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40Senate Resolution 368: Commemorating the Continuation of the Semicentennial of Hip Hop and Designating August 11, 2025, as "Hip Hop Celebration Day", Designating August 2025 as "Hip Hop...
42Senate Resolution 370: Commending the Superdome on the Occasion of Its Golden Jubilee and Its Years of Service to the State of Louisiana and the United States
Three bills and three resolutions were introduced, as follows: S. 2680-2682, and S. Res. 368-370.
Page S5514
Measures Passed
Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day: Senate agreed to S. Res. 369, designating August 21, 2025, as ``Fentanyl Prevention and Awareness Day''.
Page S5520
Superdome golden jubilee
Senate agreed to S. Res. 370, commending the Superdome on the occasion of its golden jubilee and its years of service to the State of Louisiana and the United States.
Page S5520
Captain Paul W. `Bud' Bucha VA Medical Center
Senate passed S. 2682, to designate the medical center of the Department of Veterans Affairs in West Haven, Connecticut, as the ``Captain Paul W. `Bud' Bucha VA Medical Center''.
Pages S5520-21
Leonard G. `Bud' Lomell, VA Clinic
Committee on Veterans' Affairs was discharged from further consideration of H.R. 2170, to name the Department of Veterans Affairs community-based outpatient clinic in Toms River, New Jersey, the Leonard G. `Bud' Lomell, VA Clinic, and the bill was then passed.
Page S5521
Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 technical corrections
Committee on Foreign Relations was discharged from further consideration of S. 1155, to amend the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 to make technical corrections, and the bill was then passed.
Page S5521
Homebuyers Privacy Protection Act
Senate passed H.R. 2808, to amend the Fair Credit Reporting Act to prevent consumer reporting agencies from furnishing consumer reports under certain circumstances.
Page S5522
Measures Considered
National Defense Authorization Act--Cloture: Senate began consideration of the motion to proceed to consideration of S. 2296, to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2026 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year.
Page S5522
A motion was entered to close further debate on the motion to proceed to consideration of the bill, and, in accordance with the provisions of Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, and pursuant to the unanimous-consent agreement of Saturday, August 2, 2025, a vote on cloture will occur at 5:30 p.m., on Tuesday, September 2, 2025.
Page S5522
A unanimous-consent agreement was reached providing that notwithstanding Rule XXII, the motion to invoke cloture filed on Saturday, August 2, 2025, ripen at 5:30 p.m., on Tuesday, September 2, 2025.
Page S5506
Pro Forma Sessions: Agreement
A unanimous-consent agreement was reached providing that the Senate convene for pro forma sessions, with no business being conducted on the following dates and times: Tuesday, August 5, 2025, at 1 p.m.; Friday, August 8, 2025, at 1:05 p.m.; Tuesday, August 12, 2025, at 8 a.m.; Friday, August 15, 2025, at 10:15 a.m.; Tuesday, August 19, 2025, at 10 a.m.; Friday, August 22, 2025, at 9 a.m.; Tuesday, August 26, 2025, at 12 noon; Friday, August 29, 2025, at 7 a.m.; and that when the Senate adjourns on Friday, August 29, 2025, it next convene at 3 p.m., on Tuesday, September 2, 2025.
Page S5506
Authorizing Leadership to Make Appointments: Agreement
A unanimous- consent agreement was reached providing that, notwithstanding the upcoming adjournment of the Senate, the President of the Senate, the President Pro Tempore, and the Majority and Minority Leaders be authorized to make appointments to commissions, committees, boards, conferences, or interparliamentary conferences authorized by law, by concurrent action of the two Houses, or by order of the Senate.
Page S5522
Military Construction, Veterans Affairs, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act: Agreement
A unanimous-consent agreement was reached providing that notwithstanding the passage of H.R. 3944, making appropriations for military construction, the Department of Veterans Affairs, and related agencies for the fiscal year ending September 30, 2026, the Secretary of the Senate be authorized to make changes necessary to ensure that each adopted amendment is incorporated into the text of the bill as amended.
Page S5522
Nominations Confirmed
Senate confirmed the following nominations: By 53 yeas to 44 nays (Vote No. EX. 486), Andrew Puzder, of Tennessee, to be Representative of the United States of America to the European Union, with the rank of Ambassador.
Pages S5479-90, S5522
During consideration of this nomination today, Senate also took the following action
By 52 yeas to 41 nays (Vote No. EX. 485), Senate agreed to the motion to close further debate on the nomination.
Page S5481
By 49 yeas to 44 nays (Vote No. EX. 488), Brian Burch, of Illinois, to be Ambassador to the Holy See.
Pages S5490-98, S5522
During consideration of this nomination today, Senate also took the following action
By 51 yeas to 45 nays (Vote No. EX. 487), Senate agreed to the motion to close further debate on the nomination.
Pages S5490-91
By 52 yeas to 44 nays (Vote No. EX. 490), Jason Reding Quinones, of Florida, to be United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida for the term of four years.
Pages S5498-S5505, S5522
During consideration of this nomination today, Senate also took the following action
By 49 yeas to 45 nays (Vote No. EX. 489), Senate agreed to the motion to close further debate on the nomination.
Page S5498
By 50 yeas to 45 nays (Vote No. EX. 492), Jeanine Pirro, of New York, to be United States Attorney for the District of Columbia for the term of four years.
Pages S5506-07, S5522
During consideration of this nomination today, Senate also took the following action
By 51 yeas to 45 nays (Vote No. EX. 491), Senate agreed to the motion to close further debate on the nomination.
Page S5506
By 78 yeas to 17 nays (Vote No. EX. 494), Luke Lindberg, of South Dakota, to be Under Secretary of Agriculture for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs.
Pages S5507-08, S5522
During consideration of this nomination today, Senate also took the following action
By 76 yeas to 19 nays (Vote No. EX. 493), Senate agreed to the motion to close further debate on the nomination.
Pages S5507-08
By 50 yeas to 45 nays (Vote No. EX. 495), Catherine Hanson, of South Carolina, to be Chief Financial Officer, Environmental Protection Agency.
Pages S5508, S5522
By 52 yeas to 42 nays (Vote No. EX. 496), John Arrigo, of Florida, to be Ambassador to the Portuguese Republic.
Pages S5508-09, S5522
By 59 yeas to 35 nays (Vote No. EX. 497), Sean Cairncross, of Minnesota, to be National Cyber Director.
Pages S5509, S5522
By 72 yeas to 22 nays (Vote No. EX. 498), Adam Telle, of Mississippi, to be an Assistant Secretary of the Army.
Pages S5509-10, S5522
By 71 yeas to 23 nays (Vote No. EX. 499), Marcus Molinaro, of New York, to be Federal Transit Administrator.
Pages S5510, S5522
A unanimous-consent agreement was providing that the motions to invoke cloture with respect to the nominations of Catherine Hanson, of South Carolina, to be Chief Financial Officer, Environmental Protection Agency, John Arrigo, of Florida, to be Ambassador to the Portuguese Republic, Sean Cairncross, of Minnesota, to be National Cyber Director, Adam Telle, of Mississippi, to be an Assistant Secretary of the Army, and Marcus Molinaro, of New York, to be Federal Transit Administrator, be withdrawn.
Page S5508
Statements on Introduced Bills/Resolutions:
Pages S5515-16
Record Votes
Fifteen record votes were taken today. (Total--499)
Pages S5481, S5490-91, S5498, S5505-10
Adjournment
Senate convened at 9:30 a.m. and adjourned at 9:59 p.m., until 1 p.m. on Tuesday, August 5, 2025. (For Senate's program, see the remarks of the Majority Leader in today's Record on page S5506.)
Every speech and line is the Congressional Record's own text, read from GovInfo. Speakers are matched to members by GPO's own metadata. Referandom places each turn on the Clerk's video by matching its words: 140 of 333 spoken turns were found. Turns without a time are still listed; they just can't seek.
Federal Bureau of Investigation (Executive Session)
Mr. President, once again, I am going to remind people that there was some wrong done by the U.S. Government between the periods of about 6 years ago to 10 years ago, and the taxpayers of this country might wonder why a Senator is bringing this stuff up. It involves government coverup. The public's business always ought to be public, and if there is government coverup, we need to make sure that the public knows about it and people in government know about it that might be wanting to cover up things today so they learn a lesson that I hope I can say that nobody is going to get away with wrongdoing if they are working for the U.S. Government.
So here I go on something that most people would consider history but has got a present-day purpose for doing. As part of my longstanding oversight of the FBI's discredited, ``Crossfire Hurricane'' investigation into President Trump, this week I made public a formerly classified document. Probably most of it shouldn't have been classified in the first place. That is the way the government does things to cover up.
The American people deserve to see the facts that the FBI previously buried. This document, known as the Durham Annex, contains intelligence suggesting Hillary Clinton's campaign fabricated the Trump-Russia narrative in 2016. But the FBI turned a blind eye to the evidence. In other words, it was used as a political weapon.
The American people deserve full transparency about the FBI's failure to investigate this intelligence and related records so that America's law enforcement Agencies and intelligence communities aren't weaponized again.
I am grateful to Attorney General Pam Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel for working with me to totally bring this information to light, and it is just not those two people that President Trump has appointed but other people like Tulsi Gabbard, Director of National Intelligence, have done in other ways things that were buried by previous administrations that she is making public knowledge of. And I could say, very generally, that the Trump administration is better than any Republican or Democratic administration in the past of trying to get
Now, what I have just told you is not the end of the story. There is a lot more to uncover, and you can expect more documents to be released from this Senator in the coming months. This is not a Republican issue, this is not a Democrat issue, this is an issue of the bureaucracy, in this case the FBI being used as a political weapon, covering up. In fact, some of these documents that I released, Director Patel told me, and I think he also told the public this, that they found some of this evidence in what the FBI would call a burn bag.
So we have got to make sure that this stuff doesn't happen again.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
Mr. President, yesterday afternoon, we reached an agreement with Democrats on an appropriations package, and I am pleased to report that as of last night, we passed three of the fiscal year 2026 appropriations bills: Military Construction-Veterans Affairs, Legislative Branch, and Agriculture. Those are the three appropriations bills that we were able to pass last night.
I would say it is a very good start on appropriations, and a striking contrast, I might add, to last year when the Democrat leader failed to bring a single appropriations bill to the floor for a vote, notwithstanding the fact that 11 of the 12 passed out of the Appropriations Committee with big bipartisan margins.
And I want to thank Senate Appropriations Committee Chair Collins, as well as Senators Hoeven, Boozman, and Mullin. I also want to thank Senator Moran, who had done outstanding work on the Commerce-Justice- Science appropriations bill. And that would have passed last night had it not been for the opposition of a single Democrat Senator.
Thanks are due to all the members of the Senate Appropriations Committee, which has now reported out 8--8--of the 12 fiscal year 2026 appropriations bills.
The Senate is currently in its best place on appropriations in years, and I am grateful for all those who worked cooperatively and in good faith to make last night's votes happen. It is good to have the Senate back on a regular-order track on appropriations, and I will continue to work for a regular-order process as we continue, and I hope that Democrats will join us in that effort.
It was disturbing to hear the Democrat leader threaten to shut down the government in his July 8 ``Dear Colleague'' letter. And I hope--I really hope--the Democrats will not embrace that position but will continue to work with Republicans to fund the government.
As I said, we are in the best place we have been in years, but we have a lot of work to do. And I hope that we will be able to continue the good work we began last night with continued bipartisan cooperation.
Mr. President, I just listened to my friend, the majority leader, speak. Let me say, historically bad nominees deserve historic levels of scrutiny. I saw the majority leader bring out a chart again today comparing the situation right now to past nominees from past administrations. What he fails to mention is we have never seen nominees as flawed, as compromised, as unqualified as we have right now. And the Republican Senators know that.
So, once again, historically bad nominees deserve a historical level of scrutiny.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The bill clerk read as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. By unanimous consent, the mandatory quorum call has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the nomination of Andrew Puzder, of Tennessee, to be Representative of the United States of America to the European Union, with the Rank of Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary, shall be brought to a close?
I announce that the Senator from Illinois (Ms. Duckworth), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Sanders), the Senator from Virginia (Mr. Warner), and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Welch), are necessarily absent.
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 52, nays 41, as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 52, the nays are 41. The motion is agreed to.
The motion was agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from North Dakota.
Mr. President, when I walked through that door--I guess it was only about 50 minutes ago--I had no intention of speaking. Half an hour ago, I had no intention of speaking today. But I need a little therapy. So congratulations, therapists--I have a couple of things on my mind.
As I stand here--as we stand here--uncertain about what this Saturday morning in August is going to produce, I just had some thoughts. My first thought seems probably pretty basic, and it is to the Democrats in the Chamber--specifically, their leadership.
Breaking news: Donald Trump won the election. He is the President of the United States. You don't have to like it, but he did. He won.
What got me a little bit ramped up this morning was I started thinking about all of Joe Biden's nominees that I voted for, and I got to thinking about
I got to thinking about how very, very special this institution is, in a country that is made up of self-governed people. We, ladies and gentlemen--we, Mr. President--are the representatives of those self- governed people. And in many respects, what we are going through this weekend is in large part a direct reflection of the division of our country--for sure, for sure. But I submit that we have a higher responsibility than to simply gravitate to the worst instincts but, rather, elevate this institution to a more aspirational conclusion. It is not even really a new conclusion; it is the tradition and the history of this institution.
So as I was looking at the leader's chart in the cloakroom earlier, I see this rather rich history of an institution that, first of all, respects the prerogative of the person who won the Presidency while also protecting our prerogative to have some oversight and to advise and consent.
Boy, when I think of supporting Lloyd Austin for Secretary of Defense, a decision I came to regret--not because I didn't like him but because he proved to be a pretty bad Secretary of Defense--nonetheless, nonetheless, Joe Biden had won the election, and that is who he chose. When I supported Pete Buttigieg for Secretary of Transportation, I had higher hopes, but we had a decent working relationship, and I was happy to have supported him. When I introduced Shalanda Young in the Budget Committee in her hearing to become OMB Director, that was a decision I never regretted and still do not.
But I will tell you, this morning, as I stand here in early August on a Saturday morning, with this circle of zero percent bright-gray, as though there is such a thing as bright-gray, I am frustrated. This is the future of this place if something good doesn't happen today in this place. And I fear we are going down a path we may never ever be able to go down again--or at least go the other direction.
Some fights aren't worth winning, much less losing. I have always loved this institution and the norms of it, but this is not normal. This is the exception. And this I do not want to ever have become normal. But I, as somebody who appreciated the relationships--and still do--that I have had with Joe Biden's nominees, today, if you were to ask me to vote for a Joe Biden nominee, I don't give a rat's rear who they are, how great they are, how spectacular they may be--I don't care what their credentials are--the message to me is I have to vote no. We darned sure aren't going to let them have it the easy way. We are darned sure never going to do 46 percent of the next President's nominees with a voice vote or unanimous consent because the new norm is we fight every one of them because they won the election instead of us winning the election.
It is not OK, friends.
It is not OK, Mr. President.
Last night, in this Chamber, we did something rather remarkable together with a very large bipartisan vote. We passed not one, not two, but three appropriations bills--as Chairman Collins reminded us, the first time we have done it before the August recess since 2018.
We celebrated for a complete--oh, I don't know--30 seconds maybe. And the American people instead are waking up to this--to this. And what this is--what this is--this is us voting for very low positions in the sub-Cabinet of appointees and nominees--not unimportant jobs, by the way, but low positions in comparison to the Cabinet--one every 2 hours, one every 2 hours, because that is as fast as we are allowed to go with the 1,200 or so nominees that we have the responsibility of confirming or not.
And here is what I fear. I fear that the occasional bad nominee will always pass now, from now on, because we have turned--somebody has turned this into a shirts-and-skins game. So from now until eternity, the first question is going to be: Oh, I don't know. Who won that Presidential election again? Oh, yeah, the other team. Well, we can't allow them to have their nominees on a simple voice vote.
It will, I am afraid, have a very, very, very bad ramification on this institution if we don't correct course sometime today, if we don't come to some sort of an agreement that recognizes that Donald Trump won the election and has the right to have the government that he wants and that we have a prerogative to make sure that it is not just confirmed but that if there are some bad apples along the way, that they get held up for greater scrutiny.
But if this becomes a straight skins-and-shirts game, then all discretion is out the window; then all oversight is really out the window; then the responsibility of scrutiny goes out the window because it is one team versus the other team, with nobody looking out for the American people.
As I said, I didn't intend to get up and talk today. I don't know that I feel any better for it. But we have an opportunity today-- today--to knock out this obstruction by the leader of the Democratic Party in the U.S. Senate. If we don't, if something doesn't happen today, then we, in my view, are confronted with the only other choice, and that is a major rules change that acknowledges the new reality in this country. I don't want that to be the case. I am still more optimistic than the path we are on.
Mr. President, nobody in our country should ever be above the law, certainly not powerful people who believe that they can perpetrate crimes on victims and get away with it because they have so much wealth and so many lawyers and so many friends in high places.
If you go outside the doors of the Senate Chamber, to my right, and you continue straight ahead and you go out the second set of doors to the steps of the Capitol, you are looking straight across at the Supreme Court. And while scaffolding is up right now, making it hard to see the words, the words that are engraved above those pillars are those words ``Equal Justice Under Law.'' Powerful words. A powerful vision that all Americans are subject to the law.
There is no special get-out-of-jail-free card under that vision for the powerful, but all too often the combination of reams of well-paid lawyers and a whole lot of friends ready to help you, the powerful commit crimes and get away with it.
We should aspire to the vision that is there above the Supreme Court, that vision of ``Equal Justice Under Law,'' that no politician, no celebrity, no megamillionaire or billionaire can buy their way out of justice when they commit crimes and particularly not crimes that involve life-altering damage, crimes in which people are killed, crimes in which people are mutilated, crimes in which people are raped.
No matter how powerful someone is, they need to be prosecuted when they commit these crimes. And the American people have a right to know what information the government is suppressing to protect these individuals. So this brings us to the conversation of the Epstein files. There is only one right answer, complete and total disclosure. That is the only pathway to justice.
We have a lot of suspicions across this country about what is contained in those files hidden in the Department of Justice, those files that are hidden in the Department of the Treasury.
My colleague Senator Wyden, on the Finance Committee, has been working on this for years. I heard an objection from across the aisle, Why are you interested now? Well, Senator Wyden has been leading the search to understand what went on. There is a billion dollars
So here is what we know: We know that Epstein ran a massive network of sex trafficking, sex trafficking of young girls to powerful men. Now, we don't know who they are, in terms of those powerful men, and there may be many names in the files--the Epstein files--that involve people who had nothing to do with those crimes. They may simply be friends in a network; they may be business associates in some other legitimate way; but some of them may well be these powerful men who raped young girls.
So those folks who were not part of that shouldn't be objecting to the release of the files because the files would simply show that they had nothing to do with those crimes against young women. But the folks who were the perpetrators, whose names might be in that file, right now, I can guarantee you, they are working the system of every high friend across this country, every megamillionaire and billionaire who participated in these violent acts on the innocent young, and they are trying to make sure this information never comes out. So far, they have succeeded, and that is wrong.
Several of my colleagues are preparing to speak to this, and Senator Durbin--I am looking to see that he is here, yes, he is--is going to speak to it next. My colleague from across the aisle is here to respond to a request to hear and vote on a bill that will tell the Department of Justice, you must release these files; transparency must happen.
Now, why did I write this bill? I wrote this bill because the Attorney General said we don't have legal permission to release the information. So let's give her the legal permission to release this information. In fact, let's pass a law right now, today, here in the Senate, that says you not only have permission to release the Epstein files, but we are passing a law saying you must release the Epstein files, with the names of the victims redacted to protect them.
So as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged and the Senate proceed to immediate consideration of S. 2557; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
Senate Republicans included a provision to address this very issue in an appropriations bill that Democrats blocked earlier this week.
This issue would have been addressed here on the U.S. Senate floor. Yet Senate Democrats came to the floor and objected to what was in this bill having appropriations and dealing with the funding of the Government of the United States.
And the shutdown Democrats, who want to shut down the government, did exactly that. They objected to the appropriations bill that addressed this very item. That is what happened. And what is really happening today, we are here on a Saturday morning in August, on the floor of the U.S. Senate, and why are we here?
We are here because Democrats are still trying to distract from the unprecedented obstruction of President Trump's well-qualified nominees. As of this morning, there are still 154 qualified nominees awaiting confirmation in the U.S. Senate.
Many have been approved in committee with Democrat support, bipartisan support, in many cases, strong bipartisan support. These are not controversial individuals but patriotic Americans patiently waiting for their opportunity to serve our Nation.
So far this year, Democrats have allowed exactly zero--zero--nominees to be confirmed by voice vote. This is a drastic departure from the norms and the traditions of the U.S. Senate. It is very different from how Republicans treated Democrat nominees when we were in the minority in 2021. We continued to work with the other side to reach a fair agreement to end this blockade.
I am hopeful that an agreement is within reach, and I objected to this exact legislation 4 days ago. Nothing has changed since Senator Merkley brought this to the floor 4 days ago, other than we continue to be here with an obstruction--a historic obstruction by the Democrats of President Trump's qualified nominees, and therefore I object.
Mr. President, my colleague has come to the floor and said that there is a provision in a bill, but will he yield for a question about that provision?
He will not because he has just left the floor because he doesn't want to answer the question. But I invite him to come back because the provision he is talking about does not require the release of the Epstein files--not at all. And so he has come to the floor, and he said Democrats blocked a provision, and he won't tell you what I am telling you right now, that provision does not require the release of the Epstein files. So it is misrepresenting the situation.
And you saw him change the topic. Why change the topic from this topic? Americans have been very clear that they want these files released. This is the bill that will do it.
Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Oregon for his leadership on this bill, which I am proud to cosponsor. I want to respond to my friend and colleague from the State of Wyoming and say when he goes back in time looking at the votes on nominees, don't overlook the JD Vance precedent. JD Vance, then-Senator for Ohio, came to the floor of the U.S. Senate and objected to any type of vocal arrangement--oral vote, when it came to the approval of U.S. attorneys. He said that he wanted all of them to go through the regular order. That stopped, under President Biden, the appointment of all U.S. attorneys.
So to argue that they have clean hands in the situation is to ignore the Vice President's former status, establishing the standard that made it impossible to consider U.S. attorneys on a voice vote.
Let me say about the issue before us on Epstein. Two weeks after the Senate confirmed Pam Bondi as Attorney General, she told FOX News--the mother ship--the list of Jeffrey Epstein's clients are ``sitting on my desk right now to review.''
Six days later, Bondi released binders of documents related to Epstein to MAGA influencers, but these documents were largely already publicly available. The absence of any client list led to immense blowback.
Attorney General Bondi returned to FOX News and made another startling claim. She said that a whistleblower told her the FBI withheld ``thousands of pages of documents'' and the country would see ``the full Epstein files.''
Over the next 4 months, DOJ and FBI were silent on this issue until an unsigned July 7 memo was issued finding that ``systemic review revealed no incriminating `client list.' ''
So what happened during the 4 months between Attorney General Bondi's blockbuster claims in February and this July 7 memorandum?
My office received a highly credible whistleblower disclosure describing Attorney General Bondi's pressure on the FBI to quickly review and produce more Epstein documents. For 2 weeks in late March, the FBI assigned approximately 1,000 professional personnel in its Information Management Division and hundreds of additional agents from the New York field office to work 24-hour shifts to review and produce more documents. These officials were told to ``flag'' any records which mentioned President Trump.
Essentially, agents were pulled out of the field from their work combating violent crime to review these documents. Other important work was effectively shut down.
Using tens of thousands of personnel hours at the expense of public safety, for no other reason than to try to bolster baseless claims they have made, is reckless.
President Trump has not helped the situation. Despite his administration
Last month, President Trump posted on his personal social media that ``my PAST supporters have bought into this `[BS],' hook, line, and sinker. They haven't learned their lesson, and probably never will.''
This is the way the President is talking about his own constituents who are raising concerns about the claims that President Trump's own administration has repeatedly raised.
President Trump and Attorney General Bondi are directly responsible for this confusion and mistrust. They owe Congress and the American people full transparency. Instead, the situation gets more murky when Epstein's girlfriend Ghislaine Maxwell is being interviewed by one of the highest ranking members of the administration. We don't know what the conversation is. We sent a letter that said we want full disclosure to both sides of the aisle on what they discussed, and we want to make sure there are no promises of pardon or clemency for her to speak. She is serving a 20-year term for human trafficking and exploitation of children.
The prosecutor said that she was not a credible witness, and we ought to take that into consideration when considering her role.
So I support Senator Merkley's bill. I am sorry there was an objection.
Mr. President, the American people have been treated to an extraordinary spectacle. It is the spectacle of a President of the United States trying to stonewall and stall the disclosure of a file from the U.S. Department of Justice that directly implicates him and others in places of power after boasting to the American people that he would reveal everything. He promised again and again and again that he would disclose all the files--not only of this investigation, but the JFK investigation and others--because the American people deserve transparency. They deserve disclosure. They deserve to know what is in the files of the Department of Justice when there are credible allegations that an investigation is incomplete and potential evidence concealed.
And the American people are rightly asking now: What do they have to hide? Why are they concealing this information in the files of the Department of Justice?
We are talking about documents, interviews, testimony that may mention the survivors and innocent people, and their names should be redacted and removed from any public disclosure so they are not victimized again by the public ignominy of having been victims. And if there is any ongoing investigation here that requires confidentiality, it can be held.
I know from my days in the Department of Justice--I was the U.S. attorney for Connecticut--that this kind of disclosure is done not routinely, not commonly but in exactly this kind of instance when the credibility of the Department of Justice may be at stake, and people deserve to know the truth.
And here, let's be very blunt. There are questions about whether this investigation and prosecution of Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell was full and complete. There are names; some of them rich and powerful people. There are stories; some of them believable. There are places and locations. There is testimony that describes a situation that may be much broader than just these two individuals who have been prosecuted.
And at the end of the day, we are talking here not about just legalities and about politics. We are talking about girls, the youngest victim--and some of them survivors. The President referred to them as beautiful women on the younger side, some of them.
Well, some of them were actually not women; they were girls. This crime is about the most heinous kind of exploitation of women, predatory victimization of girls, in effect, trafficking them--which was Maxwell's specialty. And the President has said that they may have stolen some of them from his spa, as if they were chattel to be bought and sold. But that was the attitude that Epstein and Maxwell had toward them, and, sadly, that was the attitude that, perhaps, some of their aiders and abettors or coconspirators or simply enablers had as well.
This action about disclosure is necessary now because the administration continues to stonewall and stall, concealing information and betraying its promise to the American people.
And what is at stake here is not just the President's promises-- although they are absolutely clear when he said:
What is at stake here is the credibility of our justice system. That is why an act of Congress is not only appropriate but necessary. And what is at stake here is also the victims.
This crime involved money laundering. It involved financial illegality. It involved fraud against the government. It involved a range of crimes that may sound abstract, even technical. But at the end of the day, it was not a victimless crime. It was about exploiting girls, young women, girls--girls who were mercilessly and repeatedly subject to abuse and trafficking.
Donald Trump has broken these promises, but he has also remained actively engaged in a coverup. That is why he sent his Deputy Attorney General to interview Maxwell for 2 days. Unprecedented, absolutely mind-boggling to send the Deputy Attorney General, who may then be a witness and potentially implicated in a coverup, to interview a vital witness.
We don't know who was with him, but we have to believe there were notes or recordings. They ought to be disclosed as well. And we should require that the disclosure be immediate, as this legislation would require.
That Deputy Attorney General also happens to be the President's personal lawyer, or he was in all his criminal prosecutions. That is unprecedented as well.
The American people deserve an end to this stonewalling and stalling. And that is why, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged, and the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 2557; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
Mr. President, we have been looking at this for well over 3 years now, and what I would like to do with my colleague Mr. Merkley, with all of my colleagues, is make an important point. I wanted to just take stock of where things stand.
The Trump administration came in promising radical transparency on Jeffrey Epstein. Now the fact is that the Epstein files are being suppressed, and the administration is obstructing oversight from the Congress.
The President's story about his relationship with Epstein changes by the day, and that is true of his administration as well. His personal lawyer went to talk to Ms. Maxwell, and who knows what was said in that conversation.
What we do know is that Maxwell has been moved--Epstein's partner in crime--to a minimum security prison without giving any good reason as to why a child sex trafficker deserves that additional comfort.
House Republicans seem no longer interested in having Maxwell testify.
Yesterday, it was reported that a member of Donald Trump's inner circle gave a high-paying job to another close Epstein associate, a man named Darren
My colleagues and I believe it is a big mistake for the Senate to go out of session without making real progress on real transparency on the Epstein issue. There are a number of ways you can do that.
Let me say a little bit about our investigation, which began 3\1/2\ years ago, so it has been looked at by Democrats and Republicans alike. From the outset, it has been built on the fact that you have to follow the money to be at the core of this global sex trafficking operation, which, on the basis of what we have seen, has been funded lavishly.
We began by examining the financial ties between Mr. Epstein and a Wall Street titan named Leon Black. We found that Black paid Epstein $170 million over just a couple of years. He said it was ``for tax and estate planning.''
The central claim, though, is what is noteworthy. The claim was that Mr. Epstein was a financial wizard, some superstar in terms of looking at taxes and estates, and he could perform accounting miracles. It appears this kind of work for Black and others was one of Mr. Epstein's biggest sources of income.
Now, here is the catch: Epstein wasn't an accountant or a tax attorney at all. And Leon Black, who is extraordinarily well off, already employed the best tax advisers in the business. He didn't need Mr. Epstein to handle his money. Black's lawyers even told our investigators--let me just keep it brief--that Epstein's work wasn't very impressive. He made mistakes, and his work needed to be double- checked by people who were actually tax experts. But, Mr. Black was paying Mr. Epstein more than double the income of the average Fortune 500 CEO.
Mr. Black wasn't the only one paying Mr. Epstein top dollar for this so-called financial advice. That is where we have to go to follow the money.
Last year, my investigators went to the Treasury Department and reviewed thousands of bank documents related to Mr. Epstein's financing. I have spoken at length about those documents here on the Senate floor. There is a whole set of Epstein files in the possession of the Treasury Department, above and beyond the files in the possession of the Department of Justice.
So that is a key point. You have to look, if you are going to follow the money, at the Treasury Department, not just at the Department of Justice.
We have been trying to get those documents. The Trump administration has been blocking us.
We have demanded answers from the new head of the IRS about why its criminal investigators didn't look into Epstein's work for Leon Black or whether they did any investigation of Epstein at all.
We are talking about hundreds of millions of dollars paid by ultrawealthy individuals to a known sex trafficker for the purpose of dodging billions in taxes. It is unthinkable that those transactions were never audited or investigated.
A deep dive on this, starting with the IRS criminal investigations operation, could have blown the lid off Epstein's cover story about being a financial genius quite some time ago. It could have helped uncover the financing behind these horrific crimes.
One last point in terms of an update. There are all kinds of pundits out there chattering about whether this is the right political issue to focus on. My message is blunt: This is not about politics. This is not about Democrats and Republicans.
I just want to make it clear, this is about whether there is going to be justice for the victims of a notorious sex trafficker who did not abuse these women and girls alone. This is about whether there is going to be accountability for the people who enabled and participated in Epstein's crimes.
The question really is, as I close: Who is the government looking out for, the rich and powerful, even those who do horrible things, or the powerless, the victims of abuse who have been neglected for too long?
Donald Trump wants this to go away without any accountability. And for him, that might be about self-preservation. But it is clear the Trump administration, based on our detailed work, doesn't want to do the right thing here. I am 3\1/2\ years into my investigation of one aspect of the Epstein story because there ought to be accountability and justice for the victims. I am here to bring my colleagues up to date on the investigation. There will be more this summer, particularly about the Treasury Department, which is sitting on thousands and thousands of Epstein documents of its own, and they shouldn't be allowed to skate on this. We are going to keep investigating. We are going to keep putting the pressure on.
This is not about blue. It is not about red. It is about doing the right thing and making sure something like this doesn't happen again.
Senator Merkley and my colleagues are doing the right thing today. I want it understood, as somebody who has led this investigation for more than 3\1/2\ years, I support them strongly.
Mr. President, I think we can and certainly should all agree that the case of Jeffrey Epstein is deeply disturbing, with horrifying abuse of young women and girls.
From the lenient plea deal he received in Florida in 2008 to the end of his case with the death in prison, survivors of his abuse have been denied a full accounting of his crimes and the justice they deserve.
It is also clear that a lack of transparency and accountability and contradictory statements by the Trump administration and its officials have led to even deeper public distrust of our justice system and especially the handling of this case. After all, Trump administration officials, including Attorney General Bondi, promised transparency in this case but instead gave the American people a binder of largely already-public documents. It was a sham.
Last month, the Department of Justice released a two-page memo informing the American public that the Department had completed its exhaustive review of the Epstein files and concluded that ``no further disclosure would be appropriate or warranted.'' We shouldn't be taking the word of any official in any administration on face value. The public should see these documents for themselves. People ranging from the victims to the American public believe transparency is warranted, and it is.
Just 3 days after the Department of Justice memo was published, the Senate Appropriations Committee unanimously agreed to an amendment I proposed to the Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies appropriations bill that would require two things. It would require the Department to retain, preserve, and compile the Epstein files and submit a report with the files to the respective subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee.
I understood that earlier today, Senator Barrasso made the point that that Commerce-Justice-Science appropriations bill was on the floor and that I objected to moving forward on that bill, as I did for totally unrelated reasons.
We also know that appropriations bills take a very long time to wind through the U.S. congressional process. It has to go through the House. It could be months before that provision--if it continues to be in there--sees the light of day. It shouldn't take months. We should do it now, which is why, the day after the Senate Appropriations Committee unanimously--Republicans and Democrats together--supported that provision to require the report and preserve the documents, Senator Durbin and I wrote to the Attorney General to say: Why wait?
And that is the question, Mr. President--why wait? The victims, the American people--they deserve to see the files and know the full truth, and they deserve it right now.
Just this morning, there was a new report in Bloomberg. The headline says ``The FBI Redacted Trump's Name in the Epstein Files.'' We have always understood that Donald Trump's name was in the files. What we are learning today, at least according to these reports, is that the FBI redacted Donald Trump's name from those files. The question is, Why? Nobody's name should be redacted from the files with respect to the perpetrators of these crimes. Clearly, in releasing files, we need to protect the names of any victims, but the perpetrators--we should
What we have seen, of course, from the President is an effort to change the subject entirely, say that it was the Obama Administration that somehow invented this whole dispute and debate. But we know that is not true. We know that is not true because of what President Trump has previously said and, of course, what his Attorney General has said.
It is also deeply concerning that the Deputy Attorney General of the United States of America, who previously was Donald Trump's personal lawyer, skirted all the Department of Justice protocols and went down to secretly interview Ghislaine Maxwell for hours over a couple of days. I think we should have the transcript of that interview as well.
We have also heard President Trump say that he has the power to pardon Ghislaine Maxwell. Well, it is one thing to have the power; it is another thing to speculate publicly about using that power to pardon somebody who could testify in an incriminating way against all of the perpetrators. That reeks of a hint of the obstruction of justice, to signal to Ghislaine Maxwell that if she says the right things, the President of the United States could pardon her. That would be a corruption of the judicial process--a gross corruption of the judicial process.
So I hope President Trump will immediately announce that he won't pardon this person, Ghislaine Maxwell, who was the associate of Jeffrey Epstein in perpetrating these crimes against young women and girls. The President of the United States should announce today that he will not do that. That is the way the President can put an end to the understandable concern that he is signaling that if she says the right thing regarding him, she will get a ``get out of jail free'' card. That would be a gross corruption of the process and of the justice system.
This is why we should do now what the victims deserve and what the American public demands, which is to support the proposal put forward by the Senator from Oregon Senator Merkley.
As if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on the Judiciary be discharged and the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 2557; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
Did I understand you to say that the President of the United States has put forward the possibility of a favor to someone who could testify about Epstein's conduct over many years?
The President of the United States, when asked if he could pardon Ghislaine Maxwell, said, yes, he has the power to do that pardon, to make that pardon. Her attorneys have made very clear through multiple public remarks that they would welcome that. Of course her attorneys would welcome that. She would love to get out of jail free.
This is why the President, today, should make very clear that he will not pardon Ghislaine Maxwell because she was a close associate in the crimes that she and Jeffrey Epstein committed.
Certainly. If the President of the United States is signaling to Ghislaine Maxwell and her attorneys that he would provide a pardon without any possible reason to do so other than for her to give testimony--in this case, it would be false testimony because we know about the close association between Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein--that would clearly be witness tampering.
I did, indeed. This is a report that just came out. The headline is ``The FBI Redacted Trump's Name in the Epstein Files.'' It is a Bloomberg report, and it is just one more example of what appears to be an effort to cover up any role that Donald Trump may have played in these crimes. Again, we don't know, and the best way for us all to know is to support your effort here, to support our mutual efforts, which is to just release the files.
I so much appreciate your amendment, which we advocated for, which you presented very well in the Appropriations Committee, that said that all the files have to be retained so that nothing is destroyed--no missing minutes on a White House tape or anything equivalent. Why is it necessary to express this concern?
The concern, of course, is that the Trump administration would be tempted to destroy these files for the purposes of getting rid of evidence. As I indicated, reports today indicate that the FBI--and, again, I don't know if they were instructed to do so. I do not know all the circumstances. What we do know are the reports from Bloomberg that Donald Trump's name was stricken from the files.
If that is accurate, I am just trying to understand why they would do so. If his name is in the files and it is simply in the context of he attended a certain event, something of that nature, or maybe Mr. Epstein went to an event at one of the President's properties, that would be a completely innocent role. Why would the FBI redact such a reference?
I think that is a question for all of us to ask the FBI, and we should follow up and ask the FBI.
In the meantime, though, the best way, as you pointed out and all of us have pointed out and even Attorney General Bondi at one point pointed out, is just release the damn files. That is how we would get to the bottom of all of this. And don't redact anything from the files except--except--to protect victims. But perpetrators should not have their names redacted from the files.
Absolutely. I so appreciate your bringing this additional information to bear.
Our colleague across the aisle who objected noted the Republicans also voted for this amendment--your amendment--in committee. So I am wondering, if we bring it back as a UC, as a bill to pass right now, saying all information is to be retained, I wonder if our Republican colleagues would join us in that effort.
We had a unanimous bipartisan vote in the Senate Appropriations Committee on an amendment to do exactly that--to make sure the records were preserved so nobody tried to destroy evidence--and it required an exhaustive report, detailing many of the questions that we have all raised regarding the Epstein files.
As I said, the appropriations process takes a very long time to wind through the U.S. Congress, and there is no reason to wait on this. Again, if a majority of the Appropriations Committee--not just a majority--but if a unanimous vote in the Appropriations Committee took place, we could actually get this out right away, and, hopefully, the House would pass that, and then we could send it right to the President's desk.
Well, I do hope you will bring that back as a unanimous consent request later today based on your amendment to retain all of the files. We have already heard our colleague's objection to releasing the files, but, certainly, they should join us in a unanimous way in retaining all of the evidence.
We, certainly, more importantly, the American people, and especially the victims deserve to know that nobody will tamper with the files between now and the moment they are released.
Again, the fastest way to address this issue, to meet the concerns, to meet the terrible, terrible abuse that was visited upon these young women and girls, is simply to release the files and do it now.
At 12:46? I thank the Presiding Officer for that information.
Mr. President, I believe Senator Markey has come to the floor to make some comments, so I will just close with this notation.
All across America, ordinary men and women know that, if they commit a crime, they will pay the fine. If they commit a crime, they will do the time. They don't have fancy lawyers. They don't have friends in high places. They don't have the FBI redacting their names from documents. They don't have one caucus of the U.S. Senate blocking information from being released.
On behalf of every ordinary citizen across America, we are going to continue to press for the powerful and the rich to be accountable. If they, in fact, participated in the abuse of young women and in the rape of young women, we want them to be brought to justice no matter what political party they are from or what bank account they have or what part of the country they live in or what friends they have.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Finance be discharged from further consideration of S. 1593 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; that the bill be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
Mr. President, reserving the right to object, this is a conversation that we had only about a month ago about tariffs. I find it interesting that we are having this conversation again because since the last time we spoke--and I want to remind my colleague from Massachusetts that I praised him heavily the last time for his position on voting against the United States-China normalization act when he was in Congress 25 years ago because I believe that that bill is what set America on a very dark path toward deindustrialization. Had his colleagues listened to him, we would be in a different place.
But I thought what I would do today is read some comments from some of my constituents in Ohio because there are a lot of opinions here. So let's see. What do real business owners who deal with this situation think about every day?
Let me start with Dr. Nick Jarmoszuk. He is the CEO of a company in Lorain, OH, called Skylift.
I asked him: Hey, Doc, what do you think about tariffs? How is it affecting your business in Lorain, OH?
To remind my colleagues, Lorain, OH, is a lot like, maybe, some of the areas of South Boston. These were once great, thriving, working- class communities that have been gutted.
He was happy to respond, and he said: America's trade imbalance with the rest of the world is something that has been festering for a long time. It is a good thing to address. The longer you leave it, the tougher it is to fix.
He said he would not be hurt by the severe 145-percent tariff on China. It was then at that level. Now, as everybody knows, it is at 30 percent because the company uses components that are manufactured in the United States. If most people did that, we would be in a better place, he said. The complaints you get are from Wall Street, which wants instant gratification. We don't.
I thought that was a good comment.
Here is Belinda Durham, also from Lorain, OH. She is a used car dealer.
She says: The companies that produce in foreign countries should have to pay for taking jobs away from the United States. I think this stuff should be made here.
Kent Savage, the CEO of Velocity Concept Development Group, an engineering and manufacturing company in Cambridge, OH: What will come out of the trade war is something more equitable than the system we had before Liberation Day. There wasn't just a level playing field before.
Jack Schron is an amazing entrepreneur in Cleveland, OH. He is the president of a company called Jergens, Inc., not to be confused with the lotion. It is a tool manufacturer: Trump's tariffs have disrupted global trade and the American economy. Yet those same new rules are making these manufacturing goods more price-competitive with imports for the first time in many years. We are swamped. We are running 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, in both Chicago and Cleveland, said Jack Schron, which makes manufacturing tools, including industrial screwdrivers, clamps, and hoists.
Schron says that his factories in Ohio and in Illinois are going gangbusters, partly owing to the new orders from customers who are looking to avoid paying import tariffs and partly because of increased demand over the last 18 months from the defense industry.
Let me just tell the Presiding Officer a little bit about Jergens because he may not know about this company.
It is right in the city core of Cleveland. I was there about 2 weeks ago at a facility right near it called MAGNET. It is a tech incubator in Cleveland, OH. These people who go to MAGNET, to the core site, whom I saw who end up going to work at Jergens, were formerly incarcerated citizens or were people who, if not for the opportunity to go work at Jergens, would have no other ability to get a good, family-sustaining wage job.
Let me just repeat what Jack Schron said: Business is going gangbusters.
I am perplexed why my colleague, who 25 years ago was on the right side of this issue, is saying we have to block deindustrialization and that we have to make things here in America. That actually is a comment that would have been made in this Chamber in the late 1950s, early 1960s by one of your great Democratic colleagues. I think that person, today, would be a member of the Republican Party of John Fitzgerald Kennedy, who believed in the power of advocating for the working class.
Let me just say one other quote here. Donny Chaplin, president of Grand River Rubber & Plastics in Ashtabula, OH--snow country. This is a place where, if it doesn't snow 24 inches on a Monday, it is considered a bad day. Donny said that he has seen a rush--a rush--of new inquiries and orders. Two previous customers who had switched to Chinese suppliers a few years ago came back in recent days wanting to buy rubber gaskets from Grand River again or for the plastic pail gaskets they manufacture.
Three manufacturers of oil filters also got in touch, as they are wanting to shift their businesses from China, with two already placing orders.
Altogether, the new business will be worth about $5 million a year. Now, look, at $5 million a year, that isn't the kind of company that gets a lot of attention here in Washington, DC, but I will tell you, in Ashtabula, OH, it makes a big difference. These are good jobs.
I thank President Trump, Secretary Lutnick, Secretary Bessent, and Ambassador Greer for their incredible work in putting together the most unbelievable trade deals that we have ever seen.
I could go on--I have pages of quotes--but I will save my colleague from having to listen to all of them.
Here is the summary: We have a 30-percent tariff on China. That is a great move. It is something that my colleague supported 25 years ago when they started to block that. We have a tariff at 15 percent from the EU. Our products can now go into the EU with no tariffs, a phenomenal deal.
With Japan, we have a historic investment in America of $550 billion and in South Korea a historic investment in America.
My former career was in the retail automobile business. I have talked to every CEO of every car company on Earth, and they all tell me the same thing: We are bringing more production to America. Instead of celebrating that, we are here trying to reverse course.
On top of that, a couple of other things are happening.
No. 1, we are getting record levels of tariff revenue--almost $150 billion into the U.S. Treasury from tariffs. Yet inflation has not ticked up at all. In fact, it is at the lowest point in 4 years.
I want to just throw one more statistic up--two more statistics up-- that haven't been talked about.
So this is data right from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The red line is employment from foreign-born citizens. The blue line is employment from native-born Americans. Since the beginning of the year, employment for foreign-born citizens has actually dropped while employment for American--native-born Americans--has gone up. That is a great result.
One other thing: Government employment has dropped, and private sector employment has gone up, which is another really important result.
And how does it all boil down? What is the conclusion?
Real wages--real wages--are up almost 4 percent, eclipsing inflation for the first time since the beginning of the first Trump administration.
What does that mean?
It means that people feel like they are getting ahead. They don't feel like fast food is a luxury. They feel like they have a little room here. This is because of the incredible work of this administration.
I know that my colleagues like to do a lot of shirts-and-skins exercise, like we are doing here on a beautiful Saturday morning in Washington, DC, where it seems like the temperature is always the same because we are always in this Chamber, confirming nominees through the most difficult process in Senate history.
But here is what we do know: We should be celebrating and thanking President Trump for having the steel backbone to have negotiated these incredible trade deals that are a massive--massive--victory to the American people.
I sat where the Presiding Officer sat while I listened to speech after speech after speech in early April. What did every speech have in common? The world was going to end. It was the apocalypse because of Liberation Day. What has been the result? A record stock market, low inflation, real wage growth, and the growth of native-born American employment. Small businesses love these policies.
Mr. President, you know, I am very troubled that the Senator from Ohio has objected because, obviously, what I am trying to do here on the Senate floor is to make it possible for there to be an exemption for small businesses in our country. Small businesses are 97 percent of our businesses, and they are 30 percent of all companies that engage in trade.
Right now, small businesses are caught in a crossfire. They are seeing this chaotic world of tariffs that the President is engaging in absolutely ripple through their business plans. And it is all across our Nation.
The reason that I have risen today as the ranking member on the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee is to draw the attention to Main Street being turned into ``Pain Street'' all across our country.
Big companies, they are in a position where they can forward order by 6 months the inventory which they need. They can do planning that is absolutely outside of the capacity of a small business in our country.
Small businesses live week to week, month to month, and they are, right now, trying to plan for what the future might look like. It changes day to day, and it changes product to product, depending upon which country President Trump is playing games with on that particular day, minute--just impulsive commentary out of the President.
There is, without question, an impact on small businesses, because that recklessness is being felt by small businesses. These rising prices are affecting them disproportionately.
In response to the President's dramatic tariff escalation, on Thursday night--which is going to go down in history; it is going to go down in history, Thursday night, as one of the most important economic days in the history of our country. My goal was to just seek unanimous consent for my Small Business Liberation Act to be put in place, which exempts small businesses from the tariff wars. It gets them out of the crossfire.
When he was running for President, Donald Trump said:
Yet after 6 months in office, things have gotten more expensive, as evidenced by Thursday's concerning inflation reading. That is true whether you are buying supplies to run a business like a restaurant, a store, or a small factory, or you are a consumer shopping for everyday items like groceries or clothing or shoes or school supplies for your kids.
Parents are going to be out in the next few weeks buying the school supplies, buying new clothing for their kids. And the prices have already gone up, and they are going to be going up higher. We are going to see the same thing when people are out buying things before Thanksgiving, buying items before Christmas. Prices are going up, and it is going to be rippling through our economy.
Now, with yesterday's very discouraging jobs report, we see the terrible bind in which the President has left our country.
What was Trump's reaction to yesterday's very, very disappointing jobs report? It wasn't to end his chaotic policies, which are casting a cloud over our economy for the last 4 months; it was to fire the Commissioner of the Bureau of Labor Statistics. It was just her job and all of those dedicated employees to bring the news to the President. Instead of accepting it and deciding to adjust his economic policies, he just fired the person who brought the news, fired the messenger of the news--by the way, leaving economists, on a bipartisan basis, across the country to be criticizing the President over the last 24 years, because they rely upon the accuracy of those numbers.
Economic data does not lie. Donald Trump does lie. He lies about almost everything.
In an ordinary world, a poor jobs report might cause the Fed to lower interest rates. The Fed has a dual mandate: maximum employment and price stability at the same time. But because of the President's chaotic tariff policies, the Federal Reserve can't lower rates without risking making inflation even worse. And inflation is increasing.
Without tariffs, lowering interest rates might be an easy call. Rising unemployment and weak job numbers would mean cutting rates. But the Fed can't ignore the extraordinary amount of uncertainty and confusion the President's trade war has injected into the economy, especially with regard to prices.
The New York Times wrote this week:
Chairman Powell knows what every small business owner in America knows: Tariffs drive up costs. He has watched, along with the rest of us, as they have risen since President Trump took office, and he knows that so long as the threat of tariffs hangs over this Nation, they are likely to increase even further.
This is just a sales tax that he is imposing on every good coming into our country. And that price is then reflected in an evaluation of the increase in inflation. It is pretty simple. So you can't, in any way, argue that there is not a direct correlation, a direct relationship.
The President would have you believe this doesn't matter. But that just shows how little he cares about how much businesses and families have to pay for the things which they need.
So on Thursday, we saw Chairman Powell's predictions about rising costs borne out with the latest inflation reading, which showed the price of goods across industries moving in the wrong direction due to tariffs.
But you don't have to read the Wall Street Journal to know things are more expensive than they were before the President launched his trade war. Just talk to the owner of your local small business. Ask them if their supply costs are going up. Ask them if they know what has been happening since the President started whipsawing the economy on Liberation Day--or what should really be called Obliteration Day--for Main Street across the country and the customers of Main Street.
The unemployment rate is going up. How can small business owners be hiring new people if they are uncertain
Take coffee. Just take coffee, for example, which the President seems to think we should tax. Only 1 percent of coffee Americans consume is grown in the United States--in Hawaii and Puerto Rico, to be precise. Onshoring coffee, like many other products we use every day--bananas are another good example--is not an option. We have to import it.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, coffee prices have already gone up 30 percent compared to this time last year, and that is before we see the 50-percent tariff the President is threatening Brazil with in the hope that he can pressure--Trump can pressure--Brazil, the supreme court of Brazil, into dropping the case against coup-plotter Jair Bolsonaro inside of the country of Brazil as a part of the domestic political scene in Brazil. Trump wants to use tariffs on Brazil as a way of influencing their judicial system.
Who is going to pay the price? Well, the people who are going to pay the price are the people who buy coffee in the United States of America. He wants to impose a 50-percent tariff on Brazil. Brazil imports account for one-third of the coffee consumed in the United States, so this additional tariff is going to make for a particularly bitter brew of coffee for American consumers. ``Good to the last drop'' this is not.
Similarly, restaurants are seeing the costs of their ingredients rise and grocery stores are paying more to stock their shelves. Grocery prices were 2.4 percent higher than a year ago. But the Yale Budget Lab expects food costs to rise by an additional 3.4 percent in the short run.
Fresh produce could go up as much as 6.9 percent in the coming months because of tariffs. For the cost of clothing, that increase is a staggering 37.5 percent. And keep in mind that all of these forecasts were made before the President unleashed a slew of new tariffs on Thursday night.
What about small manufacturers that the President claims he wants to save? Well, they can't afford to purchase the equipment and materials they need because their expenses are rising as well.
According to the Institute of Supply Management, the cost of manufacturing materials increased by 17 percent. The cost of manufacturing materials increased by 17 percent during the first 6 months of this year.
Over the past 3 months, we have lost 37,000 manufacturing jobs. Can I say that? Trump says he wants to return manufacturing to America. In the last 3 months, we have lost 37,000 manufacturing jobs.
This would suggest that tariffs are setting domestic manufacturing back and not moving it forward.
The Trump tariffs will disproportionately affect low-income individuals, women, and minorities by increasing costs on household goods that these groups spend a large portion of their income on, including clothes and groceries and household appliances.
By the way, in general, women and minorities are not running big businesses in America. They are over here in small businesses. That is where minorities are. That is where Black and Brown entrepreneurs are. That is where women are. They are in small businesses. So they are not only going to be disproportionately harmed, those small businesses, but then consumers who are poor, they are going to be hurt.
As we look past the summer and into the fall, I want everyone to think about where this continued economic insanity is leading us.
Rising prices will mean that parents will have to spend more to buy clothes and shoes for their kids as they head back to school. It will mean putting food on the table is a lot more expensive. It will mean the holiday season is a lot less joyful when we have to cut back on gifts for our families. And for small businesses, it will mean they will have to choose between stocking their shelves and paying their workers. This is tragic because it is completely avoidable.
It is time for us to stand up to the President and end this tariff madness for small businesses in our country, for ordinary Americans in our country before it becomes more and more unaffordable for those small business owners and it becomes more and more unaffordable for their customers.
That is why I ask unanimous consent for my Small Business Liberation Act to be passed here on the floor because that bill would provide small business relief from Trump's disastrous, destructive small business-killing tariffs that have absolutely turned Main Street into Pain Street all across our Nation.
Small businesses are crying out for some certainty and stability after 4 months of chaos and confusion. We must stand up for them and grant them the relief which they are looking for.
And I am joined by the national Chamber of Commerce in asking for that relief. This is a letter which I have in my hand from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to Secretary Bessent and Secretary Lutnick.
Here is what they say. They say:
This is the Chamber of Commerce speaking:
That is what my unanimous consent was all about. Just get these businesses, these small businesses, out of this economic war. Preserve them. Otherwise, those are the businesses that are going to, unfortunately, experience an extinction experience.
Those are the businesses that are going to be laying off people, increasingly, in large numbers.
So from my perspective, this is without question a very important motion on the floor. The Senator from Ohio has objected to exempting small businesses from the tariff regime, and I think ultimately we are going to see that those small businesses are the economic canaries in the mine shaft, that they are the ones who are suffering now. We are seeing it already in the inflationary numbers and in the higher unemployment rates and in the economic slowdown that has been reported just in the last week.
That is all I have been asking of the Republicans--just get these small businesses out of this fight. So it is very, very disheartening to me to know that the Republicans are standing here and objecting to that protection for small businesses in our country.
Mr. President, I just want to clear the irony here that the person who is speaking right now has been a small business owner my entire life, and my colleague has never owned a business. So I know exactly what drives small businesses.
I have read many statements from small business owners that are thankful to President Trump for his tariff policies because what it is doing is it is bringing manufacturing back to America.
Now, I will acknowledge that there is a ``Pain Street,'' but it is not on Main Street; it is on Martha's Vineyard, where the globalists and the climate change cultists are waiting for their Senators to arrive after we leave here in Washington, DC, to make the annual pilgrimage in which they talk about the plight of the little people while they fly there on their private jets and enjoy caviar in their mansions.
Let me tell you what is happening in Chillicothe, OH. They are happy that there are more Kenworth trucks being made than Freightliners in Mexico. They are happy that the products that are made by working-class Ohioans are now on a level playing field by jobs that were shipped overseas, chasing slave labor that was enriching and building those mansions in Martha's Vineyard.
Now, it is ironic, too, and quite a shift, because there was a day when Democrats loved to advocate for the working man. I mentioned JFK. Shawn Fain, the president of the United Auto Workers, has been a staunch supporter of President Trump's tariff policies despite campaigning aggressively against President Trump because he didn't know if he could trust him. But he
Another Sean--apparently you have to be named ``Shawn'' to run a union--another Sean, Sean O'Brien, head of the Teamsters--I am young enough but still remember that maybe the unions were the ones that supported Democrats, but here we are.
Sean O'Brien says:
He supports them because he knows those tariffs will produce more economic activity here in America.
So this is a very clear situation. My Democratic colleagues kept us in this Chamber for 27 hours in a row to block a bill that prevented the largest tax increase in American history. Had that bill not passed, I will tell you what would have happened to small businesses. They would have been destroyed. And there wasn't a single Democrat that voted to prevent that tax increase--27 hours, in fact, to block that tax increase. They blocked no income tax on tips, no income tax on overtime.
Now, on Martha's Vineyard, they don't worry about income tax on tips or overtime because they probably don't even pay it when they go out, and maybe they don't even like to pay it to their employees.
They blocked a $2,200 child tax credit that would have gone to zero. And maybe on Martha's Vineyard, they don't care about child tax credits, but in Chillicothe, OH, in Coshocton, OH, and in Lorain, OH, they absolutely do.
They blocked $1,000 Trump accounts--money that will go into an index fund that can grow so that when that baby becomes an adult, they have a nest egg, finally, so they don't have to live in their parents' basement and they can afford a home or a car.
By the way, let me just clear this misconception up--two things--and I will end so that we can get moving today to confirm the nominees that President Trump deserves.
No. 1--and my colleague in Massachusetts may not know this because he may not be somebody who is in the automobile market quite often--car prices are down. Let me repeat that again. Car prices are down this year. That means people are paying less money for cars right now than they were at the beginning of the year.
And guess what. Fifty-one percent of the cars sold in this country at the beginning of the year were made in this country. Now it is 56, and we are heading right to the sixties, and we are not going to stop. When I was a kid, that number used to be in the eighties.
So these tariff policies have been an incredible success.
Let me just speak to the chamber of commerce as a former small business owner. To say that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce is an advocate for small business is like saying Hamas is an advocate for Israel's best interests.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. President, I would just say this. Right now, here is what American small businesses know: Unemployment is going up. Inflation is going up. Tariffs are going up.
It is a tax. It is a sales tax that all Americans are paying. It is having a profoundly negative impact on our Nation. People are having Pepto Bismol moments in the marketplace, on Main Street, across our country. They are having Maalox moments in the marketplace. Their stomachs are churning as they look at all of this economic data.
Lutnick and Bessent are the Smoot-Hawley of the 21st century. We already did this once with Smoot-Hawley. They are repeating history. As Mark Twain said, there is no educational benefit to the second kick of a mule. This country got kicked in the behind by Smoot-Hawley, and Lutnick, Bessent, and President Trump are about to have that second kick affect every American in a profoundly negative way.
I thank the Presiding Officer for granting me that unanimous consent 1 minute in the continuation of debate.
I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego) and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Welch) are necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 53, nays 44, as follows:
The nomination was confirmed.
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.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The senior assistant legislative 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 the nomination of Brian Burch, of Illinois, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Holy See, shall be brought to a close?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the nomination.
The bill clerk read the nomination of Brian Burch, of Illinois, to be Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of the United States of America to the Holy See.
Mr. President, I want to highlight one of my members, a former member of my staff, Mark Crowley.
For the past 8 years, I have benefited from the service, the hard work, and the loyalty of my legislative director, Mark Crowley. After 12 years of working here on Capitol Hill, Mark is leaving public service, but he has made a positive--a very positive--change during the time that he has spent here working in the U.S. Senate.
Before coming to work for me, he was working for his home State senator, Mark Kirk of Illinois. He was with Senator Kirk from 2013 to 2017. He first joined my office as a legislative assistant covering issues that surrounded the topic of justice, the Department of Justice. He also became my counsel, helping me on issues ranging from technology, taxes, to consumer protection.
Mark's contribution to the Senate has been both wide-ranging and deeply meaningful. One of the examples of this impact of his work was in 2018. The subcommittee in the Commerce Committee that I chaired completed a Senate investigation into the sexual abuse of Olympic athletes. He helped lead a thorough investigation that uncovered systemic failures that allowed abuse to persist way too long.
The joint investigation included four subcommittee hearings, interviews with Olympic athletes and survivors, and the retrieval of more than 70,000 pages of documents.
This work culminated in the development and passage of the Empowering Olympic, Paralympic, and Amateur Athletes Act of 2019. This landmark law made critical improvements to the Olympic movement that strengthened oversight and accountability for the safety of American athletes, and Mark was a critical component of the team that saw this legislation become law.
After serving as an LA and then as counsel, Mark shifted his work to the Senate Committee on Veterans' Affairs, which, as general counsel, he was greatly helpful to me after I became that committee's chair.
In that role, he talked to whistleblowers, provided in-depth oversight of the operations and policy of the Department of Veterans Affairs, and helped veterans navigate legal challenges within the VA.
Mark has played a key role in passing some of the most consequential veterans legislation in recent memory, including the Commander John Scott Hannon Veterans Mental Health Care Improvement Act and the PACT Act.
Through his work on behalf of veterans, Mark has showed the same qualities that defined his work on the Olympic investigation: deep policy expertise, a strong desire to get things done--and done right-- and great care for the people who are involved.
At the beginning of 2023, Mark then took over the policy team, serving as my legislative director back in my personal office. Most recently, Mark helped to guide the ACRE Act and the Financing Our Energy Future Act to passage during the reconciliation process.
Whether we are talking about veterans, technology, the Olympics, complex Senate procedure, Mark could be counted on to effectively advise me and lead our team to the success that we have had.
He has been a mentor and guiding hand to several legislative assistants who have come through my office. My junior staff would tell you that Mark brings a steady hand, a steady presence, and even under pressure, he recognizes the importance of thoughtful decision making before taking action. They would also tell you that Mark is quick to crack a joke and often brings much needed humor to Capitol Hill on stressful days. More importantly, he has a real interest in getting to know the people he works with--not just knowing them, not just knowing what makes them tick, but being a mentor and a friend.
Mark leads in a way that earns respect. He makes sure that everyone on the team knows their role, and they know that it matters. He is the kind of person who listens first, gives clear feedback, and never dismisses an idea out of hand. I have many ideas that I thought would be shot down from the very beginning, and Mark, at least, took time to convince me that I was wrong. Because of that, my staff and I have been more encouraged to take ownership and to work harder.
While Mark has expressed to me and to his colleagues how much he loves working in the Senate as a legislative director, there is another role that he loves even more, and that of being a husband and a dad.
The fact that the Senate never seems to end its business anytime during the normal business hours really has created problems in people's family lives. I am grateful to Mark's wife Colleen for letting me keep Mark at work late into these nights for evening votes and vote- aramas, even when that meant he missed out on helping with bedtime and other tasks related to being a dad.
Mark is the father to Ilsa, James, Hallee, and has a fourth baby on the way. As much as he loves working in the Senate, he loves his family. And with a fourth child on the way, he recognized it is time to really put his family first.
I will miss Mark's presence in my office and in the Senate. I will miss his skills and expertise. They don't come along every day. He has a lot to offer our country. While he wasn't a Kansan--perhaps his only shortcoming--he embodies many of the traits that we value in the Midwest: hard work, a cheerful attitude, and determination to get things done.
My many thanks to Mark. I thank Mark for his years of service to me, to Kansans, and to our country. I am wishing him well as a father and a husband and in his new line of work.
I ask the Senate to acknowledge with me, today in these remarks, the contribution that we all find from those who work side by side with us every day in hopes for a great outcome.
Mr. President, it is 2:20 on Saturday afternoon, not a usual time for the Senate to be in business, especially leading into the August State work period when Senators are home meeting with their constituents, hearing their concerns, sharing news about what was worked on. So you can say it is unusual, for sure, that we are here.
I want to take a brief trip down memory lane to explain why we are here for the benefit of Senators, especially Senators who haven't been here until recently, and for the benefit of our friends who are visiting in the Gallery.
We are here for one reason. We are here because of the actions of one man: Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader. We are here voting, as you have probably seen and wondered about, on a series of nominees. These are not household names. For some of you, you may not even have known the job existed. No offense. I am sure it is important to them and their parents.
But for over 200 years, these kind of nominees didn't get a vote on a procedural question and then 2 hours of debate and then another vote on confirmation; they were voice-voted or they were adopted by what is called unanimous consent of the Senate--for over 200 years.
You can see the evidence here in front of me on this chart. This is the percentage of civilian nominees who have been confirmed by voice vote or by unanimous consent going back to George Bush 41 and to the day of President Trump's second term, through about the first 6 months of the administration.
George Bush 41: 98 percent. Bill Clinton. Some people thought Bill Clinton's Presidency started at a more polarized time of politics. Nope. Ninety-eight percent for Bill Clinton as well. George W. Bush, Bush 43: Well, it is a 5X increase in the number of record votes we needed but still 90 percent.
I would note that Senator Schumer was elected in 1998. So he showed up here about 2 years before George W. Bush did.
Obama--despite the treatment of George W. Bush by the Democratic Senators--stayed steady, 90 percent. Ninety percent of all of Barack Obama's nominees through his first 6 months were confirmed by voice vote or unanimous consent.
Look at this huge drop here--from 90 percent with Barack Obama to not even two-thirds for Donald Trump in his first term.
And yes, it does decline by another 8 percent to Joe Biden. As is often said, what goes around comes around. The shoe will be on the other foot, and you might not like how it feels.
But look now at the unprecedented break from the customs of the Senate under these Senate Democrats and Chuck Schumer: from 57 percent to zero--zero--not a single one. Not a single nominee of Donald Trump's has been confirmed by voice vote or by unanimous consent in the first 6-plus months of his administration--a totally unprecedented blockade.
And we are not talking about the Secretary of Defense or the Secretary of the Treasury. Again, we are talking about jobs like the Chief Counsel for Advocacy at the SBA. I would bet most of you didn't even know that job existed. They do important work, but does the Senate really need to spend 2 hours and two votes on it? I would suggest not, based on historical customs.
So when did this all start? Did it happen when TV cameras got in the Senate and Senators could come down here and perform for the TV camera? No. In fact, there are ample examples and precedent of highly controversial nominations not even requiring a 60-vote threshold.
Think about Clarence Thomas, maybe the best example--Clarence Thomas in 1991: The most consequential nomination we consider, a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court of the United States. One of the most, if not the most, controversial nominees in history because of the lies and calumnies that Democratic Senators made against him, I would add-- he was confirmed on a record vote of 52 to 48.
Now, you may say: Well, how did he get confirmed? He didn't have 60 votes. And that is because, as late as 1991, it was considered unprecedented for a Senator to require what we call a cloture motion--a motion to end debate at a 60-vote threshold on a nominee--on any nominee, to include a Supreme Court Justice.
Think about some of the Senators who were here in 1991 who could have, on their own accord, irrespective of the wishes of another 99 Senators, demanded that Clarence Thomas get 60 votes before he be confirmed: Teddy Kennedy, Robert Byrd, Joe Biden, John Kerry--lions of the Democratic Senate. Not a single one of them came down here and said: I want to demand a 60-vote threshold for Clarence Thomas.
Maybe there were conversations about it, but maybe people like Teddy Kennedy and Robert Byrd said: We don't do that. That is not the way things are done here--until 1999 when
And then, a couple of years into the Bush administration, they began to demand it, most notably on nominees to the court of appeals for the DC Circuit and, most notably of all those, on Miguel Estrada, a young Latino lawyer that they were afraid George Bush was going to later elevate to be the first Latino on the Supreme Court.
They took unprecedented actions. And that, led by Chuck Schumer, is what brought us to this moment today. That is one reason why this says 90 percent and not 98 percent.
By 2013, Harry Reid, then-majority leader of the Senate, voted to change the rules of the Senate and said there will no longer be 60-vote thresholds on any office other than the Supreme Court. He did it right there at that desk. Mitch McConnell stood at that desk, then the Republican leader, and said: What goes around comes around. The shoe may be on the other foot, and it may be sooner than you might think. And sure enough, 4 years later, in 2017, Republicans used the Harry Reid precedent and extended it to the Supreme Court. So now Supreme Court nominees, as was the case throughout history, only require a simple majority vote.
And then the Democrats engaged in the dilatory practices that they are using now, which is why this number was at 65, to demand 30 hours of debate. And I say ``30 hours of debate'' in air quotes because nobody comes down here in those times and debates the nominee pending on the floor. They talk about climate change or they recognize someone celebrating their 100th birthday back home, but nobody comes down here and has a serious debate on the merits of a nominee.
So, in 2019, Republicans used the Harry Reid precedent again to cut time for debate for most offices in the sub-Cabinet--not for courts of appeal, not for Cabinet members, not for the Supreme Court--from 30 hours to 2 hours. And that is why we spend 2 hours in between each one of these votes.
But Democrats, having lost again last year in the White House and the Senate, have brought us to this point: zero nominees confirmed by voice vote or by unanimous consent, an unprecedented blockade, all traced back to Chuck Schumer's decision when he got into the Senate to break the norms, the practices, the traditions of the U.S. Senate.
Well, this is not going to stand for much longer. It is up to our Democratic friends to decide how they would like to proceed. Do they want to follow Chuck Schumer off the cliff? Because, if so, we will be happy to use the Harry Reid precedent again. We will eliminate 2 hours of debate time. We will eliminate motions to go in and out of executive session. We will eliminate cloture motions entirely for nominees that currently take 2 hours of debate.
For today, maybe we will make a motion to adjourn. And when the House returns and votes on that motion, then Donald Trump can appoint this backlog of more than 150 nominees in a recess appointment.
It is the Democrats' choice. They have a third choice. They could return to historical precedent. They could agree to voice vote today in the next few minutes--more than 150 nominees at this point, most of whom came out of our committee on a bipartisan basis, many of whom are nominated to offices that have literally never had a recorded vote on the floor of the U.S. Senate.
The question is up to the Democrats. Do you want to do this the easy way or do you want to do it the hard way? Because Republicans are prepared to finish what Chuck Schumer started 22 years ago, and what it will do is return the U.S. Senate to those practices, customs, and traditions that prevailed here from the 18th century to 2003 for both parties, for Presidents of both parties. I think our Republic was just fine from the 19th century--I am sorry--the 18th century to 2003. But one way or another, I promise you, this is going to stop.
Mr. President, I rise today to acknowledge the passing of a friend, a great Washingtonian, Bill Neukom--one of the most thoughtful and caring human beings I have had the pleasure of working with and knowing.
Bill was a legendary leader in technology who made incredible contributions and helped pave the way for the innovation economy. As a philanthropist later in his life, he cared deeply about making the world a better place. His efforts will have longstanding impacts on his adopted home in the Pacific Northwest and also on his beloved native Bay Area and the world at large.
As Microsoft's first general counsel, Bill played a pivotal role in the story of the company's unparalleled business success. Those in the industry know the extraordinary engineering challenges the company overcame through genius and tenacity, providing the operating system for the world's first mass-marketed desktop computer and beating all the competitors to the Holy Grail and making that operating system multitask--a milestone that laid the technological foundation that would serve the world's needs for decades to come and so many more yet to come. Bill was part of that.
People who are inside the company know the important legal roles that he played and know that the challenges they face would not have been able to be overcome without Bill's contributions. Consider the accomplishments that came on his watch in the early days, being a small tech startup, and then he served as the chief counsel to one of the world's most valuable and important companies.
In 1980, Microsoft signed perhaps the most advantageous business agreement ever. And at a time when few even knew what software was or could fathom how it would have monetary value, Bill Neukom argued and successfully defended the once-controversial notion that software was copyrightable. Now, of course, that is a bedrock principle that continues to provide the foundation for innovation in our economy. There are certain levels of productivity that we have all achieved because of it.
In confronting these incredible challenges, Bill always came through for his company, for his friends, and through incredible work in his community. He also was instrumental in embedding philanthropy and public service into the company's culture, launching programs such as the Microsoft Giving Campaign and Libraries Online. And I remember that at one point in time, Bill once considered running for public office.
I am so glad that we all got the benefit of his contributions in the private sector and from his philanthropy. He continued to make those public contributions after leaving Microsoft, and he cofounded the World Justice Project, an international civil society organization that works to advance the rule of law around the world--such an unbelievable impact. As a result of his generosity and his intellect and resources, many organizations benefited.
He took on leadership roles in the American Bar Association, serving as president and earning the ABA Medal in 2020 in recognition of his career contributions.
Bill gave back to educational institutions that meant so much to him. He served as trustee at both Dartmouth and at the University of Puget Sound, and he made significant--significant--contributions to the University of Washington and to Stanford and to numerous other community causes.
Bill and his family founded the Neukom Family Foundation, supporting education, the environment, justice, and public health. One of his lasting legacies is his family foundation, which helped establish and grow the Wild Salmon Center.
Many of my conversations with Bill over the last several years have been about that very Northwest icon, the Pacific Northwest salmon.
This organization focuses on long-term, science-driven, and collaborative
When I first met Bill--everybody would remember him because he wore his unique bow tie. It was part of his personality. But when you met him, he was also a person of unbelievable kindness, and that always, always stayed with him.
I remember many times, in my role in the Commerce Committee, calling him up and asking him for advice about critical issues, and he was always there to tell me that these are the three people I should call and consult. I always found that so interesting, given his great intellect and his great ideas--he always wanted me to reach out to more people.
He was an avid golfer, a fly fisherman, and I often saw him at airports on his way to one of those great, beautiful places in the Pacific Northwest.
But many Americans might know him for his other passion, and that is baseball. I personally prefer the Seattle Mariners, but Bill, growing up in the Bay Area, had a childhood love that brought him into ownership and participation as a leader of the San Francisco Giants. Under this leadership, the team improved on the field, going from 72 wins in 2008 to 92 wins and a Major League championship just 2 years later. I happened to go to a game with him in the Bay Area, and, again, his love and passion for the success of that team was undeniable.
We are going to miss Bill Neukom. We are going to miss his warmth, his laughter, his kindness, his contributions, his intellect, and just an unbelievable chapter of Northwest history that he participated in. And I know all of his friends and colleagues at Microsoft will also miss him.
I want to say a special outreach to his family, particularly his wife Sally--I know this is a very hard time--and his 4 children, 14 grandchildren, and 2 brothers Davidson and Daniel.
We all were so privileged to know Bill. We are all so grateful for his contributions to all of us in the Nation and certainly for what he did in the Pacific Northwest.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, 2\1/2\ years ago, I was sworn in as America's 2,000th Senator, a pretty unique honor for a kid that grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Bridgeton, MO. And as someone who appreciates history, the U.S. Senate has always been held out as the greatest deliberate body in the history of the world.
It is a very uniquely American institution. As our Founders envisioned what our system of government looked like, they wanted something that was very different than the House and something that you had equal representation as opposed to proportional representation, this system of checks and balances in a bicameral legislature, every State, no matter the size, having two Senators was thought of very differently and has proven over the course of our nearly 250 years to be a very important place to protect individual rights and a whole host of other issues that matter to the American people.
There has also been some people whose names are famous. You had Henry Clay, the great compromiser. You had, of course, Webster, Calhoun, and Clay as the great triumvirate. Missouri's first Senator Thomas Hart Benton was known as Old Bullion.
And I want to propose a new name, someone who serves currently in the U.S. Senate: the great arsonist, Chuck Schumer. Chuck Schumer has singlehandedly, more than any Senator in the history of our Republic, done more to diminish the importance and significance of this Chamber.
And I am going to walk through a few ways in which he has done that. To take a step back for the folks watching on C-SPAN, for the folks in the Gallery, for over 200 years--for over 200 years--the Executive Calendar, which is what we are dealing with today and what this whole debate is about--this Executive Calendar, there was no filibuster ever. It didn't happen. It didn't exist.
Presidents were able to come in; they were able to nominate folks. They were done by unanimous consent. Maybe there was some debate. But to put this in perspective, the folks nominated as judges for the Cabinet and other related posts--judges, for example, weren't even really subject to the filibuster.
Think about this, Clarence Thomas, perhaps one of the most controversial Supreme Court Justices--or that nomination was--got 52 votes. A filibuster wasn't instituted on Clarence Thomas--52 votes and he was confirmed. Any Senator could have moved forward with an effort to filibuster, requiring cloture, and then a vote requiring 60 votes.
So then, of course, you move into sort of the 20th century, Harry Reid and Chuck Schumer grew tired of that old institution of having to have 60 votes once that started to be employed. So they decided to change things around here, that you only needed 51 votes for anything other than a Supreme Court nominee. Lit the fuse. Lit the fuse.
Then, of course, now even for Supreme Court nominees, it is only 51. That happened in the 21st century. For the entirety of the 20th century, we didn't have this nonsense that we are doing here today.
I mean, even as we go back into the 1990s and into the 2000s, this Executive Calendar that we are dealing with was done by unanimous consent in voice votes. There are people literally being voted on today, I don't think the Ambassador of Uruguay has been voted on in 50 years; we just did that.
So Chuck Schumer rode shotgun with Harry Reid to upend the Executive Calendar as it relates to judicial nominees. Now, Chuck Schumer is doing that to all these other positions. We have never seen this in the history of our Republic. With over a thousand people that need to be Senate confirmed, the Democrats are requiring--they are filibustering and requiring cloture for every single one of them.
Because of those stall tactics, the 30-hour rule was changed to 2 hours, but this is all about delay. And why? Well, there is a couple reasons. One is the Democrats, at this point, are catering to a very, very radical and growing element of their party. And they are competing to be the greatest resister against President Trump. They can't believe he got back in. They can't believe it.
They tried to throw him in jail for the rest of his life. They invented this Russiagate nonsense in the first term. But the American people sat in that jury box, they weighed all the evidence, they saw all the shenanigans. And they said: Do you know what? We want our country back. We can't believe that you would weaponize the Justice Department against parents who showed up to school board meetings or Catholics or your chief political rival.
They rejected it. They rejected it because they want reform. So now President Trump is offering candidates who are reformed candidates for different positions, but they don't want to do it. And do you know what? Vote no or whatever, but this level of obstruction has never been seen before. It has never been seen before.
And don't even get me started on what Chuck Schumer would do to the legislative filibuster. He is already on record, his colleagues are on record, many of which I have talked to privately and can't believe they would actually do it, but if they are ever in the position that the Republicans are in right now, with a President in the White House, Democratic Senate, and a Democrat House, they will blow up the legislative filibuster.
They have all voted to do it--save Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who are no longer here.
They won't do it. They won't yield at all. And by the way, I have had very--I won't mention who--conversations with my Democrat colleagues who pretend to care about this institution and who are on record for that, on record for voting to end the legislative filibuster.
Oh, it is just for one issue. It was just for the voting rights issue. Give me a break--because you know exactly what comes next, DC and Puerto Rico come into the Union, federalizing our elections, packing the Supreme Court, put a shot clock on the Republic on that day.
So here we are now, that is the legislative calendar. We are in the Executive Calendar. They already lit the fuse on judicial nominees. And now Chuck Schumer is lighting the fuse on this. And I have got news for you: A reckoning is coming, because we are going to get back--the Republicans in this Chamber are going to get back to where the Senate always was, where the Executive Calendar isn't being utilized like this.
And so whether it is, you know, because a rule change is coming, if I have anything to say about it--and by the way, in a few hours, we may be recessing, and President Trump is going to get his recess picks.
You have lit the fuse. And let me give you another example of what Chuck Schumer has done. Last year, for the first time in the history of the Republic, articles of impeachment were delivered over to this Chamber, all Senators were seated, all of us.
In every single instance that articles of impeachment have come over to this Chamber if the person was alive or still in office, there was a trial. It happens to be in the Constitution. That is part of our job. There are only three calendars, the legislative calendar, the Executive Calendar, and the impeachment calendar.
The fuse was lit yet again. For the first time in our country's history, Chuck Schumer made a motion to dismiss the articles without a trial, and the Democrats, with a simple majority vote, went along with it.
I don't ever want to be lectured by any Senator on that side of the aisle about how much they care about the institution of the Senate. All three calendars would be lit ablaze, set on fire by the great arsonist and his merry men.
So what are we going to do about it? This is the charge to my Republican colleagues today. The charge is: We are not going to let you do this to the Senate. We are not going to let you destroy this place. We are going to get back to a place it has always been.
And one more example. I heard Chuck Schumer on the floor earlier today lauding the passage of appropriations bills. In my first 2 years in this place, we spent exactly 0.0 minutes on appropriations bills, a Blutarsky, nothing.
Leader Thune has made it a priority to open this place up, to have amendments. In fact, when I carried the rescissions package, I wasn't seeking to box anybody out. Offer your amendments. Let's have free and open debate.
We didn't see that when Chuck Schumer was in charge--not once.
So lit the fuse on judicial nominees. Lit the fuse on the Executive Calendar. Lit the fuse on the legislative filibuster. Lit the fuse on regular order. He will go down in the annals of history as someone with total disregard for this Chamber, the work we are charged to do when we are elected.
But I think Republicans have a chance to course correct today, and I hope we do it to get back to a place that can actually function.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Just as a reminder to my colleagues, you should refer to each other as a person or Senator from, for example, Ohio. And I also just want to remind my colleagues that ``no Senator in debate shall, directly or indirectly, by any form of words impute to another Senator or to other Senators any conduct or motive unworthy or unbecoming a Senator.''
Mr. President, I was hoping my colleague would stay on the floor to have a little bit of discussion about the topic he just raised because there seemed to be some missing elements in his discussion.
And isn't that kind of what happens here, where we hear from our leadership about all of these terrible things the other side is doing, and we just kind of swallow that hook, line, and sinker, rather than actually looking at the record.
Now, one of the pieces left out of his story was 1974, 100 Senators on this floor said: We are going to create a special fast track, filibuster-free, for one single purpose: reducing the deficit. And think of Robert Byrd of West Virginia. And Robert Byrd was an adamant-- adamant--advocate for the filibuster. Unfortunately, he had been very supportive of using the filibuster to block civil rights bills. But, in general, he was dedicated to making sure that it stayed in place. And even he joined 99 other Senators to say: Hey, we should have a special fast track solely for reducing the deficit. That was 1974.
At that same time, that same bill created the Congressional Budget Office so we would use honest numbers in putting forward spending bills because if we are going to actually reduce the deficit, we have to quit using smoke and mirrors to pretend that what we are spending is less than it really is.
So let's go forward 22 years to 1996. And in 1996, we were in the middle of the first term of the Gingrich revolution. The election of 1994 had been of dramatic success for Republicans in the House, picking up dozens of seats with an agenda for America. And in that agenda was something called the line-item veto. And the line-item veto was the idea that we would delegate our constitutional responsibility of the power of the purse to the President of the United States of America and say the President can decide what is spent on what programs.
And the Supreme Court said: Oh, no. You can't do that. You have a constitutional responsibility under the separation of powers. Under the checks and balances, Congress, by law, establishes what must be spent on each program, not the President of the United States.
Certainly, the President gets a role. The President provides the budget. The President has to sign the spending bills. But Congress could not take the power assigned to it and simply hand it over to the Executive. That is the way you end up in a strongman state.
And so the Supreme Court wiped out, in 1996--well, they canceled, if you will, the line-item veto power that Congress tried to give the President.
And so the Republican team controlling the House and Senate said: Well, we have another idea, and that other idea is a balanced budget constitutional amendment. Now, that happens to require two-thirds of both bodies here to vote for it and then three-quarters of the States to do a constitutional amendment.
It easily flew through the House of Representatives. All very good. It came over to the Senate, and we needed 67 votes for that, and there were 66 votes. The 67th vote was potentially the chair of the Appropriations Committee, Senator Hatfield from Oregon, and Senator Hatfield said: This is a bad idea. Here is why it is a bad idea. Sometimes we are at war, and we need to spend more money. Sometimes we are in recession, and we need to spend more money. And we do decide every single year, and we are in the majority, Republican majority, we decide every single year how much is going to be spent through the spending bills, the appropriations bills. And we decide through the revenue bills how much is going to be raised. So we already have the power to do a balanced budget in the years that it should be balanced, but we need to retain the power to address these emergencies.
It is kind of an interesting story in that Senator Hatfield, for standing on this principle as the chair of the Appropriations Committee, was vilified--vilified--for defending the responsibility of the power of the purse held here. And, in fact, he was so vilified that he even received a message from his son-in-law with a picture of his granddaughter, saying: For her sake, you should do this.
He then went to the majority leader, Senator Dole, and said: If you feel so strongly this is right, and clearly I feel it is a mistake, I will resign. And Senator Dole decided, no, we are not going to ask you to resign. We are not going
There is kind of an interesting twist to this story because Oregon did not have a law that allowed a Governor to appoint a replacement. So had Senator Hatfield resigned, there would have been 99 Senators, and then you would have only needed 66 votes for the balanced budget amendment. But that did not transpire because Senator Dole turned Senator Hatfield's offer down.
So then what happened? Well, a little bit of frustration among the Republican majority. Their line-item veto had been knocked down by the Supreme Court. Their constitutional amendment had not cleared the Senate. And they said: We really want to do a massive tax bill, particularly giving huge breaks for the richest Americans. And they said: Ah, but we can't do it. We can't get it done. Why not? Because the Democrats won't agree to massive tax breaks for the richest Americans. So we won't be able to get the 60 votes we need to be able to pursue this path.
And then what happened? Well, Majority Leader Dole and others conferred and said: Let's do a nuclear option. And let's take this strategy, this tool, that we created in 1974 to reduce deficits, and let's repurpose it and allow it to be used to increase deficits--of course, not at all what the 100 Senators had voted on in 1974.
Well, that was pretty dramatic to proceed to take a tool, reconciliation, invented in 1974 to reduce deficits and to say it can be used to increase deficits. Well, so dramatic, in fact, that it couldn't be done unless they overturned the opinion of their Parliamentarian. So they fired the Parliamentarian. That is what the Republicans did. They fired the Parliamentarian and they brought in a new Parliamentarian and his name was Robert Dove.
Now, Robert Dove had been here in 1974. He knew about why they passed this bill with 100 Senators to have a fast track with no filibuster was only for decreasing the deficits. But where had Mr. Dove been working? He had been working for the majority leader, Robert Dole. And so he took and he came in and he ruled--or provided the recommendation to the chair--that it was just fine to completely repurpose this 1974 tool called reconciliation for decreasing the deficits so it could be used to increase deficits. That was the nuclear option. Wow.
Now, my colleague didn't mention any of that. He talked about lighting the fuse. Lighting the fuse, as if Democrats had been degrading the structure of this institution. But I would suggest maybe there is responsibility on both sides of the aisle. What was done in 1996 was a dramatic--dramatic--well, contravention of the very core of the understanding that every Democrat and every Republican had agreed to. It was a deal broken--deal broken--in the exercise of power politics.
Or let's go forward to 2008, and this man named Barack Obama ran for President. He was a Member of the Senate, and he was elected. At that point, something dramatic happened, and that is the minority leader decided to undertake a dramatic blockade of President Obama's nominees. I mean, couldn't fill the National Labor Relations Board, couldn't get the Labor Secretary into place. The list went on and on and on.
Well, Democrats didn't respond with a nuclear option. They responded with: Let's work this out. Let's preserve the supermajority on nominations. But to preserve it, we can't abuse it in this fashion.
Just the number of blockades of nominations soared dramatically. This instrument that had really almost never been used on nominations, it started being used routinely on the Republican side of the aisle. That was left out of the speech you heard a few minute ago.
So we negotiated. We pleaded. It was like a 9-month process. And, finally, we all met in the Old Senate Chamber--no staff present. I don't know if there was anyone to even record the comments for history, and we basically talked to each other in very real terms about let's preserve this supermajority on nominations. But it can't be that the minority uses that as a blockade against a President to keep qualified people from being put into office. An agreement was reached that that blockade would be dialed back enormously.
I recall that a month or so into that, there was us on the verge of the minority blocking a very qualified individual that there was no justification for. I remember Senator McCain grabbing the arm of a fellow colleague coming down the aisle over here and saying: We mustn't do this. We agreed to not be irresponsible in blocking qualified people. And that person just got the 60 votes and went through.
All good and well, like we had resolved this conflict and preserved the supermajority, until the minority leader changed his mind and said: I don't care how qualified a nominee is from President Obama for the DC Circuit Court. We are going to block anyone--anyone--from being assigned to fill those seats.
Well, that was the final straw.
As much as Harry Reid tried to, as majority leader, say: Back off, don't do that; that is a violation of the agreement we reached in the Old Senate Chamber, the minority leader said: No, we are not going to allow Obama to put a single justice on the DC court.
A few arguments--policy arguments--were made by the minority leader to support the position. He said: I think they have enough justices already. We don't need to fill those additional positions. But that is not an argument that had ever been used here, that even though courts had a huge backlog, they didn't need the additional justices.
No, it was just a plain outpower move to block the President of the United States from putting people on the DC Circuit Court.
Why was that the target? Well, for one reason, the DC Circuit Court considers--a lot of the national issues go through the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. And for another, a lot of folks who eventually get nominated to the Supreme Court serve on the DC Circuit Court of Appeals. That makes it kind of a pretty important place.
But this pretty important place where justices consider pretty important issues and sometimes have a chance to be recognized as someone who might be a good candidate for the Supreme Court was blocked by the minority. And he has made all the efforts to undo that. The minority said: No, regardless of qualifications, we are going to back up the minority leader and not allow any justices to be appointed, no matter how qualified they are.
So I am just adding to the conversation that my colleague began--who proceeded to throw in kind of a dialogue of, say, all the obstruction here stems from one side of the aisle, the blue side of the aisle--I am suggesting that there have been moments where both sides have stretched their power. There have been moments when both sides have sought--and sometimes successfully--to resolve that conflict.
But in the end, there have been some big moments in which the Republicans have torn down the system. That may be true for the Democrats, as well. But it might be helpful to have a more balanced conversation.
And while we are at this dialogue, recognizing factors that have occurred on both sides of the aisle, let's talk about something else that never happened in U.S. history until it happened by the Republicans refusing to hold a debate and a vote on a Supreme Court nomination. It had never happened until the last year of the Obama administration when a vacancy became open due to an untimely death and the President nominated a candidate to fill that seat. And Republicans said: We are not even going to allow a debate or a vote--the first time in the history of the United States of America.
I was just reading a column the other day that referred to this as the ``stolen seat.'' I noticed it because that is what I called it at the time. I said this is wrong. Once one side steals a seat from a President, it will be horrifically difficult to fix that problem because if the Democrats have the same chance to do the same and balance things out, now you just have a tradition of stealing seats.
You have a Republican President and a Democratic majority that blocks debate on a nominee until the next election, hoping that you will keep that seat empty until there is a Democrat in the Oval Office. That just means we have locked in obstruction.
I came to this floor at 6 p.m. and started speaking and addressed my comments to the majority leader
I proceeded to make that plea through the night up until cloture ripened--that is a motion to close debate--ripened the following morning, 15\1/2\ hours later.
Why would I stand on this floor 15\1/2\ hours later? Because I was asking my Republican colleagues: Do not tear down this institution.
That is three examples of what the Republican side has done. It didn't come up in my colleague's speech.
Let's talk about a fourth. I see my colleague from Illinois is here and I am going to defer to him. The fourth was just recently in which, for the first time ever since the 1974 act, we passed a bill--I say we passed a bill--Republicans passed on a partisan line bill, a spending reconciliation bill that will create deficits beyond a 10-year window. They had already blown up the agreement from 1974 that there could be no deficits created in a 10-year window. They blew that up in 1996, as I referred to. Then they proceeded to blow up, just weeks ago, the second half, second pillar of that deal, that there would be no deficits after that 10-year period.
Then they blew up the third pillar of that 1974 act, which was: We would use honest numbers from the Congressional Budget Office in laying out what a bill costs.
I say to my colleague across the aisle who was speaking before me: You pointed out things that you feel Democrats stretched the boundaries and damaged this institution, but you left out enumerable cases that I have just pointed to. Isn't it time to not do one more damage to this institution and, instead, get together a group from each side to wrestle with the issue at hand?
It is my understanding that as of this moment, this day, there is almost exactly the same number of nominees that have been approved to date under the Trump administration as there were under the Biden administration, a similar number of days under his administration-- almost exactly the same number. I think the hyperbole across the aisle is profoundly exaggerated.
Let me yield to my colleague from Illinois, who stands ready to share a few thoughts.
Mr. President, I thank my colleague from Oregon for his statement. I would like to join in the chorus for just a moment and note two or three things that have not been mentioned on the floor by the other side. In fairness, I think they should.
I have listened to several Republican Senators today, with the pie charts, come to the floor and express concern--even outrage--at what is happening in this Chamber. There is some legitimacy to their complaint. There are a lot of things that need to be changed.
I join in with my colleague from Oregon to say we ought to put a group together to try to calmly come up with changes and Senate procedure to bring us back to the stature this Chamber once had. Today, we don't have it, and we should. There are several things I would like to mention briefly.
If you are talking about denying a voice vote or a rollcall to an individual seeking a nomination, I call to mind what happened with our colleague at that time, JD Vance, the U.S. Senator from Ohio, who announced when I was chairman of the Judiciary Committee that he would no longer allow U.S. attorneys to go through the voice vote. At that point, he said they should go through the procedure we are now using for all nominees. He literally stopped the process of choosing U.S. attorneys for President Biden at 63. There are over 90 U.S. attorney positions in the United States.
So he did exactly what is being complained about by Republican Senators, saying that we can no longer use the voice vote or unanimous consent to pick U.S. attorneys.
Let the record reflect, when President Trump was in his first term, every one of his U.S. attorneys was chosen by voice vote, no record votes. Democrats were in control and gave that option to President Trump. And then Vice President Vance had an opportunity to stop it and did. He said at the time he wanted to ``grind the Department of Justice to a halt.'' I quoted that while he was standing on the floor right there. He didn't deny it. He had been quoted in the press.
When you talk about balance and fairness in reforming the Senate, it goes both ways.
Secondly, do you remember when Anton Scalia died on vacation and there was a vacancy at the U.S. Supreme Court? Do you recall what happened? That vacancy was protected by the Republican Senate leader, Senator McConnell, for 10 months so that Obama would not have an opportunity to fill that vacancy. He wanted to make certain that was done by President Trump in his next term. There is another illustration of departure from common practice and precedent for political advantage.
But the last point that I want to make is one that came by as I listened to the Senator from Arkansas come to the floor and talk about the treatment of Republicans under his experience in the Senate.
We have something in the Senate called a hold. What that means, basically, when your name makes it to the Calendar, the Executive Calendar here, which means you have gone through the background investigation at the White House, you have gone through the committee process, you have been chosen by the committee, and you come to the Calendar to be considered for a position in our Federal Government. There is still one last hurdle--not just a vote on the Senate floor, but the possibility of a hold. Individual Senators can put a hold on a nominee indefinitely.
One of the most egregious examples that has happened in modern times relates to the Senator from Arkansas. Let me read from an article by Frank Bruni in the New York Times, June 6, 2016:
Mr. Bruni wrote--
The woman says:
That's Washington for you.
A hold of 820 days. A woman who waited on the calendar patiently for this ambassadorship to the Bahamas passed away from leukemia.
So, when we sit down and talk about bringing civility and common sense back to the Senate, let's bring in more than just the topic of the votes as to whether there will be record votes or whether there will be voice votes. That is an important issue, but it is not the only issue. Let us show civility, one to the other--Democrats to Republicans and Republicans to Democrats.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The President pro tempore. The Senator from Iowa.
Mr. President, soon, we will vote on the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Florida.
Until recent years, it has been unheard of to use floor time to confirm U.S. attorneys. Typically, they are confirmed by voice vote. I regret that we have become a body where every nominee has been obstructed. U.S. attorneys keep our communities safe and ensure law and order is enforced. There are 93 U.S. attorneys in the United States. It would take more than 230 hours to confirm all of them. That is totally unrealistic, and that is not hyperbole.
The Democrats' obstruction of nominees is hindering law and order across our Nation. As chairman of the Judiciary Committee, I will continue to work across the aisle to restore a commonsense confirmation process for U.S. attorneys.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Kennedy), the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. McConnell), the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).
I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Kelly), and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Welch) are necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 49, nays 44, as follows:
The nomination was confirmed.
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.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The senior assistant legislative 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 the nomination of Jason Reding Quinones, of Florida, to be United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida for the term of four years, shall be brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Kennedy), the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. McConnell), the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the nomination.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read the nomination of Jason Reding Quinones, of Florida, to be United States Attorney for the Southern District of Florida for the term of four years.
Mr. President, Americans want Congress to deliver. Americans want Congress to work. They want Congress to not just work as in being here but work as in collaborate and cooperate in order to get things done. But the reason there are such low expectations is because of days like today.
My colleagues--are they proud of this? Is this what they think their constituents want?
If you go back to any State and talk to, like, normal people-- Democrat, Republican--they probably all agree that
Now, if you would be too embarrassed to ask your own constituents, you should be embarrassed now.
We are 7 months into President Trump's administration, and we have approved zero percent of his nominees by voice vote or unanimous consent.
You may say: Well, that is not anything strange.
No, it is quite strange. You can see that under H.W. Bush, 98 percent of the nominees were voice vote or unanimous consent; President Clinton, a Democrat, 98 percent; George W. Bush, 90 percent; Barack Obama, 90 percent; Trump 1--if you don't like Trump, you could have stopped then--65 percent; and then President Biden, 57 percent. I guess there has been a decline, but this is an abrupt stop.
It is frustrating. Zero percent. Zero percent.
Now, we would all like to be with our families. We would like to be meeting our constituents. We would like to find out what is going on in our own districts. But we are having to battle this in order to get some of President Trump's nominees through.
By the way, as others have emphasized, these are not controversial nominees. This is like the Ambassador to the Vatican. That is about as noncontroversial as you can be. These are like not the Cabinet Secretary, not the Deputy Cabinet Secretary, but a couple positions below that. So this is obstruction for the sake of obstruction.
The other thing that concerns me terribly--Roy Blunt, a former Senator from Missouri, used to say that whatever one party does to the other party, that party will do it to the other going forward, which is to say that we create precedents in this Chamber. We have always had a precedent of having a significant percentage of people who have been confirmed by voice vote or unanimous consent, as we just pointed out on this chart. But now we have to grind, grind, grind--2 hours of debate between when someone is first put up until there is a final vote. But no one in the Chamber debates; it is just that for 2 hours, you find something to do. That will set a precedent.
Now, I love the Senate because I love my country. And our Founding Fathers set up the Senate to be the place where we would come--we the people, with our representatives, would come and make laws that are beneficial for our country.
I grew up with this incredible esteem of the Senate, and now we are seeing the Senate ground down, where the comity, the cooperation that allowed people with different perspectives to come together and find common ground for the benefit of our country is being exploited merely to delay President Trump's agenda. The Ambassador to the Vatican-- putting a stop on his nomination and then his final approval doesn't really stop the President's agenda.
So it is not just shattering precedents, it is creating new ones, establishing a pattern where next time, if Republicans are in the minority, we will, unfortunately, feel motivated to create the same gridlock that is being created here.
I don't know of any American who wants that. I don't know of the most partisan American who wants that because they know that when their side is in power next time, they will want to get something done.
By the way, we are talking about the Ambassador to the Vatican. This is not--this is not--the Secretary of Defense. This is not--you name the position.
Now, I know my Democratic colleagues care about the institution as much as I, and I appeal to that concern. I appeal to that sense of, we have to make this place work if it is going to work for the American people, and must be careful about what we do because it will be done unto us.
I suppose this could be done in the name of resistance. I would say it is resistance to the will of the American people--the American people that want the Congress, that want the Senate to function, to get on to bigger and better things, to not break precedent to set a new precedent where, in the future, we work even less well together.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. President, in just a little while, later this afternoon, we will consider confirmation of Jeanine Pirro as U.S. attorney for the district of Washington, DC.
Now, I have a particular feeling about appointments as U.S. attorney, having served as one in Connecticut and having seen how profoundly impactful it can be on the lives of everyday Americans.
Obviously, it is a position that is integral to justice in the United States. It is the top Federal prosecutor in that district. In DC, it is the largest office in the whole country and probably one of the two or three most important because it has jurisdiction over all of the Federal Agencies, Federal employees, Federal issues that arise in this profoundly significant place.
Like any prosecutor in the Federal system, it is a position of absolutely staggering importance and power. I learned as U.S. attorney that probably the most important decision I made was whether to bring an indictment; that is to say, whether to charge somebody with a crime. Most--almost all--were convicted. But convicted or not, speaking generally, somebody charged with a crime suffers damage for life-- financial harm, reputational impact, families often disrupted. And that is no reason to avoid bringing charges but only to make sure that someone who is making those final decisions is independent, objective, and nonpolitical in the way they go about the job.
Jeanine Pirro is unqualified to be U.S. attorney. She is unfit for this role. She is simply a loyal political acolyte and sycophant of the President. Loyalty is the reason she has been nominated, not experience. She is not objective. She is not independent. In fact, she is essentially an entertainer. Nothing wrong with being an entertainer, but it is not a qualification for being U.S. attorney.
In fact, on her show, she has made Islamophobic comments so offensive that FOX News temporarily suspended her from the air. She has promoted a wide variety of damaging, offensive conspiracy theories, including the thoroughly debunked allegation that some pro-choice States allow doctors to kill fully delivered, breathing babies. She was a key figure in promoting the entirely baseless claim that the 2020 election was stolen. Her public record essentially disqualifies her from serving as the chief Federal prosecutor.
Her nomination is more serious and more profoundly important than just her particular place. It is, in a sense, a symbol of what President Trump is doing to the U.S. justice system. My Republican colleagues are simply not only willing to place her at the head of the largest U.S. Attorney's Office in the country, last week, they moved her nomination forward by a party-line vote. They rallied behind her, not in spite of her record but because of it--again, simply because she is loyal to the President.
So the issue here is not only about her; it is about whether loyalty will qualify somebody for this kind of powerful position in the U.S. Department of Justice, which is supposed to be above politics, when she has demonstrated that, in fact, she would be totally unfit for any such office.
How loyal is she? Well, she was individually discussed in the defamation lawsuit against FOX News for promoting 2020 election conspiracies. Her totally false comments were at the center of that defamation case. FOX News canceled an episode of her show after the 2020 election with a FOX executive producer, saying: ``I don't trust her to be responsible.'' A FOX producer called her a ``reckless maniac'' in an internal email. These were her colleagues, her coworkers, her producers. One of them asserted that ``she should never be on live television'' and described her draft of a monologue as ``rife w[ith] conspiracy theories.''
That defamation case ended in a settlement in which FOX News agreed to pay $787 million, in part, because of statements she made on the air.
The history of peddling conspiracy theories on cable news should be fundamentally disqualifying for any prosecutor, let alone the head of the largest
And her specific record around the work of the very U.S. Attorney's Office she is now nominated to lead reveals how unqualified and unsuitable she is for this role.
Here is the most important part of her background. Four and a half years ago, as we all know, rioters stormed the U.S. Capitol, contributing to the deaths of Capitol Police, injuring them severely, disrupting the vote-counting for President, and leaving devastation in their wake.
The U.S. Attorney's Office for DC was primarily responsible for bringing the January 6 rioters to justice, with praise from both sides of the aisle for the diligent and dedicated work they did to make sure that justice was done. For years, those prosecutors worked alongside the FBI to investigate, to build cases, to bring prosecution against the rioters. They didn't choose those roles or assignment; they were chosen by the Department of Justice to do their duty and enforce the law.
But on her radio show, Jeanine Pirro agreed with a guest who said the Department of Justice prosecutors handling the January 6 cases should be criminally prosecuted. She said:
In her responses to this committee's questions, she failed to disavow this position. In fact, she failed to directly answer whether she believed Federal prosecutors assigned to work on the January 6 cases should, themselves, be prosecuted. In other words, she sided with the criminals.
She criticized the prosecutors who now will be in the office that she has been nominated to lead. Her criticism of them was to side with the conspiracy theorists and the call-in guests to her show as Judge Pirro. Rather than condemning pardons for people who committed violence against law enforcement, she simply wrote:
Again, she refused to answer key questions. And, unfortunately, the Judiciary Committee failed to bring her forward as a witness, despite our requests and demands that she be a witness in her nomination proceeding. That is really regrettable on the part of the Judiciary Committee and, I think, an avoidance of responsibility that we owe the American people to scrutinize somebody who plainly raises such profound questions of qualification, even if you prize loyalty to Donald Trump.
This person who Donald Trump has nominated to be in this position of trust and responsibility, plainly is not just unfit but would disgrace this office and diminish the credibility of the entire Department of Justice. That is the more profound question here, whether someone so unqualified will be confirmed after no testimony, after inadequate consideration, after simply agreeing because she is loyal to the President.
Rather than support the prosecution and conviction of people who assaulted law enforcement officers, she believes that the Federal prosecutors bringing those cases should, themselves, be investigated. The U.S. Attorney's Office that did those cases, the dedicated professionals who investigated them and the people of the District of Columbia--indeed, our Nation--deserve better.
I oppose her nomination. I urge my colleagues to join me in voting no.
Mr. President, I am one of the newest Senators in this esteemed body. In fact, I just marked my sixth month here in the U.S. Senate.
Over and over and over again, you could just plug and play the same speech because, apparently, everyone nominated by President Trump to every position that we have to confirm as a body is wholly unqualified. That is what the Democrats would have you believe. In fact, I don't think we heard much else about any of the nominations.
If you look at the statistics going back administration after administration, Democrat and Republican, at this point in time, you saw 90 percent of nonmilitary civilian nominees confirmed. And how many of President Trump's administration have we confirmed? Zero. It is almost as though they are trying to thwart the will of the American people.
I stand here to reflect on a situation that I am astounded by as the newest U.S. Senator. In November 2024, the American people elected President Trump to be the 47th President of this Nation. And with that election, the people expressed their willingness to see this country move down a new path, a better path, a stronger and safer path, a path where leaders actually looked at the well-being of this country and the security of this country and the interests of our people and made commonsense policy decisions based on that and not some radical wish list that filled some Marxist governing philosophy. How about we get back to the founding ideals of this Nation?
How did the colleagues on the other side of the aisle respond to that election? What have we seen since January of this year when the 119th Congress set out to do the people's work? We have seen obstruction. It was the same response they have always had, a blend of histrionics and performance theater.
Instead of committing to the calls for reflection from within their own party in the aftermath of an electoral loss, they resorted to obstruction in the name of democracy--in the name of democracy. I find it strange that in protecting democracy, it requires ignoring the will of the people.
Here in the Senate, both on the floor and in our committees, we have found that carrying out the people's will is being stymied every step of the way. We have seen Presidential nominees and legislation as opportunities for a performance. And every day this goes on, important positions critical to the national security and the well-being of this country and improving the lives of our citizens, those positions go left unfilled.
So while China continues to staff their diplomatic postings abroad and undercut the prosperity of our country, our Embassies go without Ambassadors. As our domestic Departments seek to unleash the American economy for the benefit of the working-class Americans, they are left without leadership. Our colleagues have sought to protect this country by obstructing the very exercise of the people's will, ensuring it is incapable of meeting the challenges of the moment.
So here we are, on a Saturday in August, voting on the President's nominees because our colleagues continue to hold out. This ultimately places this body and our Nation at a crossroads.
If we continue down this path, if we continue to allow obstruction at every turn or continue to allow people on the other side of the aisle to gain personal points or even political points, we weaken this body created by the Framers to carry out the responsibilities the American people have asked of us, protecting our liberty and protecting this Union.
I hope that our colleagues will avoid this path and join us in moving forward with putting Americans and America first.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Tennessee.
Mr. President, today marks day 212 of this new Congress under Republican leadership. I would offer to my colleagues this has been the most successful--the most successful--beginning of a Congress.
When you look at the nearly 750 hours that we have spent working and the 450 votes that we have taken, when you look at how we have pushed to move forward and how we have fought obstruction from our colleagues on the other side of the aisle, you do realize that we, indeed, are helping to fulfill the promise President Trump made when he said: We will make America safe, secure, healthy, productive, and great again.
Do you know what? That is precisely what the American people voted for. They want action. They want things to be done differently. Indeed, with a Republican House and Senate and this administration, led by President Trump and Vice President Vance, they are delivering on this.
Look at the border. What we are seeing is a border that is secure. We know that we have some of the best numbers--the lowest illegal crossings that are coming across those borders. We are returning to building a wall. We are getting the Border Patrol what they need to do their job.
We have the Laken Riley Act, which Senator Britt led here in the Senate. This helps to detain those criminal illegal aliens. We have the HALT Fentanyl Act that Senator Grassley led, and we have Senator Hagerty with the GENIUS Act to give us that first crypto bill to make certain that we retain the lead in that emerging technology legislation.
Those are all a few of the things that have been accomplished.
Of course, look at what we did in the One Big Beautiful Bill. Tennesseans are really looking forward to this bill because of what it does.
When you look at the fact that we got rid of a lot of that far-left Green New Deal spending, we have put money into modernizing our military for 21st century warfare and into Border Patrol agents, and we have the funding there that is needed. It is all there.
The people said: Let's get back to addressing our debt and restoring some fiscal sanity to this country. We have $37 trillion of debt. We didn't get there overnight, and it is going to take a dedicated, focused, intentional process to get us out of this debt, to address it.
Of course, we are delighted--absolutely delighted--and we are so pleased to know that June was the first month in not a year or a decade but in three decades that this government ran a surplus.
Those are good signs.
Indeed, last night on this floor, we moved forward three of the appropriations bills. There are eight bills that have already come out of committee, and we processed three of those last night to make certain that we get onto a budget; that we get off of the Biden-era CRAs and onto the numbers that President Trump and our Appropriations Committee have moved forward on.
This marked the first time since 2018 that the Senate passed appropriations bills before the August recess. Now, that is so significant because what are the first things that we are supposed to do? One of them is to fund the government. And for my colleagues who always want to reduce Federal spending, which I am one of them, we have to go through the appropriations process to be able to do that.
Of course, in addition to the One Big Beautiful Bill, we also had the rescissions bill, which gave us an additional $9 billion in cuts.
We need to realize, when we do these rescissions, that is the equivalent of taking that red pen and marking through those line items and saying: They are gone.
The American people wanted to see the high cost of living and inflation addressed. Indeed, with the One Big Beautiful Bill, we have been able to get things heading in the right direction. For Tennesseans, we know that there is going to be a $2,600 per year savings in taxes with that One Big Beautiful Bill. We know that people are looking forward to this and that the One Big Beautiful Bill was the largest tax cut in our Nation's history. Indeed, we expect from the Council of Economic Advisers' numbers to see families in Tennessee increase take-home pay somewhere between $7,000 and $10,000. Those are numbers that are significant.
And do you know what that does? It says to people: We want you to have more control over your pocketbook--in how you choose to save your money, in how you choose to spend your money. All of those things are accomplishments. In 212 days of this Congress, those are all items that we have been able to move forward on.
Our other committees are hard at work. We are approving judges and getting them through the process, ready for floor votes. Indeed, the first appellate judge--appointed by President Trump and approved by Congress--was Whitney Hermandorfer out of Nashville. We look forward to seeing her on the Sixth Circuit. All of this we have moved forward at a rapid pace.
Now I want to talk about what has happened with nominees. Of course, everyone is aware we approved the Cabinet in record time in getting people to work. When it comes to those sub-Cabinet positions and judges and U.S. attorneys and U.S. marshals and Ambassadors, our friends across the aisle have enjoyed playing a game of obstruction. You know, it is as if they learned nothing on November 5.
Our friends across the aisle have lost at the ballot box; they have lost in the U.S. House and in the U.S. Senate. They have lost in the courts, and so now what we hear from many of them--and you can look at some of their campaign websites--is that they are holding resistance labs and encouraging people to obstruct. They think that they are harming us. What they are doing is harming the American people, thwarting the will of the American people.
They are trying to slow-walk these nominees. They are making a game out of it. How many can they hold back? But what they are doing is acting outside of the norm. What they are doing is proving to the American people that they are not here to address the issues of the day; they are here to see what they can stop.
I have got a chart with me that I think tells a great story. You will see the heading ``Civilian nominees confirmed by voice vote or unanimous consent in first term.'' That is a President's first term. In order to provide context for what is happening in the U.S. Senate, I think it is important that we go back and look at history and see what that yields for us and the lessons that it yields.
As I said, these are nominees who are confirmed by voice vote or by unanimous consent in a President's first term. That is a practice that has been an accepted and expected practice of this body. When you have a deputy or an Under Secretary and sometimes nominees for different boards, they are grouped together en bloc, and then they are moved through the process together. They receive either a voice vote, or they move forward by unanimous consent. It simplifies the process. Many times, as I have talked to Tennesseans, what they have said is: We are not certain how many nominees there are. When you talk about President Trump not getting his nominees, are we talking about 100 people or 200 or 300? No. It is about 1,200 positions.
So let's put the context on this.
President George H. W. Bush: He had 98 percent of his civilian nominees confirmed by voice or unanimous consent.
President Bill Clinton: 98 percent.
George W. Bush: 90 percent.
President Obama: 90 percent.
President Trump's first term: 65 percent.
President Biden: 57 percent.
President Donald Trump's second term--zero--zero--not one--not one single nominee, not one. This is the obstruction that they are practicing within this Chamber.
Not only are they doing that, but they are wanting multiple votes. They want cloture filed. Then they want the cloture vote. Then they want the 2-hour period or the 4-hour for appellate judges while a Cabinet Secretary is a 30-hour clock to run. They are doing that on every single nominee. You can imagine how much time this would take if you have to follow this pattern for 1,200 people.
You see why it is deemed by many people in this country to be active obstruction by the Democrats. This is a practice that has gained steam under the current Democrat leadership. They feel like they are hurting the Republicans, but what they are doing is harming the American people because the agenda they voted for--what they wanted to see accomplished--cannot be accomplished.
Of what the American people voted for President Trump to do, our friends across the aisle would choose to slow-walk that. What they are doing is hurting the people they were sent here to represent.
Just one quick point of fact into this maelstrom of faux outrage about Democratic obstruction, and that is that the proposal that has been made to the Republicans to resolve the customary August jam-up where we clear nominees would actually put President Trump ahead of the number of appointees that Republicans had allowed President Biden at this same time in his Presidency. So you can take what is being said here with a bit of a grain of salt.
There are lots of extraordinary and suspicious happenings around the Epstein case in the last few months. But just by way of background to those who may not be following each development, you have Epstein at one point describing himself as one of Donald Trump's closest friends. You have Donald Trump saying at one point that he shares a bond with Epstein over their mutual like of attractive women and pointing out that, in the case of Epstein, they tend to be on the younger side. You have the President recently acknowledging he is upset with Jeffrey Epstein for stealing young women from Mar-a-Lago--by Epstein--for purposes that he did not disclose--the President did not disclose.
Tragically, in April, one of those women--one of those children, underage women--working at Mar-a-Lago committed suicide. She was a victim of the Ghislaine Maxwell-Jeffrey Epstein sex trafficking. Just this past April, she took her own life. But she was one of those women, apparently, that Trump was upset that Epstein was taking away from him at Mar-a-Lago. It certainly begs the question of, what did Trump think Jeffrey Epstein was doing with these young women he was taking from Mar-a-Lago?
So these are just some of the questions we hope will be answered, but, of course, after promising the MAGA base that he would disclose these files, after Bondi promised and Kash Patel promised and Trump promised, they have reneged on this.
So this is the backdrop in which Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche goes to visit the No. 1 coconspirator, Maxwell.
The other background piece of this is that Todd Blanche isn't just some Deputy Attorney General; Todd Blanche is Trump's former criminal defense lawyer. Todd Blanche is the guy who sat in the courtroom in Manhattan helping to defend Donald Trump against the Stormy Daniels allegations against him, for which Donald Trump was convicted of multiple felonies.
As you will remember from the Judiciary Committee when Blanche came for his confirmation hearing, you and I were both concerned about whether Blanche would be able to shed his role as Trump's criminal defense lawyer when he adopted the new role of being the No. 2 person in the Justice Department.
All of this begs the question of, when this very unusual thing happened where the No. 2 person at the Justice Department goes to talk to the coconspirator, this child sex predator, is he acting as Trump's defense lawyer or is he acting as a Deputy AG?
As you were alluding to, if this wasn't bizarre enough, for a top person like that to go interview a witness is unprecedented. For them to do it secretly--and we don't know if this was recorded; we don't know if an FBI agent was present. It would be unthinkable to do this in the absence of an FBI agent taking down the statement, but there is no evidence that took place.
The only thing we do know is that this interview lasted 9 hours, and after the interview, Ghislaine Maxwell got the special treatment of being moved from her prison in Florida to a minimum security prison in Texas that is like a camp, to which sex predators are not supposed to be sent. So why did she get that special treatment?
Finally, one other point I would make before I yield back to you about how unusual all this is, is the defense attorney representing Maxwell is friends, apparently, with Todd Blanche, the Deputy Attorney General, and when Maxwell was asked ``Are you hoping for a pardon out of this? he basically said ``We didn't ask for one, but of course the President has said he has the power to do it.'' They obviously want some special treatment. They are already getting it. But we have no record of any of this.
So, yes, this is so unusual, extraordinary, and unprecedented. And if they think this is going to somehow answer the questions that have been raised by their refusal to turn over these documents, it is the furthest thing from that, wouldn't you say?
I see that the Senator from Maryland has come to the floor to make his unanimous consent request, so let me yield to him since we are kind of into his time here.
But what Senator Schiff and I can both tell all of you is that it is extremely rare for even a U.S. attorney to go and do a witness statement and unusual in most circumstances even for an assistant U.S. attorney to go and do a witness statement. The reason for that is you then become a witness to what took place in that room, and you don't want to be both the prosecutor and the witness in the same case.
So the fact that he went in either alone or with no FBI agent or with no stenographer and became a witness to what took place sends off flares of concern to everybody who has served in that line of work.
One other extraordinary fact about this is that none of the prosecutors who actually worked on prosecuting Maxwell were present. The reason you would want them there is, they know the facts. Blanche doesn't know the facts. So when you are interrogating this person, when you are taking their statement, you want somebody who knows the facts, who can attest to whether they are being forthcoming, telling the truth or not.
Also, a defense lawyer representing 20 of the Epstein victims asked to be present, and they were turned down.
Mr. President, I thank the Senator from California and the Senator from Rhode Island. They have well described, I think, all the inappropriate actions that have been taken by the Justice Department, including recently with respect to the Deputy Attorney General, who had been Donald Trump's personal lawyer, conducting the secret interview with the Epstein associate Maxwell.
This is an important conversation to continue here on the Senate floor. We were here earlier this morning, where
Those who were so terribly abused and mistreated deserve to have the full truth. They deserve to have all the facts come out, as do their loved ones, as do the American people so the American people can have some kind of confidence that the Department of Justice is presenting the American people with the truth because we need transparency in order to ensure full accountability.
It used to be the case that Donald Trump and his Attorney General Pam Bondi and others in this administration said they wanted to get to the bottom of this. In fact, they said they wanted to release the Epstein files. But as we got closer to actually doing that, they suddenly decided that they did not want the public to know and that they didn't want Epstein's victims to know. So now they have decided not to be forthcoming.
The obvious question is, What are they hiding? And that is why we took to the floor earlier today to say: Release the damn Epstein files.
We have learned just in the last 48 hours that at some point along the way, the FBI redacted Trump's name from the Epstein files. We have learned that his name was very likely in those files. We also know that the Trump administration asked the FBI to do a search of his name in the files. We now know that his name was redacted from those files at some point along the way by the FBI.
As my colleagues from Rhode Island and California were just discussing, we have also witnessed in just the last week or two the highly inappropriate action of Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche to conduct a secret interview with Ghislaine Maxwell, who was Jeffrey Epstein's partner in these crimes.
When he was asked at his confirmation hearing before the Senate about whether he had a continuing duty of loyalty and confidentiality to Donald Trump, his response was yes, as the former personal attorney of Donald Trump, he had an ongoing duty of loyalty and confidentiality.
Clearly, that duty of loyalty and confidentiality to Donald Trump puts him in direct conflict with the interests of the truth and the people of the United States when it comes to President Trump. So it was highly inappropriate that he held that interview.
As the Senator from California just pointed out, he excluded from that interview lawyers who had been working on this case for a long time. It is also a fact by at least many reports that he, Todd Blanche, has a very close, personal relationship with the lawyer for Ms. Maxwell.
So this thing stinks to high heaven, and one thing they should do is immediately release the transcripts of this secret interview that was just conducted. Release the transcripts.
According to all reports, they gave Ghislaine Maxwell immunity-- proffered immunity for the purpose of her testimony; nothing she said in that interview could be used against her. So release the interview transcript to the American people, because Donald Trump's personal attorney should not be the one in the room conducting an interview with somebody who might have testimony that directly incriminates Donald Trump.
We have also seen just in recent days the question floated about whether the President of the United States would pardon Ghislaine Maxwell. When President Trump was asked about that possibility, he acknowledged he had that power.
As I said on this floor this morning, President Trump should immediately, today, announce that he will not use his pardon power to pardon Ghislaine Maxwell, who is serving a 20-year sentence for being a coconspirator in the abuse of young women and girls.
What is clearly happening in plain view is very dangerous to our system of justice.
What is clearly happening is the possibility that Ghislaine Maxwell and her lawyers are seeking a pardon in exchange for her giving the kind of testimony that would please President Trump.
One of the families of one of the victims, a family from Virginia who lost their loved one to suicide in April, has said: President Trump, do not pardon Ghislaine Maxwell.
And my understanding is that is clearly the sentiment of the other victims and their families. So the President should, today, announce that he will never do that.
Now, earlier this morning, Senator Merkley offered a resolution and asked unanimous consent on it to release the Epstein files. And we should do that immediately. That should be done immediately.
Senator Durbin and I wrote to the Attorney General last week urging her to do what she said she was going to do, which is release the files. But that was objected to on the Republican side.
And I see Senator Barrasso on the floor. And when he objected to Senator Merkley this morning, this is what he said. He said:
Well, first of all, I should clarify the fact that it was not Senate Republicans who included that provision in the appropriations bill to require that the Justice Department retain all the records with regard to the Epstein files and that they answer certain questions regarding those files and provide those responses to Congress. It wasn't Senate Republicans. In fact, it was my amendment in the Senate Appropriations Committee on that very issue.
I am glad it did pass unanimously, and momentarily I am going to ask for unanimous consent on the exact same provision that was adopted unanimously by the Senate Appropriations Committee, word for word.
Now, it is true that that bill did not move forward here in the Senate. And I am not going to go on for the hours that would be required to talk about the provisions in the Commerce-Science-Justice bill. Suffice it to say that there was another issue that we discussed for about an hour the other night regarding the fact that the Trump administration decided to seize, rescind, steal--whatever you want to call it--$1.4 billion that had been set aside for a secure FBI Headquarters, and they decided to snatch that money away from the selected site and put it to another site. And my view is that, wherever the FBI builds that new headquarters, it should be a secure site.
So that was a disagreement that led to the fact that that bill did not proceed at this time. We also know--and Senator Barrasso knows as well--that the appropriations bills take a very long time to wind their way through the Senate and the House, go through conference. And so, really, there is no reason to delay the provision in that bill that was unanimously adopted by the Senate Appropriations Committee and which Senator Barrasso said this morning Republicans included.
Well, if it was included in that bill, we should do it right now. We should get it done right now. And I am just going to, in closing, read this resolution because it is pretty straightforward. It says:
Pretty straightforward. Retain the records. Don't destroy any evidence.
It also called for a report.
Finally--
That is it. I wanted to read it to all the Members of the Senate so everyone knows exactly what they are voting for. It is straightforward: President Trump, Attorney General Bondi, do not destroy the evidence of the Epstein files, and within 60 days present this Senate with answers to questions regarding the case.
That is what this amendment does. It is exactly the same as the amendment that passed unanimously, with Republican and Democratic support, out of the Appropriations Committee, the same provision that Senator Barrasso this morning said was a Republican proposal. So I hope all the Republicans will join us in supporting this measure.
And with that, Mr. President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of my bill at the desk; further, that the bill be considered read three times and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
Mr. President, just briefly because, as I made clear, this was the very provision that Senator Barrasso this morning said that Republicans have supported, and he indicated that this was something that they wanted to see move forward.
Well, that was this morning, and now it is 6 this evening, and I don't know what changed. But the language is the same as what Senator Barrasso talked about this morning. It is the same as what the Senate Appropriations Committee passed on a bipartisan basis.
All of a sudden, when it comes time to actually get it done on the Senate floor--not just as part of an appropriations bill that is going to wind its way through this place for weeks or months--when it is time to actually get it done, Republicans are opposing the idea of transparency. I find that quite shameful.
I understand my colleague from Oregon Senator Merkley is interested in making some points and maybe asking some questions.
If I understood your presentation right, this is, word for word, exactly the same--this bill--as the amendment you proposed in the appropriations meeting.
Well, I can tell you I have read through it, and it looks like, to me, exactly the same. And we heard from our colleague from Wyoming that this was a Republican proposal, which you clarified that, actually, you introduced it but also observed that it was passed unanimously.
So I am confused. If my colleague from Wyoming liked it so much that he wanted to claim authorship and he proceeded to say, We liked it so much, we passed it unanimously, why is he objecting now to actually getting it passed?
Well, Senator Merkley, I didn't hear an explanation. I heard the objection. I have not heard the explanation for the objection, and I think it may be difficult to provide an explanation given the fact that the Senator from Wyoming was here on the floor of the Senate earlier, as you and I have both pointed out, extolling the virtues of this amendment and, in fact, partially taking credit for it, saying Republicans supported this and wanted it.
But, apparently, that was this morning, and now is now. And I suspect it is because when it was included in the appropriations bill, it was included in a vehicle that, as we have said, will wind its way through a long road to this process. Who knows how many people will try to take it out behind closed doors in conference.
That is why we have an opportunity right now, in the light of day, here in the U.S. Senate, to actually pass this and send it off to the House immediately. And if they passed it, it could go to the President's desk.
This seems extremely--well--minimal. We are preserving the records. Earlier, we asked for a vote on a bill that would be a complete disclosure because we believe that disclosure is merited given a set of extraordinary circumstances--extraordinary circumstances like President Trump dangling a potential pardon in front of Ms. Maxwell, extraordinary circumstances like the FBI itself redacting Trump's name from documents, extraordinary circumstances like Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanch going and personally interviewing Ms. Maxwell and not taking along the lawyers who were experts in this case, and then, just shortly after, she was transferred to a minimum security prison in Texas--in other words, rewarded in a powerful way. There is a big difference between a regular prison and a minimum security prison.
So we wanted disclosure, and I think America wants disclosure because they want to see people held accountable who have perpetrated crimes-- rape--against young girls. And yet all you are asking for is to preserve the information, that it not be deleted or put into a shredder or put into a wood chipper. Is that right? Is that what the Senator is asking for?
It could not be clearer. The amendment does ask for a report on other very relevant information regarding the Epstein case.
But to your fundamental point here, this is simply a directive not to destroy evidence that could be in the Epstein files.
As I said, we just learned, at least within the last 48 hours, that somewhere along the road, the FBI had redacted Donald Trump's name from the Epstein files. So we know it is in there, and we know that at some point in time, it was redacted. We want to make sure these records are not destroyed.
If I turn the clock back to that Appropriations Committee hearing where you presented your amendment and I was present, was that not voted out of committee on a voice vote?
So the Republicans in committee said we support the idea, but let's do it by voice vote because we don't want to have our names recorded, yea or nay; is that correct?
Again, I cannot, Senator, read the mind of any of our colleagues. It was a voice vote, but of course the objection we are seeing here on the floor of the Senate today indicates that our Republican colleagues do not want to go on record and vote, when it comes right down to it, on this proposal, making sure the records are not destroyed.
So even though it was passed out of committee by voice vote, and you offer a proposal simply to keep the records intact--which I must say, should never have to be
I mean, I am confused. Don't all of us believe that when there is evidence related to a crime, it should not be put into a shredder or a wood chipper?
It is a very fair question. And as I indicated, we didn't get an explanation for the objection. We had the objection made and no further comment from our colleagues on the Republican side.
I do think it is important that we underscore the fact for our colleagues and anybody listening that this amendment is very straightforward: Don't destroy evidence. It does also require, within 60 days, that a report be provided that provides certain relevant information regarding the Epstein case, and I am not sure why anybody would not want that information to be presented either.
I mean, this is like--oppose an effort to save the records and don't void the evidence and also voting against the idea of the Attorney General providing the U.S. Senate with answers to some fundamental questions.
Again, as we discussed this morning, the fastest and most complete way of doing it would have been to support the Senator from Oregon's motion this morning--UC request this morning. Just release all the files, right? That is what should be done. We should release the files, and we should do it now.
You don't even have to have a vote in the House to do that. The Attorney General could do what she said she was going to do and just release them on her own. That is what many of us have called for. That is what the Senator's motion this morning was all about.
But my goodness, you should be releasing them. But for goodness' sake, why not at least send a directive saying, ``Don't destroy the evidence''?
Well, I appreciate my colleague from Maryland bringing this forward. It seems like the absolute minimum we should do now is protect the evidence for the future. Certainly, it should be released, as both of us have spoken to.
I really appreciate my colleague from California who brought his legal expertise, along with our colleague from Rhode Island who put out how extraordinary it is that a Deputy Attorney General would go and sit in a prison interviewing a key witness to criminal activity and that magically, within hours thereafter, she is transferred to minimum security, and the President starts talking about the possibility of a pardon.
Americans, this is just stinking to high heaven. I will repeat the point I made earlier today. No one should be above the law. No powerful man should be able to rape young girls and be protected by friends in high places or by legions of lawyers or any other circumstances. Let the rule of law come forward in full force to hold those who have committed egregious crimes be held accountable.
Mr. President, I could not agree more. Our message is simple: Release the damn Epstein files, and for God's sake, don't try to destroy the evidence while we wait for those files to be released.
One of the next two votes will be for Ms. Pirro, nomination for U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia. Ms. Pirro is a trailblazer. It is shameful for Democrats to oppose this trailblazing woman. Her qualifications speak for themselves. She graduated from law school in 1975, and began prosecuting domestic abuse cases at a time when very few other women did so. She was the first woman to serve as a judge in Westchester County Court. She was the first woman to serve as district attorney for that county. And she was the first woman to serve as president of the New York State District Attorneys' Association.
Her record is remarkable. She spent 27 years prosecuting criminals and another 3 as a judge. In those three decades, Ms. Pirro gained a reputation for fierce advocacy against domestic abuse and crimes against children.
In 1977, she helped create the Domestic Violence and Child Abuse Bureau in Westchester County, serving as its first-ever chief. She also created the Elder Abuse Bureau to prosecute crimes against elderly citizens.
In the 1990s, she stood up one of the first law enforcement sting operations against sexual predators on the internet. Her reputation was so widely known that online predators referred to suspected police officers in the internet chat rooms as ``Pirro's Boys.''
Today, many Americans know her as Judge Jeanine, and she is beloved for her straight talk and witty commentary.
You may hear my Democratic colleagues criticize Ms. Pirro for some of her colorful remarks during her time as a TV personality. Yes, she has a larger-than-life personality, but she has decades of distinguished record as a prosecutor and judge.
DC is fortunate that the President nominated her to serve as its U.S. attorney. Her job in the interim role where she is stationed now has been heralded. She boosted morale. She has the support of the DC Police Union and the National Fraternal Order of Police.
I look forward to supporting her nomination and urge my colleagues to do the same.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego) and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Welch) are necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 52, nays 44, as follows:
The nomination was confirmed.
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.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the mandatory for quorum under rule XXII has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the nomination of Jeanine Pirro, of New York, to be United States Attorney for the District of Columbia for the term of four years, shall be brought to a close?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the nomination.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read the nomination of Jeanine Pirro, of New York, to be United States Attorney for the District of Columbia for the term of four years.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it adjourn to then convene for pro forma sessions only, with no business being conducted on the following dates and times: Tuesday, August 5 at 1 p.m.; Friday, August 8 at 1:05 p.m.; Tuesday, August 12 at 8 a.m.; Friday, August 15 at 10:15 a.m.; Tuesday, August 19 at 10 a.m.; Friday, August 22 at 9 a.m.; Tuesday, August 26 at noon; and Friday, August 29 at 7 a.m.; further, that when the Senate adjourns on Friday, August 29, it stand adjourned until 3 p.m. on Tuesday, September 2, that following the prayer and pledge, the morning hour be deemed expired, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate resume the motion to proceed to Calendar No. 115, S. 2296; finally, notwithstanding rule XXII, the cloture motion filed on Saturday, August 2 ripen at 5:30 p.m.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that the following disposition of the Molinaro nomination and the recognition of the majority leader to dispense with wrapup items, including filing cloture on the MTP to NDAA, it stand adjourned under the previous order.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the votes going forward be 10 minutes in length and that people stay here so we can roll through them as quickly as possible.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, later today, the Senate will vote on the nomination of Jeanine Pirro to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. I urge my colleagues to examine this nominee's record and oppose her nomination.
I have heard some of my Republican colleagues claim that Senate Democrats are blocking U.S. attorney nominees in an unprecedented fashion. That is simply not true.
Two years ago, then-Senator Vance announced he would block all U.S. Attorney nominees in order to ``grind the [the Justice Department] to a halt.''
I went to the floor eight times seeking unanimous consent to quickly confirm the U.S. attorney nominees whom Senator Vance was blocking.
Senator Vance argued it was no problem to take rollcall votes on U.S. attorney nominees, stating that it is ``not too much to ask . . . to vote on cloture and vote on these nominees on the record.''
I have said time and again that there cannot be one set of rules for Republicans and one for Democrats. That said, I am willing to work with my Senate colleagues on a path forward.
However, President Trump is not making it easy to reach an agreement when he insists on installing MAGA loyalists as interim U.S. attorneys without Senate confirmation.
U.S. attorneys are supposed to be apolitical law enforcement officials focused on protecting public safety. But shortly after her interim appointment to the District of New Jersey, Alina Habba told a news outlet that she aimed to ``turn New Jersey red.''
And just last year, John Sarcone, the interim U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of New York said the Democratic Party is ``evil in my opinion.''
District of Nevada interim U.S. attorney Sigal Chattah has a long trail of extreme, hateful comments. To take just a few examples, she called a Black Member of Congress a ``hood rat''; called a Black woman prosecutor ``ghetto''; called a prominent Black entertainer a ``monkey''; and said that Nevada Attorney General Aaron Ford, who is Black, ``should be hanging from
Do these sound like apolitical prosecutors who are focused on keeping their communities safe? Notably, the White House has not even bothered to try working with home State Senators in each of these districts to find a consensus U.S. attorney candidates. Instead, the administration is trying to make an end-run around the Senate. This should be deeply troubling to all of us.
Which brings me to Ms. Pirro, the latest Trump loyalist nominated to be U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia. For decades, Ms. Pirro has demonstrated that she prioritizes her relationship with President Trump over almost everything else.
Ms. Pirro repeated falsehoods about the 2020 election to millions of viewers, compelling Fox News to pay nearly $800 million to settle defamation claims brought by Dominion Voting Systems. For example, Ms. Pirro falsely claimed that Dominion ``started in Venezuela with Cuban money'' and that the company had a software backdoor to flip votes.
She has called January 6 rioters ``hostages'' and complained about the 22-year sentence imposed on Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, arguing that he should not be subject to such a long prison term.
Notably, a judge found that Tarrio's actions led to ``two hundred men amped up for battle encircling the Capitol.'' After his release, Tarrio posted a video of himself stalking officers who defended the Capitol on January 6.
Ms. Pirro has argued that prosecutors handling January 6 cases should be criminally prosecuted themselves. And now she is nominated to lead the office where many of these prosecutors still work, if they haven't been fired by Emil Bove already.
When I met with her last month, I asked Ms. Pirro if she always accepted assignments given to her by supervisors when she was an assistant district attorney. Unsurprisingly, she said yes.
But when I asked her whether it was appropriate to terminate prosecutors for their work on January 6 prosecutions, she wouldn't answer. She also claimed that she hadn't fired anybody.
Yet since Ms. Pirro became the interim U.S. attorney, three career prosecutors in the U.S. Attorney's Office, including the leader of the Capitol Siege Section, were fired by DOJ. It is hard to believe that she had no knowledge of these terminations.
I am also concerned that Ms. Pirro continues to justify the Trump administration's unlawful actions.
Just days before she became the interim U.S. attorney, she argued that the administration could deport immigrants without due process, claiming that the Fifth Amendment ``says nothing about illegals, so cut the crap . . . .''
As Ms. Pirro knows full well, the Fifth Amendment applies to everyone present in the United States as it states that ``No person . . . shall . . . be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.''
Ms. Pirro has proven to be a willing accomplice in weaponizing the justice system to protect President Trump's allies and go after his enemies. I urge my colleagues to oppose this nomination.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. McConnell), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).
I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego) and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Welch) are necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 50, nays 45, as follows:
The nomination was confirmed.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the motion to reconsider is made and laid upon the table, and the President will be immediately notified of the Senate's actions.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The senior assistant legislative 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 the nomination of Luke Lindberg, of South Dakota, to be Under Secretary of Agriculture for Trade and Foreign Agricultural Affairs, shall be brought to a close?
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. McConnell), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).
Mr. President, on rollcall vote No. 493, I voted no. It was my intention to vote yea; therefore, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to change my vote since it will not change the outcome.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. McConnell), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott), and the Senator form Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).
Mr. President, on rollcall vote No. 494, I voted no. It was my intention to vote yea; therefore, I ask unanimous consent that I be permitted to change my vote since it will not change the outcome.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
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.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the cloture motions with respect to Hanson, Arrigo, Cairncross, Telle, and Molinaro nominations be withdrawn and the Senate vote on confirmation in the order listed.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. McConnell), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).
I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego) and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Welch) are necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 50, nays 45, as follows:
The nomination was confirmed.
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.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. McConnell), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).
I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), the Senator from Connecticut (Mr.
The result was announced--yeas 52, nays 42, as follows:
The nomination was confirmed.
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.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. McConnell), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).
I announce that the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Bennet), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Welch) are necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 59, nays 35, as follows:
The nomination was confirmed.
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.
Mr. President, I rise today to urge my colleagues to support the confirmation of my close friend and, for the past 4 years, my chief of staff, Mr. Adam Telle, who is President Trump's nominee to serve as Assistant Secretary of the Army for Civil Works. He has served as my chief of staff for the past 4 years, and in that time, he has become a trusted adviser, a leader on my team, and, frankly, a very good friend.
Adam has spent the past two decades serving on both ends of Pennsylvania Avenue and at all times serving this body here in the U.S. Senate, whether he was leading the Senate side of the leg affairs team at the White House or working right here for many of us. Adam is just the type of staffer that I think we want to see step into the executive branch into a leadership role, and he will serve as an inspiration to all of the staff that serve us so ably.
Adam is the son of a geologist, a man who knows how to make things work. He has a knack for that. He is a native of Northport, AL, and a graduate of Mississippi State University's Bagley College of Engineering. He is a brilliant mind.
He has excellent organizational skills--just what we want at the Corps of Engineers. If you think about it, the work of the Army Corps of Engineers affects millions of Americans--from navigation and flood control to water infrastructure and disaster response.
This work requires capable and responsible leadership, and Adam Telle is exactly that kind of leader, and I want to urge all of my colleagues to support Adam Telle for this position.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. McConnell), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).
Further, if present and voting: the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker) would have voted ``yea.''
I announce that the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Bennet), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Welch) are necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 72, nays 22, as follows:
The nomination was confirmed.
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 actions.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. McConnell), the Senator from South Carolina (Mr. Scott), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).
I announce that the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Bennet), the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), and the Senator from Vermont (Mr. Welch) are necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 71, nays 23, as follows:
The nomination was confirmed.
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 actions.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to 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.
Mr. President, I was absent on Saturday, August 2, 2025, for rollcall vote no. 485. Had I been present, I would have voted nay on the motion to invoke cloture on Executive Calendar No. 186, Andrew Puzder, of Tennessee, to be Representative of the United States of America to the European Union.
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. 369) was agreed to.
The preamble was agreed to.
(The resolution, with its preamble, is printed in today's Record under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that 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. 370) was agreed to.
The preamble was agreed to.
(The resolution, with its preamble, is printed in today's Record under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')
I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The bill (S. 2682) was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading, was read the third time, and passed as follows:
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent the Committee on Veterans' Affairs be discharged from further consideration of H.R. 2170, 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.
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 (H.R. 2170) was ordered to a third reading, was read the third time, and passed.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Foreign Relations be discharged from further consideration of S. 1155 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.
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. 1155) was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading, was read the third time, and passed, as follows:
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 (H.R. 2808) was ordered to a third reading, was read the third time, and passed.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the passage of H.R. 3944, the Secretary of the Senate be authorized to make changes necessary to make sure each adopted amendment is incorporated in the text of the bill as amended.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding the upcoming adjournment of the Senate, the President of the Senate, the President pro tempore, and the majority and minority leaders be authorized to make appointments to commissions, committees, boards, conferences, or interparliamentary conferences authorized by law, by concurrent action of the two Houses, or by order of the Senate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
