of who we are and what we stand for.

This is an abuse of power. This is a violent act unjustifiably taken on a Member of this body. The question is, Who will we be as a Senate? The question is, How will we respond? Will we defend this institution or will we yield to the tactics of authoritarian, violent leaders?

I see my colleague here from Maryland. I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Maryland.

Official Text ↗

Alex Padilla

Chris Van HollenDemocrat, Maryland

Mr. President, I thank my friend and colleague from New Jersey.

It is hard to contain my emotion appropriately on the Senate floor. This is a moment that every American should be outraged about, and every American should be angry, and not only angry about what happened to Senator Padilla but fearful for our democracy because we are at a crossroads when it comes to the rule of law and respect for our democracy and our Constitution in the United States of America.

I felt compelled to cancel the rest of my meetings this evening to come right here to the floor to join my colleagues in speaking out, not just for a fellow Senator but for the future of the rule of law and due process in the United States of America.

I had to rewind that video three or four times to see if this was really happening. And I saw the earlier video come out of him being, essentially, dragged out of the room, roughed up, and then the other video of him lying on his stomach, handcuffed with people standing around him.

Then the lies went out that the Senator from New Jersey just mentioned. I am reading this statement from the Department of Homeland Security:

That is a lie. Just look at the video. You can see him coming in and saying: I am Senator Padilla, the senior Senator from California. He wanted to ask a question. We all have a lot of questions. He is a U.S. Senator, he should be able to ask a question about what is happening in his State of California.

You know, we had the President of the United States, just a few weeks ago in response to a question, saying he wasn't sure if he had to comply with the Constitution of the United States. The President of the United States who is sworn to take an oath to uphold the Constitution said he wasn't sure if he had to comply with the Constitution. You have senior administration officials like Steve Miller talking about suspending habeas corpus in the United States of America. Habeas corpus is the core to due process that makes sure that people cannot be deprived of their liberty without a fair trial and a fair hearing.

And here we have Alex Padilla going in to ask a question, and he is tackled; he is roughed up; he is dragged out of the room; he is put on the floor and handcuffed. This is a President who also the other day, when asked if he would arrest the Governor of California or whether his people should arrest the Governor of California, he said: Yeah, I think maybe they should.

Think about that.

This is an administration that arrested the mayor of a major city. This is lawless behavior from this administration. This is what a dictatorship looks like. This is what happens when one person tries to grab all the power, when they say: I don't know if I have to comply with the Constitution of the United States.

The Constitution of the United States is designed to have checks and balances. It is designed to make sure that our liberties are protected. The Bill of Rights protects all of us. And yet you see the President of the United States and his henchmen and his henchwomen trampling over due process, trampling over the First Amendment in the country, and trampling on a U.S. Senator from California who said: Madam Secretary, I have a question.

I am looking forward to hearing about what question Senator Padilla wanted to ask because I know Senator Padilla, and I know he had a good question to ask of the Secretary of Homeland Security, but he didn't get a chance. This is a press conference. The Secretary of Homeland Security is taking questions. The U.S. Senator representing the people of that State elected to represent the people of that State had a question. He didn't get to ask it because he was dragged out of the room and thrown on the floor and arrested. I want to know what that question was going to be, and I know that Senator Padilla will tell us. We will probably find out then why the Secretary of Homeland Security didn't want to hear the question, because this administration wants to shut down questions except from the journalists that they like. They belittle journalists who ask them any question that they see as critical. That is also what authoritarian leaders do; they push aside people who ask hard but meaningful questions and just call on the people who will ask them the slowball question.

You have already seen this at play at the Oval Office during press conferences, the President will say: Oh, I like that reporter. Oh, that is a terrible question. What he means is, it is a question that he doesn't like. And, usually, the question he doesn't like are questions that are right on target and go to the heart of what is happening in our country.

So Senator Padilla had a question. He didn't get a chance to ask it.

I want to build on another point my colleagues have made, and that is a real appeal to our Senate Republican colleagues, because in these first months--4 or 5 months--of the Trump administration, we have seen the actions of a lawless President.

You know, it is unprecedented in the United States to have over 260 lawsuits filed in Federal courts. Right? This doesn't happen normally. It is because of the massive lawbreaking that we have seen going on-- attacks on civil liberties, attacks on due process is part of that, attacks on the First Amendment, the illegal withholding of funds that have been appropriated by the Congress.

The courts didn't do it alone, colleagues. Every Member of this body is sworn to uphold the Constitution--the Constitution the President of the United States now says he is not sure if he has to comply with.

I believe Senators here want to take those constitutional responsibilities seriously. But if we are going to do that, we have to stand up at moments like this--not Democratic Senators alone but Republican Senators too--because if you let the executive do this to Alex Padilla today, some other executive, some other President can do it to somebody else tomorrow. If you can do this to Alex Padilla, imagine how vulnerable other citizens and others in this country are to this kind of tyranny and abuse.

So I hope this will be a moment where people come together and stand up and say: Regardless of policy differences on different issues, we are all here to debate those issues and disagree, but there are some things we should consider fundamental and sacrosanct, and that is the idea of rule of law and due process.

What we witnessed here was the outrage that we have come to see in countries with authoritarian leaders. That is what we witnessed, and it is a pattern. But today was the most graphic example to date where a U.S. Senator was, essentially, taken down as he introduced himself and said ``I have a question.''

So I have a question for all of our colleagues: What are we going to do about it? Who are we? What do we stand for? Are we going to uphold the Constitution?

I am looking forward to hearing the question Senator Padilla wanted to ask, but I also ask all of us a question, and that is, Are we going to use this moment to stand up for decency and to stand up for the fair treatment of every American?

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.

Official Text ↗

Alex Padilla

Christopher MurphyDemocrat, Connecticut

Mr. President, I agree with my friend from Maryland. This has to be a moment where we just drop our political affiliations, where we decide that we are Americans; that the Constitution matters; that dissent defines America; and we say and do the right thing.

I think there is still time for our Republican colleagues here to speak out. I understand they may still want to collect more facts, but as each minute and each hour passes, it is becoming clear that the main justification seems to be simply that Senator Padilla was showing some level of disrespect.

The first comments from our Republican colleagues, I think if you are an American who cares about free speech, are really concerning. One of our colleagues in the Senate said this:

Well, that is certainly a legitimate opinion. You can criticize any of us for engaging in a spectacle. But spectacle is not illegal. Raising your voice is not a crime in this country. Protesting your government does not, cannot, and should not result in you being delivered to the ground by law enforcement and handcuffed.

Another of our colleagues says:

Once again, the standard here seems to be disruption; that if you are speaking truth to power, then you are going to be met by violence.

The definition of this country, the fundamental nature of America, is that protest is not met by violence. Protest is celebrated in this Nation; that what defines America against the rest of the world, against the totality of previous human history is that we protect the right of human beings living in the United States of America to raise protest--loud protest, sometimes disruptive protest--against their government. And, frankly, we protect that right equally, whether it is a U.S. Senator or an ordinary citizen with no formal power.

So we can say today, well, this is really dangerous that a U.S. Senator got thrown to the ground and handcuffed simply because they spoke up at a press conference. But it is no more concerning that it is happening to a U.S. Senator than what is happening to many other citizens and residents of this country who, right now, are being met with equal physical force.

We don't expect any different treatment of U.S. Senators than of ordinary citizens. But many ordinary citizens in Los Angeles, right now, are being treated with the same kind of force that Alex Padilla was met with today.

So there is still time for us to come together and say: In this country, speaking truth to power, even in a disruptive way, is never rationalization for violence.

But I will tell you, the first couple of statements from my Republican colleagues are deeply worrying. They misread the fundamental nature of this country.

If we now live in a world where simple disagreements--vocal disagreements--where protest with this administration becomes justification for violence, I don't know how you can define that as America any longer.

As someone who was sitting in this Chamber--I think at this very same desk--on January 6, it shouldn't be lost on us that there are forms of political protests that are protected by this administration-- celebrated, even. And then there are forms of political protests, as you saw today, that are met with violence.

There are individuals out on the street today in America who, just a few years ago, were in this building or on the outskirts of this building beating the hell out of police officers--viciously, savagely attacking police officers; tasers to the throat; rendering those police officers unconscious; metal poles being hammered onto the heads of police officers. And in an exceptional moment, the President of the United States, in celebration of their violence, pardoned them and put them back out on the street, sending the unequivocal message that if you engage in violent protest on behalf of the White House, you get out of jail free.

Pair that together with the message that is being received by the American public now on a daily basis, most prominently and visibly today, that if you engage in peaceful protests--Senator Padilla was asking a question; he identified himself as a U.S. Senator--of the administration, you will be met by violence. You carry out violence on behalf of the White House, you are excused. You lodge normal, protected protest against this White House, you are thrown to the ground and handcuffed, even if you are a U.S. Senator, though it should not matter.

The early reaction here, it should be chilling because once this becomes normalized, I don't know how you put it back in the bottle.

We shouldn't assume that this democracy survives forever. This is a revolutionary experiment, 250 years in. It is fragile. This idea that we govern ourselves, this idea that we respect through rule and force of law people who disagree with us--0.0001 percent of humans have ever lived under a system like that in which they decide for themselves the law, their protests, even against the most powerful people in the country, is protected by law. That idea is unnatural. It is, in some ways, almost destined to fall apart.

Yet for 250 years, we have not let it fall apart. We have decided that our fealty to the idea of free speech, of protected free speech, even if it rubs up against the ruling elites, the ruling class of the White House, the most powerful people in the country in an uncomfortable way, will be protected.

For 250 years, we have together--Republicans and Democrats--decided that that principle of free speech was more

At some point tonight, a Republican has to come down to this floor. At some point this weekend, some of our Republican colleagues have to speak out on behalf of this fundamental American idea, on behalf of the U.S. Senate, on behalf of our colleague.

We can still fight on tax policy and immigration policy. We can have big disagreements about the reconciliation bill. It will not harm my Republican colleagues' ability to render argument on the things that matter to them.

It is OK for us to agree that what happened to Alex Padilla 2 hours ago crosses a line. It doesn't compromise my Republican colleagues' integrity as Republicans to decide that there is still right or wrong; that not everything is black or white; that two plus two sometimes has to still equal four.

What happened to Senator Padilla should not have happened. He identified himself. It is not true that he didn't identify himself. What happened to him in the room is not justifiable; but, certainly, what happened to him outside of the room isn't justifiable. Once he was removed from the room, being thrown to the ground as he is identifying himself as a Senator, being handcuffed can't be justified.

So we are going to hang around on this floor in hopes that, at some point, somehow--and I know not all of our Republican colleagues are still in town--they speak up on behalf of this basic premise, this basic foundational idea of America: that even when protest rubs you the wrong way, even when you don't like the form or substance of it, that we are no longer the country that we love, the country that we teach our kids about, if we don't find a way to come together to object to protest being met with this kind of violence.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.

Official Text ↗

Alex Padilla

Adam B. SchiffDemocrat, California

Mr. President, a little more than a couple of hours ago, my friend and colleague Senator Alex Padilla attended a press conference in the Federal building in Los Angeles being held by the Secretary of Homeland Security, Kristi Noem. Instead of treating him with respect, instead of answering his questions, he was grabbed by her security detail, he was physically forced from the room, forced to the ground, his arms pinned behind his back.

This assault on a Member of the U.S. Senate is unlike anything I have ever seen, perhaps unlike anything anyone in this Chamber has ever seen, and it crystallizes the threat posed to our country and its democracy. If the administration can so mistreat a Member of this body, what can it do to every other American? What can it do to every other resident of the United States of America? What can it do to you? What can it do to your neighbor and to your community?

The abusive treatment of Senator Alex Padilla, however, did not take place in isolation. It took place at a time of heightened tension in Los Angeles and around the Nation.

Earlier this week, I returned from my home in Los Angeles, a city in which thousands have peacefully protested the administration's harsh immigration policies and in which the President has ordered the mobilization of thousands of National Guardsmen and hundreds of marines in order to deal with a few hundred vandals and miscreants that local law enforcement was more than capable of subduing.

And the question is, Why? Why order in the military if they are not necessary? Why order in the military over the objection of local and State officials? Why go to the expense? Why go to the trouble? Why undertake such an obvious provocation? Why, in a city of over 500 square miles, did Donald Trump believe it was necessary to escalate so dramatically over the vile acts of a small number of people in the space of a few blocks?

These are some of the questions I imagine that Alex Padilla wanted to ask the Secretary of Homeland Security.

But now, today, we must add one more question: Why would they treat Senator Alex Padilla with such forceful and disgraceful disregard, forcing him to the ground? Why?

And the answer involves failure and distraction and disrespect and disregard--failure of the President's immigration protocol, failure of his economic policy, a desire to distract from these failures, disrespect of our military and its role in civil society, and disregard of our democracy and the principles upon which our Nation was founded.

Let's start with failure: the failure of Donald Trump's immigration policy; the failure, in particular, of his promise to deport massive numbers of violent criminals, a failure that was inevitable because it was based on a lie, a foundational lie--foundational to his campaign and to his Presidency--the original lie of the Trump campaign, the one he spoke as he descended the golden escalator in 2015 and suggested to the American people that most of the folks coming to this country as immigrants and migrants were murderers and rapists and violent criminals bent on doing harm to the American people, that foreign nations had opened their prisons and let out their worst offenders so that they could come to the United States and destroy our way of life.

It was a big lie. It was an audacious lie but a lie that the President hoped he could ride, a wave of fear that he could in turn ride into office.

The truth, of course, is the vast number of people coming to this country are peaceful, hard-working people who want nothing more than an opportunity to get ahead, to enjoy a good life, and to provide for themselves and for their family.

The American people understood this, but they also understood that our border was broken, that our system was chaotic, that the immigration system was itself broken, that asylum cases took too long to adjudicate, and people waiting lawfully to immigrate should be given priority over those who do not.

As President, Donald Trump promised his focus would be on the deportation of violent criminals, but he also promised mass deportations. And the only way to square that conflict between the very specific and the very broad was to go back to that original lie that all immigrants are violent criminals who mean us harm.

If you can make the country believe that, you don't have to be targeted in your immigration raids, you don't have to go through the painstaking work of tracking down people with criminal records who don't want to be found. If you believe the lie that all immigrants are violent criminals, then you can do broad immigration sweeps at restaurants or on farms, in garment factories or high school graduations, in random neighborhoods and homes, or at the Home Depot.

``Just go out there and arrest illegal aliens,'' the President's Deputy Chief of Staff, a frustrated Stephen Miller, demanded after berating Department officials for the slow pace of their operations. Three thousand arrests a day the administration insisted on as a new quota, and gone was any pretense of looking for violent offenders.

And so the indiscriminate raids and the indiscriminate cruelty began to multiply, picking up people who show up for immigration appointments or to take the oath of citizenship, only to deport them; separating fathers from their sons and daughters, mothers from their children, husbands from their wives; a farmworker who worked in the fields for decades--hard work, backbreaking work, work in the heat and the cold, work during a deadly pandemic when others stayed home, work that most U.S. citizens do not want to do and will not do--chased through the fields that they harvested to be taken away from their families; a mother chased down the street by hooded ICE agents, away from her terrified and screaming teenage daughter.

Americans did not vote for this, do not want this. And in the midst of this, the American people started to speak out--at first, in small ways, in private conversations, after the deportation of their neighbors; and then in more public ways, at townhalls and in letters to the editor, on social media, and in gatherings at their schools; and then, as the raids increased in their scope and the scope of their cruelty, by taking to the streets, as is our God-given right and also a right given by our Constitution.

Some of those protests have taken place in Los Angeles, where Angelenos gathered to speak out against these actions, against the separation of families and the injury to our communities and our economy.

And in the midst of these protests, some number of agitators were attracted by the conflict and saw it as an opportunity to vandalize, assault law enforcement, and engage in other reprehensible conduct. Like moths to a flame, every city has these miscreants, and so does Los Angeles. They care not about immigration policy or immigrants or migrants who are affected, and our State and local law enforcement are more than capable of dealing with them--and they did.

But amidst the failure of his immigration policies and the backlash, Donald Trump saw an opportunity. His economic policy was in tatters. His tariff wars were not improving our trade with other nations and instead were prompting the boycott of American goods by close allies like Canada and causing layoffs at American ports, higher prices at Target and Walmart and elsewhere.

He had to fend off Amazon plans to include a line item for the Trump tariff tax on each transaction, which would have made it even more obvious to the American people that he was betraying the central promise of his campaign: to bring prices down when they are going up.

And his Big Beautiful Bill was in trouble over a big, ugly pricetag. Far from reducing the debt or the deficit, the bill was revealed to cost taxpayers a whopping $2.4 trillion added to the national debt. He was borrowing the money from our kids and our grandkids to fund a tax cut for himself and his rich friends.

Even the world's richest man and, heretofore, the President's biggest benefactor, Elon Musk, called the bill a ``disgusting abomination'' and made it clear that Republicans should be ashamed of voting for it.

And the opportunity Donald Trump saw in all this failure was this: Call in a distraction. Call in the troops. Call in the marines--not to save a city but to save himself from drowning in failure. And so he did: 4,000 troops from California's National Guard and 700 from the Marines.

And the reaction in Los Angeles, of course, was the one that he desired: escalation, not deescalation; more conflict, not less; more chaos--and the kind of chaos he thrives on, the kind of chaos where the insurrectionist-come-President, the man who, on his first day, pardoned hundreds of criminals who beat police officers, could somehow try to reclaim the mantle of a law-and-order President.

It has not worked. It will not work. Americans have a long memory and will not soon forget the images of January 6, when the President sat calmly in the White House dining room, dining on burgers and fries, while our Capitol Police were under assault. And the same man who called in the Guard to handle a comparatively small number of criminals and vandals in L.A. refused to call in the Guard to stop thousands of them from ransacking this Capitol.

The last time a President called in the National Guard over the objection of the Governor of a State was in 1965, when the segregationist Governor of Arkansas ignored a ruling of the Supreme Court and refused to integrate the schools in that State. Lyndon Johnson did so to avoid violence and to protect the students trying to attend.

Those circumstances could not be more different than today, when our President has called in the Guard knowing it is more likely to provoke violence than to stop it.

``We must reject any thinking of our cities as a `battlespace' that our uniformed military is called upon to `dominate,''' a Secretary of Defense once said. ``At home,'' he said, ``we should use our military only when requested to do so, on very rare occasions, by state governors.''

Those are the words of Donald Trump's Secretary of Defense--not Pete Hegseth, of course, not the FOX News version of a Defense Secretary, and not the Trump Defense Secretary before him or the one before that. No, those were the words of the first Trump Defense Secretary, James Mattis, perhaps the only Trump Cabinet member in his first term or the present term to leave his office with a stronger reputation than before he arrived.

``Militarizing our response,'' Mattis said, ``sets up a conflict . . . a false conflict--between the military and civilian society. It erodes the moral ground that ensures a trusted bond between men and women in uniform and the society they are sworn to protect, and of which they themselves are a part.

``Keeping public order,'' he said, ``rests with civilian state and local leaders who best understand their communities and are answerable to them.''

Now, in California, we love our National Guard. We revere them, as we do the Marines. The Guard is always there when we need them, during fires and floods, after devastating earthquakes. They serve us at home and abroad, always protecting our interests, our lives, our homes, and our freedom.

There is a bond between us, a bond of respect, affection, and trust that must not be broken. Donald Trump does not understand this. He cannot understand it any more than he can understand why people choose a life of military service.

The man who once called soldiers, sailors, marines, and airmen who fight and have died on our Nation's behalf ``suckers and losers'' could not possibly understand. Nor does he care about misusing them if it suits his personal or political interest as his partisan, disrespectful and inflammatory speech at Fort Bragg makes clear, as does his commandeering of the military for a costly parade to celebrate his birthday this weekend.

Now, there is a birthday worth celebrating this weekend, but it is not the President's. That is the 250th anniversary of the U.S. Army, an Army that my father was very proud to serve in.

We can and should honor the Army. But a celebration of the vanity of a President who does not himself celebrate the military but only his control over it, that is not a cause for celebration.

Our Founders understood the need to insulate the military from internal domestic affairs, from the raucous and often divisive nature of the political process dominated by party or faction.

For centuries, too, so has this Congress, prohibiting the use of the military for domestic law enforcement purposes, except for narrow--very narrow--circumstances of rebellion and insurrection.

This is vital not only for the protection of the country from a man who would abuse the military to become a King but also to protect the military from the lack of trust that would accompany its subversion to a partisan end.

Our country is approaching its 250th birthday. It is worth remembering why we chose to separate ourselves from our British masters. The preamble of the Declaration of Independence is familiar to us all in its poetic recitation of truths that are self-evident.

But what has been lost to us over time were the long list of grievances set out in that document, grievances that drove the impetus for revolution:

``The history of the present King of Great Britain,'' it reads, ``is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations,'' this is what our Founders wrote, ``all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.''

The Declaration provides in its list of grievances:

``He has obstructed the Administration of Justice.''

``He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people,'' they enumerated.

``He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone,'' our Founders charged.

``For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world,'' they objected.

``For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial by Jury,'' they declared.

``For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offenses,'' they cited in words all too prescient for today.

``He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies, without the Consent of our legislatures.''

``Quartering large bodies of armed troops among us.''

``He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil power.''

All of these grievances so vivid at the time of the Revolution--our Revolution--are so vivid today. And today they can be distilled into a single image--that of Senator Alex Padilla on the ground, face to the ground, and in handcuffs. If you are looking for an image of our democracy in handcuffs, look no further.

America, we have a choice. We can rededicate ourselves to the vision of our Founders, one born of struggle against autocracy, one pledged to a form of self-governance that elevated the people over the powerful, that believed we possessed sufficient virtue to be self-governing, that we did not need to be governed by a despot.

We can rededicate ourselves to that vision or we can continue to travel down our present path of incivility, of division, of might not making right but making wrong, a celebration not of self-governance but of self-destruction.

I believe in this country. I believe we are a great country because we always strive to be a good country. I believe in the country because of good people like Alex Padilla--wonderful people, beautiful people, courageous people, patriotic people.

Alex Padilla's story is the story of all of us, the story of what is possible in this country. He is a good and decent man. He is a great and capable Senator. He deserved better than what he got in that Federal building in Los Angeles. The American people deserve better than what he got in the Federal building in Los Angeles.

Let us remember ourselves. Let us remember who we are. We are the country of Jefferson and of Lincoln and of Washington. We are the country of John Lewis, and we are the country of giants.

We stand on their shoulders. We owe our life, our liberty, the opportunity to pursue happiness to their brilliant legacy.

We have come to the rescue and liberation of other worlds, of other parts of this globe. We have fought for democracy. We have championed democracy and human rights. We believed in treating others as we would treat ourselves. This is who we are.

Alex Padilla face down in a Federal building, forced to the ground by agents of the Secretary of Homeland Security--this is not who we are.

I can't help but think of the words of my late and wonderful colleague Elijah Cummings because they have always been such a potent reminder: We are better than this. We are better than this. We are not a country that sends the Marines into a city--not to restore order but to create disorder.

We are a better country than that. We are not a country that needs to have a parade honoring our President to showcase our military might on his birthday. We are a better country than this.

There have been giants who have served in our military. There have been giants that have served in this body, great people. They came from all different backgrounds. And the strength of this country--that is still so possible. You could come from any beginning and end up here. And we have been a country that has welcomed people from around the world because we have understood they bring their genius and their work ethic and their striving with them, and it has lifted our country forward.

We have that beautiful Statue of Liberty not because we disdain immigrants, not because we view them as a threat, but because we celebrate what they have brought to this country. And I think in the last several years, we have forgotten who we are.

Every now and then, we just need to step back from the abyss and remind ourselves of where we came from and that in this greatest Nation on Earth what is possible.

I didn't serve with Alex Padilla in the State legislature, and I didn't get to serve with him or really get to know him well until I came to this body. And I told my colleagues when I got here: You all are wonderful people, but nobody--nobody--did better than I did in whom I got as my seatmate. I mean that with all my heart. He is a good and genuine and decent and capable and brilliant man.

I will never forget that image I saw today because, to me, it is the image of what is best in this country being brought to the ground.

I ask every Member of this body to think about the legacy we have been charged with protecting and what we are going to do from this day forward to make sure that this incredible experiment in self-governance continues and that we never see an act like we saw 2 hours ago take place again in the United States of America.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.

Official Text ↗

Alex Padilla

Cory A. BookerDemocrat, New Jersey

Mr. President, I just want to first thank my colleague from California for stating so plainly about the character of the individual we are talking about.

We have justifiable disagreements in this body. We have strong-held beliefs in this body. We have real debates and arguments in this body. But it has been generations and generations and generations since there has been violence in this body.

I stand with my back toward the Chamber where there was the caning of Sumner during the slavery debates, and a House Member came over and beat a U.S. Senator within an inch of his life.

You see, there is this decorum here where we have this mutual respect, and we understand violence is absolutely unacceptable.

And if there is anybody that shows that kind of decency and that kind of peace, my colleague from California put it so plainly--Alex Padilla, like many of my colleagues, even across the aisle--he is one of the people of true character here. I think that is why today has hurt so many of us personally is because of what this breach of this body actually means to all of us.

We know of dangers of violence in a democracy and the insidiousness that violence presents or that fear of violent reprisal presents.

Jefferson said it so eloquently:

What is so disturbing when you see a Member of this body thrown to the floor, a knee on his shoulder, arms being wrenched behind him after he has identified himself as a U.S. Senator is literally what Alex Padilla said.

I am going to pull from what I know he has already said publicly, but this is what he also has written privately.

Alex Padilla says:

You see, Alex Padilla knows something about this country, which is that we are all, as Martin Luther King so eloquently wrote in those letters from the Birmingham Jail, when he was jailed for his nonviolent civil disobedience--what Alex Padilla knows is what King said so eloquently; that we are all caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied to a common garment of destiny that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, that when you have a President that so exceeds his constitutional authority, that he begins to do things to infringe upon the fundamental rights and securities of other Americans, it is a threat to all Americans.

This is why right across the way--I can almost see it looking through these windows--why the Supreme Court, with nominees from both parties, with three Donald Trump appointees on it, ruled 9 to 0 in support of the due process rights of someone in our country that was not even a citizen of this Nation--because in the Constitution, using the words ``any Person,'' knowing that if you erode the due process rights of anybody in this Nation, it is a threat to the due process rights of everyone in this Nation.

Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.

Understand what we saw today: A U.S. Senator forcibly removed from a room in a Federal building--a Federal official forcibly removed from a Federal building after he identified himself as a U.S. Senator. But after he was out of that building, they did not stop there. They drove our colleague to his knees and then forcibly shoved him upon his face, wrenched his arms behind him, and Alex Padilla writes: If they do that me, what are they doing to farmworkers and cooks and domestics?

What are they doing to other people? What does that mean if they are using the violent force of government unjustly against him? This is a breach. This body has not seen such a breach in my lifetime or longer where the executive has treated an honorable Member of this body in this way.

That should be enough, but our colleague correctly points out that if we are in an environment where that is happening to a U.S. Senator, what does it say--if the Government of the United States is unjustly taking violent action against a U.S. Senator, dear God, what does it mean for other Americans? That is what Alex Padilla asked today.

Now, I will tell you this: This is not an isolated incident. That is the challenge. We have already seen the actions taken against a mayor, a local government official who himself was forcibly handcuffed, dragged into a police vehicle, held for hours as a prisoner, and then, when he finally got before a judge, that judge reprimanded this administration for an abuse of their power.

Alex Padilla sees this with the violation of the due process rights of individuals going on in this country. Alex Padilla sees this with a mayor in America unjustly incarcerated, handcuffed, held.

This is the challenge we have in this moment.

I love this quote by my favorite author, James Baldwin, who wrote this letter the night authorities came and arrested Angela Davis.

He said:

This administration, in its abuse of power, in the audacity of handcuffing, of violently assaulting, of forcibly pushing to his knees and onto his stomach a U.S. Senator--what does that say?

We all gather right there as Senators to raise our hand and swear our oath to uphold the Constitution, but we are not the only ones. Members of the Supreme Court do that. They are not the only ones with Members of this body; administrative officials do that as well. We are bound by the laws of this land.

The terrifying thing for every American should be a government that is not restrained by the law, a government that misuses its power--and not just its power; its power to use violence unjustly against its citizenry. That is when we slip away from our democratic ideals, from our constitutional principles, and slide towards an authoritarian government that wants to make its people heel before them, kneel before them.

That is what I physically saw with my own eyes--a Member of this body being driven to his knees for asking a question, for standing up to speak truth to power. What was the response? The response was violence--being dragged out of that room, being forced to his knees, being thrown prostrate, and being handcuffed.

Here is the thing that frustrates me the most: Is this another day where the lead stories will be about the actions of this administration? We have seen a week where it is violating a tradition that has gone back before I was born where the Federal Government activating Federal troops in a community goes through--in fact, I know the statute: title 10, section 12406--that they should go through the Governors, work in coordination with them. But, no, this was a provocative incident, moving military troops at the expense of taxpayers into a community where even the leader of the police department says this is wrong.

All of this, from the beginning of our week to this unprecedented action of violently removing a U.S. Senator from a Federal building, from a room, thrown upon the ground, driven to his knees, and handcuffed--this is all purposefully being done in our country by a President that has a different view of his authorities as President; that if a judge criticizes him, he believes it is wrong.

He drew reprimand from the Supreme Court for his calling out Justices whose opinions he disagrees with. This is a President that doesn't believe in the checks and balances of our Constitution.

But the frustrating thing about all of this is that it is distracting us--this dangerous, violent distraction--from the bill we should be discussing on this floor about the ripping away of healthcare from millions of Americans, the cutting of food stamps for millions of children, the cutting of services for disabled Americans, the cutting of support for our senior citizens.

This monumental moment, the biggest transfer of wealth from working people in America to millionaires and billionaires; this moment that should be dominating our attention and our focus; this imminent bill that is being debated and discussed here in the Senate right now that has such incredible consequences, putting $2.4 trillion more of debt in our country and raising the energy costs on the average American by hundreds of dollars; this bill that would raise the premiums of people in our Nation by hundreds of dollars; this bill that merits debate and discussion because it is so violative of our common values; this bill that takes food away from the hungry, healthcare away from the sick, and takes working people and makes their challenges harder, all to give more tax cuts to billionaires and drives up our deficit by the trillions--that should be the central conversation in our country.

But this President, almost as if he knows the unpopularity of his bill, the betrayal of his bill, is misusing, abusing his powers and trying to change the conversation in the most despicable of ways; abusing his authority, treading on our traditions, violating our Constitution, and now perhaps one of the greatest violent assaults on a Member of this body by the executive.

This is not metaphorical; this is literal. A Member of this body, after identifying himself, was physically and forcibly dragged out of a room in a Federal building, and then, when the doors were closed--you can see it on the camera--the Federal Government, the executive branch, taking a Member of this body, a Member of the U.S. Senate, a coequal branch of our government, and driving that man to his knees, slamming him upon his face, and wrenching his arms behind his back. That is what we are talking about in this body right now.

This is a dangerous time in America. When the President from the Oval Office says almost daringly ``Do not protest my parade,'' warns people about protests--and this is the thing the President of the United States doesn't understand about this country: When a President is violating norms and traditions and violating our Constitution, dissent is not unpatriotic; protest is not un-American; silence is unpatriotic.

This is a time where protest is justified. Peaceful protest is necessary and vital. This is a time where speaking up and exercising your constitutional principles--like freedom of speech, like freedom of assembly, like the right to petition your government--is demanded by our democracy.

When you have a President that so flagrantly violates the checks and balances--so much so that the authorities today kept a Senator from stepping forward and asking questions to an executive official and is met by violence--this is exactly the time that our Founders saw that we must stand up and speak up and protest peacefully and let our voices be heard because silence in a time like this is complicity.

My colleagues on the other side of the aisle have to see this. It doesn't take that much mental acuity to understand that if this was the Biden administration or the Obama administration and an official used their security detail to put another person in this body--to put a Senator from the other side of the aisle on their knees and in handcuffs, we would see outrage.

This is not about left or right; this is about right or wrong. And today, we saw a deep, grave wrong heaped upon not just this body but, as Alex Padilla wrote so eloquently, upon the ideals. Because if you could do this to a U.S. Senator, then you can do it to another American.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.

Official Text ↗

Alex Padilla

Christopher MurphyDemocrat, Connecticut

Mr. President, Senator Booker and I have now spoken multiple times on the floor. The Senator from California has been here multiple times. We are doing so because we saw the look in our colleague's eyes as he was being violently thrown out of that room. You lost contact with his eyes in the hallway as he

One of our colleagues suggested that Senator Padilla got what he wanted. If you saw Senator Padilla's eyes, if you saw Alex's eyes as he was being pushed out of that room, you saw a man who did not expect to be treated that way. He thought that he was coming to register his dissent, his objection, to something deeply serious and illegal that was happening in his State. He had a responsibility as a Senator to speak truth to power.

So we are here on this floor speaking repeatedly in hopes that at some point, some of our Republican colleagues, whether here or in other public statements, will register some degree of concern for what happened to their colleague.

We lose our democracy if we lose our ability to dissent.

In 1722, in a newspaper started in Boston by the name of the New- England Courant--one of the country's first newspapers--a series of essays began to appear that were speaking to some really radical ideas for 1722. This is 20 years before Thomas Jefferson was born. This was 50 years before Thomas Paine wrote ``Common Sense.''

This is 1722, and the author's name is Silence Dogood. Silence Dogood writes in the New-England Courant:

Silence goes on to say:

In 1722, this was a radical idea, this idea that a tyrant must control the freedom of thought with violence in order to maintain control of the people.

The New-England Courant was owned by a man named James Franklin, and he probably didn't know that Silence Dogood was a pseudonym for his 16- year-old brother named Benjamin Franklin. That is Benjamin Franklin writing in 1722, 16 years old.

What happened to Senator Padilla today, it does stand in context. I say again, it does matter that on that day in which violence was used against the U.S. Capitol as a means to try to upset our democracy was cheered on by a President who then pardoned those violent rioters.

It stands in the context of the arrest of a mayor in New Jersey and a Congressperson seeking to do normal and regular oversight. It stands in context with the use of the FCC to try to intimidate and harass news stations that carry coverage unfavorable to the President and stands in context of the banning of outlets having access to the White House or the Pentagon simply because they don't write things that are favorable to the President or use terms that are favorable to the President.

If we lose our democracy, it is not likely that there is going to be this one moment, this one day, this one fight. It won't be like other revolutions where the Parliament building gets burned down or a coup occurs. No. It will be that, over time, the message has been sent that if you speak up against the government, there is a price to be paid, and that price involves violence. But if you use violence on behalf of the government, it will be excused.

And so why we are still on this floor tonight is, sure, we have immense respect for our colleague, and I believe he has respect across the aisle. Senator Padilla is a decent human servant who doesn't deserve to be treated that way. We are here because he is our friend and our colleague. But we are also here because too many in this body take for granted that this democracy is natural, that it is just going to hang around, no matter the threats.

The effort that this administration is undergoing to excuse and normalize violence when it happens in advancement of the administration's political priorities and then to suppress nonviolent speech in a multitude of ways when it objects to this administration's priorities, it sends a message to the public about what you can get away with and what you can't get away with.

Now, I don't think this will be the result. I don't think the American people will be bullied into silence. I do not believe they will watch that clip of Alex Padilla being forced to the ground and handcuffed and decide to stay home. No, I think, in fact, the opposite will likely happen. I think more Americans will be out there protesting this government. I think more Americans will decide to be present this weekend, to stand up for the right of free speech.

But if that were to be the case, it would be the exception to the historical rule, because in most countries when a ruler uses violence in order to suppress dissent, it works. People decide that they don't want to risk the fate of Alex Padilla. They don't want to be on the ground with their hands forced behind them and put into handcuffs. They stay home, and they just let the tyranny wash over them, their community, and their country.

We are not there yet. I don't mean to exercise hyperbole. What I seek to say is that we should not take this democracy for granted and that there can be--history tells us there often is--a deep impact when violence is used against those who are protesting the regime. It becomes normalized. And it ends up scaring many people into a dissent away from civic participation, and that is where our democracy dies.

This sacred privilege, the privilege of free speech, the privilege to protest your government--says 16-year-old Benjamin Franklin--``is so essential to free Governments, that the Security of Property, and the Freedom of Speech always go together.''

Men cannot be prosperous, he says, without having access to the freedom of expression.

Senator Padilla was doing his job. Sure, you can decide that he was being disrespectful. That is not illegal. You could decide that he, in the alternative, should have waited until the press conference was over. But nothing he did warranted the treatment he got.

And when you stand it side by side with the pardoning of the January 6 protesters, the attempt to bully the free press into toeing the administration's line, the deployment of the National Guard and the Marines to a protest in California that was largely peaceful and, basically, just encompassed 1 or 2 square blocks, nobody mistakes what that agenda is about. That agenda is about trying to bully the American people into silence.

And once again, the first several comments from our colleagues justifying the handcuffing and violence to Senator Padilla simply because they believe he was disrespectful paints a really dangerous picture of where we are headed.

Senator Booker is right. The focus should be on the violence that is being done to the American people's healthcare right now. We are debating a bill right now, as we speak, to rip healthcare away from upwards of 15 million Americans. That is extraordinary. That is a healthcare catastrophe. That is not just 15 million people losing their healthcare. That is hospitals, drug treatment centers, health clinics shutting down when you pull almost a trillion dollars out of the Medicaid system.

There is a new budget analysis today that shows that the poorest 30 percent of the country, 40 percent of the country, will be poorer after this bill passes, just so that the richest 10 or 20 percent can get a massive new tax cut. In fact, the richest people in this country will get an average $270,000 tax cut. Literally, a transfer of wealth from the poorest people in this country--people who are working minimum wage jobs are going to be poorer after having passed this bill in order to enrich the folks who are doing super well, and we are going to add $3 trillion to the deficit--just going to put it on our kids' credit card.

That is, maybe, the most unpopular piece of legislation that has ever come before the U.S. Senate. That is an agenda that you can probably only impose on the Nation by force--by force--because if people have the right to protest, if they have the ability to stand up to the most massive transfer of wealth from the poor and the middle class to the rich in the history of the country, it might not pass. That protest movement might be big enough in order to change the minds of enough Members of this body so that that agenda might pass.

It may be that that bill is so unpopular that the only way that you can get it to pass is by using violence and the threat of violence to suppress protest and free speech.

So we are still here, hours after this incident, because we care about our colleague, because we believe this is ultimately going to do immense damage to this institution that we love.

I have done hard work with many of my Republican colleagues. I deeply care about many of my Republican colleagues. I don't know all of them well, but I know enough of them to know that there are patriots; there are people who believe that America matters more than our party.

I showed that video to several of my Republican colleagues as we were leaving the Chamber today. I saw their jaws drop. I know their human reaction to what they saw. But I also know that there is a tendency in this version of the Republican party to circle the wagons around one message. If Democrats say X, then Republicans have to say Y.

That doesn't have to be the case every time. It just doesn't.

There can be true things. And a true thing is this: That was an excessive, impermissible amount of force that was used on Senator Padilla today. We can say that together.

Even if you agree with the President on his decision to deploy the National Guard, even if you hate every single one of those protesters, even if you don't like Senator Padilla--which is hard because he is a freaking hard guy not to like. But even if you believe all those things, you can say that what happened today is not all right and that the White House should admit that; that there should be an apology; and that there should be protocols set in place to make sure that if a U.S. Senator shows up to a public event--he didn't bust into a private meeting. This was a press conference designed to be public, to transmit public information. He wanted to make sure that that was accurate information. Maybe you don't like the way that he did it, but what he did is not illegal. What he did does not deserve that treatment. We can decide that that is wrong. We can recognize the danger to this concept of free speech, defended in 1722 by a 16-year-old Benjamin Franklin, is serious enough for us to speak together with one voice.

So my Republican colleagues may think that we are belaboring the point, but this is an important moment for the Senate and for the Nation.

I yield the floor.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from New Jersey.

Official Text ↗

Alex Padilla

Cory A. BookerDemocrat, New Jersey

I am grateful for the recognition.

I know we have been talking here for quite some time about an incident that is unprecedented--I would imagine in generations here-- that a U.S. Senator, today, in a Federal building, going to ask questions to a Federal official in the executive, is forcibly handled, identifies himself as a U.S. Senator, and is pulled out of the room. Doors close, and as we saw from another camera, he is forcibly driven to his knees and thrown upon his face with his arms wrenched behind him and handcuffed. It is such a breach to have one of our Members of this body treated in such a way for, as one of the officials from the Department of Homeland Security says, for being ``disrespectful and performative.'' Well, if that is a reason for people to be thrown on the ground, forcibly handcuffed, most of this body would have had that experience.

This is something far more serious when we see that overstep of power. I have seen this with LaMonica McIver, doing her oversight authority, being caught up in a storm of officials going to arrest a mayor who then the judge said clearly was wrongfully arrested.

We have seen this in the overstepping of the bounds of propriety. But this act of violence against a Member of this body demands a response.

We have seen what happens when government abuses their power, when they engage in violent actions against their citizenry. Indeed, we have seen this in its extreme cases, time and time again, throughout our history, unfortunately, in the labor movement, in the suffrage movement, in the civil rights movement.

We know that when State officials in Alabama met John Lewis and marchers across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, they were met with such violence that the intention there was to suppress our freedoms.

We are in a time now where we are seeing protests planned all across the United States of America, with hundreds of protests coming this weekend. As Alex Padilla, himself, has asked: If they can do this to a U.S. Senator, what does that say to the average American who wants to exercise their constitutionally protected rights to protest, to petition their government, to speak up?

More than this, Alex Padilla, in this body, has come in a very unusual way. He is the son of Mexican immigrants--a short-order cook and a woman who cleaned homes. In this environment, where we have seen our immigration enforcement officials not going after criminals or gang members or people that are somehow threatening us but going to separate families, taking away a mother from her children, taking away people dropping off their kids at school, going to work sites or places like Home Depot where people stand looking for work, going after agricultural workers--this is a moment where we see good-faith people peacefully protesting and having the courage to stand up to the most powerful person in the world, the President of the United States.

Yet, again, we see an example where that President is willing to abuse their authority in an act that is ensured to be an attempt at intimidation.

If Alex Padilla, a U.S. Senator, can be dragged from a room in a Federal building for asking questions, thrown upon the ground and handcuffed, what does it say to the traditions in our Nation that are one of the reasons why we are all here?

Because our government does have its limits--it is not unchecked power. The President is not the King. Insulting him is not a crime.

Look, I have been disappointed, as I have seen in joint statements and I have seen this in State of the Union Addresses, behavior from people that I don't find justifiable within the Chamber. I remember when a South Carolina Congressman heckled the President of the United States. I heard it in one of Trump's addresses--people yelling things at the President.

Is that, in a democracy, sufficient provocation to arrest Senators or Congress people who are ``disrespectful,'' as Alex Padilla was accused of being, as if that is a justification to be thrown upon the ground and violently handcuffed?

We have certain exalted ideals and principles in a democracy. In fact, fundamental to our democracy, written in our founding documents, over 200 years old, was this ideal of certain inalienable rights of the people. Our Bill of Rights enshrines--before even the ratification of our Constitution by States, it was demanded that we have a Bill of Rights that guarantees certain principles before a government. Our design of our government was to provide checks and balances because of how much our Founders feared excesses and abuses of power.

These are constitutional principles now that, today, in the most dramatic of fashion, are under attack. We, as a Nation, have elevated the ideals of the ability of American citizens to speak truth to power, to protest, to stand peacefully and forcibly in defiance of abuses of power.

And, today, in this body of 100, we have seen one of our Members, the son of Mexican immigrants, the son of a short-order cook and a woman who cleaned houses in the most noble of fashions--who invested themselves in our common dream, who invested themselves in our ideals, who raised an extraordinary young man who has lived his life in service of others, starting in Los Angeles, starting as a city councilperson in that very city, a graduate of MIT--face an indignity and an assault and violence that should not be tolerated on anybody in this body.

That is an executive overreach by the President of the United States, and it is happening within a pattern of conduct--a mayor in Newark arrested, rebuked by a judge that the authorities of the executive were overstepped; LaMonica McIver, a Congresswoman, brought up on charges as she was caught in a storm of officials rushing to arrest--wrongfully arrest--that

We see, time and time again, a pattern being created of an executive overstepping its authority and, in this case, using violence against an American citizen who also happens to be a Member of this body, a U.S. Senator.

I have strong, strong concerns about the fear and intimidation that this President seeks to create in our society--the fear and intimidation of a President that seems to equate defiance, dissent, and protests with somehow being unpatriotic or being un-American.

Well, leader after leader in our history says that when there is injustice, when there are abuses of power, when there is a Federal Government overstepping its bounds, it is incumbent upon the citizenry of the United States of America not to be complicit, not to be silent, not to do anything.

In this Nation, we bring strong voices that know that the true checks of the power of the executive are not just the judicial branch and the Congress. The true checks on abuses of power will always be the power of the people. I believe that our Founders spoke to this. I believe that there are extraordinary words from our past, and I would like to read some of them:

This is a quote that so guided our Framers--that the President of the United States is not a King. The great difficulty lies in this: ``You must first enable the government to'' stand for justice.

In Federalist No. 51, James Madison talked about the urgency of the people to check the power of the executive.

Here is Jefferson: The abuse of power is not a new thing. It is the consequence of power evidence.

Jefferson was suggesting the urgency for us as a citizenry to be vigilant against the abuses of power. As I said already, the words of Jefferson:

Donald Trump seems to want to make protesters afraid of him, dissenters afraid of him, those who disagree with him afraid of him. He seems to want to have law firms come to heel because of threats to their financial well-being. He wants to make universities come to heel because of their fears of losing Federal grants. These are signs not of a healthy democracy but one under assault.

Another quote:

A President that tries to precipitate a crisis or make people believe that there is a crisis in Los Angeles--one that cannot be handled by the local police, the city police, the county police--and in the farce of some serious emergency, sends in Federal troops. This is a President that is abusing our traditions and, as we saw today, a President whose administration, in my lifetime, took the first violent action against a Member of this body who was standing up to ask questions.

I quote George Washington:

That is how important our first President thought of as the ability for the people of this Country to stand up and speak truth to power. The right to free speech, the right to petition your government, the right to assemble--these are vaunted, sacred principles in this country.

And, today, if those principles are stripped from a U.S. Senator in their own State, in a Federal building; if a U.S. Senator cannot exercise their right of speech, their right to question their government, the right to provide checks and balances--even after they identified themselves, they are forcibly removed from a room in that Federal building, forced to kneel, and then thrown upon their face, then having their arms wrenched behind their back and handcuffed. As Alex Padilla said: If they are doing that to me, just imagine what they are doing to laborers and farmworkers and others who do not have the stature of this office.

What will this body do? This is the test before us right now. What will this body do? Where are the voices of our colleagues on the other side of the aisle?

True tests of leadership are not easy. To stand in a storm, to stand for principle against politics, to stand for patriotism against partisanship, to stand up for what is right--that is what this moment calls.

For us to normalize what we saw today, normalize a U.S. Senator being violently grabbed and handcuffed with no charges filed, if we say nothing now, our silence is complicity in that behavior by the executive. It is an erosion of our democracy, of our principles.

I heard the authors of this book, ``How Democracies Die,'' speak with fear and worry about our current state of affairs in America. One of the signs they pointed to about a democracy in peril was violence. But it wasn't violence of a political sectarian nature. Yes, that is part of it. But the worst type of violence that shows the erosion of a democracy is when the state itself uses violence unjustly against its citizens.

That was the horror of Donald Trump pardoning people who beat police officers in this building. The horror to me was not the Presidential pardon power; the horror to me was that the very people who beat into submission police officers in order to unjustly install a President, in order to prevent the peaceful transfer of power--that very same President was saying: Hey, it is all right. I am going to call you patriots and absolve you of your convictions by a jury of your peers. Some of you who even pled guilty to your crimes, I am going to say that is all forgiven.

The danger in that is a President saying: If you commit violent acts to my benefit--in this case, to unjustly install me in my position-- then that is OK.

It is encouraging violence within our society that erodes our democracy as a whole.

This is the crisis we are in. This is a moment that is a test of this body. This is a crossroads in this body.

A Member of this body in a Federal building, trying to ask questions to a Federal official after identifying themselves, faced violence from his government that tried to silence him as he tried to ask a question.

This has precipitated for us a greater question: Are we a vibrant democracy that protects our fundamental rights, that checks power from abuse, that demands that no one is above the law, whether it be any American citizen and especially those who serve in public office? What will our democracy be tomorrow? Will we normalize this kind of violence, this kind of attack on a Member of this body by the administration for the sin that they themselves have said is just disrespectful behavior--asking a question at a press conference?

This is a day of great challenge and great trial. This is a test of this body. How will we respond in this moment? Will this body simply allow the administration to continue in this manner this pattern and practice that they are establishing where the rights of American citizens to speak truth, to protest, to speak up, to call out, to question, to be in dissent--are those sacrosanct principles or will we allow them to be violated even when it is a Member of our own body?

At the end of the Declaration of Independence, these brave men who saw the abuses of power of a King; those revolutionaries who gave birth to this great democracy; those imperfect geniuses who grappled with the great ideals of their time, that set up a nation not ruled by Kings and Queens, not a theocracy where there is some divine right of someone to rule over us, decided to vest the power in this Nation with the people and created a government organized around the principle of the suspicion of concentrations of power and created three branches of government to provide checks and balances and then gave to the people of the United States of America certain fundamental rights--the First Amendment to our Constitution, enshrining those rights--those rights that have allowed generation after generation to use them to make our Nation more perfect, to speak up to the wrongs and the ills of government, to challenge leaders who had gotten corrupt and had gone wrong; generation after generation

And here we are in 2025 where those ideals are being tested, where that Constitution is being strained, where a Member of this body speaking up and asking questions at a time of trial in his community is not met with answers to his questions but is met with violence. That is wrong.

But when wrongs continue--or, as our Founders called them, usurpations of our inalienable rights--when those go unchecked, when such actions go unanswered, it paves a road toward tyranny, and in our day and age, they are signs of our weakening commitment to democracy.

Our Founders knew something so well, and as they pledged themselves to break with a King, to break with a central powerful person, to break through a world where you must go before the dear leader and bow in submission, where the vicissitudes and the whims of an individual leader wreak havoc with the community--those people who broke with that course of human events and established this Nation knew one thing for sure: that if we were to make this Nation work, we had to make an unusual commitment to each other. They ended that Declaration of Independence with that commitment--we must mutually pledge to each other our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.

There is no honor in what happened to one of our Members today when he was taken violently and driven to his knees. There is no honor in what happened today when an American standing up to ask questions to a person in authority was met with violence. There is no honor in what happened today when a Member of our body was thrown into handcuffs. There is no honor in that.

But where we can show honor, where we can honor our traditions, is not being silent in the face of something going wrong. The truth of the matter is, our Nation has seen wrongs before, but the way we dealt with them was by having others stand up and call them out to help us to correct course.

When those marchers were met with violence at the Edmund Pettus Bridge, that was not the end of the story. The end of the story happened days later when they made it over that bridge; when they got to their destination; when they presented their grievances to their government; when this body itself, hearing from the people, passed new laws and legislation to protect the people and their rights--in this case, their voting rights.

Bad things happen. Mistakes are made. Power seeks more power. Our country is not bereft of demagoguery or hate or powerful people who want to suppress dissent, people who equate opposition with being un- American. We have seen that all. But so far, we have seen people in those times having the courage to stand up and stand against it, who have called it out to demand redress, to fight for justice.

This is a moment that demands that tradition. This is a moment that demands not just people on one side of the political aisle, not just one party, it demands us coming together and pledging a deeper, more sacred honor--that we will defend this democracy, that we will uphold the Constitution and stand together united against anyone--especially using violence--who tries to suppress the fundamental rights of another American, especially a senior U.S. Senator from the great State of California.

I yield the floor.

(Mr. CURTIS assumed the Chair.)

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The majority leader.

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Executive Calendar (Executive Session)

John ThuneRepublican, South Dakota

Mr. President, I move to proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 145.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion.

The motion was agreed to.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the nomination.

The senior assistant legislative clerk read the nomination of Gary Andres, of Virginia, to be an Assistant Secretary of Health and Human Services.

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Cloture Motion (Executive Session)

John ThuneRepublican, South Dakota

Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.

The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

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Legislative Session

John ThuneRepublican, South Dakota

Mr. President, I move to proceed to legislative session.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion.

The motion was agreed to.

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Executive Calendar (Executive Session)

John ThuneRepublican, South Dakota

Mr. President, I move to proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 98.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion.

The motion was agreed to.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the nomination.

The senior assistant legislative clerk read the nomination of Olivia Trusty, of Maryland, to be a Member of the Federal Communications Commission for the remainder of the term expiring June 30, 2025.

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Cloture Motion (Executive Session)

John ThuneRepublican, South Dakota

Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.

The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

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Legislative Session

John ThuneRepublican, South Dakota

Mr. President, I move to proceed to legislative session.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion.

The motion was agreed to.

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Executive Calendar (Executive Session)

John ThuneRepublican, South Dakota

Mr. President, I move to proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 99.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The question is on agreeing to the motion.

The motion was agreed to.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the nomination.

The senior assistant legislative clerk read the nomination of Olivia Trusty, of Maryland, to be a Member of the Federal Communications Commission for a term of five years from July 1, 2025. (Reappointment).

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Cloture Motion (Executive Session)

John ThuneRepublican, South Dakota

Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The cloture motion having been presented under rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.

The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

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Legislative Session

John ThuneRepublican, South Dakota

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate resume legislative session and be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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Vote Explanation

Richard J. DurbinDemocrat, Illinois

Mr. President, I was necessarily absent for rollcall vote No. 321, motion to invoke cloture on S. 1582, a bill to provide for the regulation of payment stablecoins, and for other purposes, as amended. Had I been present for the vote, I would have voted nay.

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Vote Explanation

Jack ReedDemocrat, Rhode Island

Mr. President, I was necessarily absent for rollcall vote No. 297, the confirmation of Executive Calendar No. 111, Brett Shumate, of Virginia, to be an Assistant Attorney General. Had I been present, I would have voted no.

I was necessarily absent for rollcall vote No. 298, the motion to invoke cloture on Executive Calendar No. 49, David Fotouhi, of Virginia, to be Deputy Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Had I been present, I would have voted no.

I was necessarily absent for rollcall vote No. 299, the confirmation of Executive Calendar No. 49, David Fotouhi, of Virginia, to be Deputy Administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency. Had I been present, I would have voted no.

I was necessarily absent for rollcall vote No. 300, the motion to invoke cloture on Executive Calendar No. 112, Stephen Vaden, of Tennessee, to be Deputy Secretary of Agriculture. Had I been present, I would have voted no.

I was necessarily absent for rollcall vote No. 301, the confirmation of Executive Calendar No. 112, Stephen Vaden, of Tennessee, to be Deputy Secretary of Agriculture. Had I been present, I would have voted no.

I was necessarily absent for rollcall vote No. 302, the motion to invoke cloture on Executive Calendar No. 117, Andrew Hughes, of Texas, to be Deputy Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Had I been present, I would have voted no.

I was necessarily absent for rollcall vote No. 303, the confirmation of Executive Calendar No. 117, Andrew Hughes, of Texas, to be Deputy Secretary of Housing and Urban Development. Had I been present, I would have voted no.

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Genius Act

Catherine Cortez MastoDemocrat, Nevada

Mr. President, as I travel from Washington, DC, to participate in a congressional delegation focused on U.S. national security while debate on the GENIUS Act, S. 1582, continues, I rise today to expound on my support for this critical bill. This bill represents what the U.S. Senate can achieve when Republicans and Democrats collaborate in earnest. As lawmakers, we have the responsibility to build and improve upon laws that are no longer applicable to 21st century innovation. The GENIUS Act is an important first step that helps solidify the United States as a leader in shaping payments modernization. We must maintain this ongoing effort to ensure digital assets grow and evolve in a safe and sound manner that not only protects national security but also the people engaging these technologies.

The current iteration of the GENIUS Act is distinctly different from the text that was originally introduced because of bipartisan negotiations. The version being considered includes a change in section 7(B) that I introduced during the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs legislative hearing on March 13, 2025. This change ensures payment stablecoin issuers can only issue, redeem, and manage reserves to back their stablecoins and prevents issuers from engaging in speculative and high-risk ventures that could increase the likelihood of a failure.

Furthermore, while the GENIUS Act provides a roadmap for more robust Federal consumer protections, I support the preservation of State consumer protection laws in the bill. As the former Attorney General of Nevada, I have always been a strong advocate for preserving a State's authority to act in the best interest of its residents. This goal is accomplished through the negotiated savings clause in section 7(f)(4) which solidifies congressional intent to preserve State consumer protection law through the bill.

The GENIUS Act is not the end of Congress's work to bolster national security, encourage innovation, and protect consumers in the emerging digital assets ecosystem. We must continue our work to further our ideals that have made the U.S. financial system the envy of the world.

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Tribute to Erica Wheelan Heyse

Cynthia M. LummisRepublican, Wyoming

Mr. President, I rise today to recognize Ms. Erica Wheelan Heyse, who this June marks 25 years of extraordinary service to the Congressional Award Foundation, Congress's only charity and the highest honor available to America's youth.

Since joining the foundation in 2000 and now serving as National Director, Ms. Heyse has transformed a modest recognition program into a nationwide engine of opportunity. Under her stewardship, the Congressional Award is active in every State, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the territories, engaging tens of thousands of young people in voluntary public service, personal development, physical fitness, and exploration.

Her impact is best captured in one remarkable figure: 7,528 young Americans have earned the gold medal since 2000 under her guidance, each one a story of commitment, growth, and civic engagement that echoes well beyond the medal ceremony.

Ms. Heyse's vision has always reached beyond accolades. She launched the STEM Stars Initiative, opening doors for girls and rural students to pursue science and technology careers; partnered with Intuit to create a free Financial Literacy Center, equipping medalists with essential money-management skills; and, during the COVID-19 pandemic, shifted statewide celebrations online so that no young person's achievement went unrecognized.

Colleagues and alumni alike describe Erica's signature qualities, humility, relentless optimism, and an unshakeable belief in every young person's potential. Whether guiding a first-time volunteer in rural Wyoming or briefing corporate and military partners on Capitol Hill, she exemplifies the servant-leadership we seek to cultivate in the next generation.

On behalf of the U.S. Senate, I ask that this tribute be entered into the Congressional Record so that future generations may know of Ms. Erica Wheelan Heyse's remarkable quarter-century of leadership. Her work has expanded opportunity, strengthened communities, and inspired a culture of service that will echo across our Nation for decades to come.

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Authority for Committees to Meet

John ThuneRepublican, South Dakota

Mr. President, I have five requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.

Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:

The Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, June 12, 2025, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on nominations in open session.

The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, June 12, 2025, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing.

The Committee on Finance is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, June 12, 2025, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing.

The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, June 12, 2025, at 10:30 a.m., to conduct a hearing on nominations.

The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Thursday, June 12, 2025, at 9:30 a.m., to conduct an executive business meeting.

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Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act

John ThuneRepublican, South Dakota

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs be discharged from further consideration of S. 1467 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the bill by title.

The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

There being no objection, the committee was discharged, and the Senate proceeded to consider the bill.

John ThuneRepublican, South Dakota

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

The bill (S. 1467) was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading, was read the third time, and passed as follows:

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Condemning the Violent Antisemitic Attack in Boulder, Colorado, and Expressing Support for the Survivors and Their Families

John ThuneRepublican, South Dakota

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 278, submitted earlier today.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the resolution by title.

The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:

There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the resolution.

John ThuneRepublican, South Dakota

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

The resolution (S. Res. 278) was agreed to.

The preamble was agreed to.

(The resolution, with its preamble, is printed in today's Record under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')

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Orders for Monday, June 16, 2025

John ThuneRepublican, South Dakota

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 4 p.m. on Monday, June 16; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate be in a period of morning business with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each; further, notwithstanding rule XXII, the cloture motions filed on June 12, ripen at 5:30 p.m. and the Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture on Executive Calendar No. 145, Gary Andres.

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.

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Adjournment Until Monday, June 16, 2025, at 4 P.M.

John ThuneRepublican, South Dakota

Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order.

There being no objection, the Senate, at 6:38 p.m., adjourned until Monday, June 16, 2025, at 4 p.m.

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