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16<bullet> TRIBUTE TO BRITTANY CLARK Mr. WICKER. Mr. President, in January, Mississippi endured a historically catastrophic ice storm. At the height of the bad weather, nearly 90 percent of north...
28Senate Resolution 725: Congratulating the University of Oklahoma Women's Gymnastics Team for Winning the 2026 National Collegiate Athletic Association Championship, the Eighth National Title In...
29Senate Resolution 726: Expressing Support for the Designation of May 5, 2026, as "National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls"
Eighteen bills and two resolutions were introduced, as follows: S. 4488-4505, and S. Res. 725-726.
Pages S2236-37
Measures Passed
Authorizing the use of the Capitol Grounds: Senate agreed to H. Con. Res. 73, authorizing the use of the Capitol Grounds for the National Peace Officers' Memorial Service and the National Honor Guard and Pipe Band Exhibition.
Page S2241
Congratulating the University of Oklahoma women's gymnastics team
Senate agreed to S. Res. 725, congratulating the University of Oklahoma women's gymnastics team for winning the 2026 National Collegiate Athletic Association Championship, the eighth national title in program history.
Page S2241
National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls
Senate agreed to S. Res. 726, expressing support for the designation of May 5, 2026, as ``National Day of Awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls''.
Page S2241
S.J. Res. 163 and S. Res. 526: Agreement
A unanimous-consent agreement was reached providing that if Senator Merkley, or his designee, makes a motion to discharge S.J. Res. 163, to direct the removal of United States Armed Forces from hostilities within or against the Islamic Republic of Iran that have not been authorized by Congress, Senate vote on the motion to discharge at 11:30 a.m., on Wednesday, May 13, 2026; that following disposition of S.J. Res. 163, notwithstanding Rule XXII, Senate vote on the motion to invoke cloture with respect to S. Res. 526, withholding the pay of Senators if a Government shutdown occurs; and that if cloture is invoked on S. Res. 526, all post-cloture time be expired and Senate vote on adoption of the motion to proceed at a time to be determined by the Majority Leader, in consultation with the Democratic Leader, no earlier than Thursday, May 14, 2026.
Page S2235
Message from the President
Senate received the following message from the President of the United States: Transmitting, pursuant to law, a report of the continuation of the national emergency that was originally declared in Executive Order 13873 of May 15, 2019, with respect to securing the information and communications technology and services supply chain; which was referred to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs. (PM-60)
Pages S2234-35
Warsh Nomination: Agreement
Senate resumed consideration of the nomination of Kevin Warsh, of Florida, to be Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for a term of four years.
Pages S2207-08, S2208-23
During consideration of this nomination today, Senate also took the following action
By 51 yeas to 45 nays (Vote No. EX. 117), Senate agreed to the motion to close further debate on the nomination.
Page S2213
A unanimous-consent agreement was reached providing that notwithstanding Rule XXII, the post-cloture time with respect to the nomination be expired and Senate vote on confirmation of the nomination at 2 p.m., on Wednesday, May 13, 2026.
Page S2223
En Bloc Nominations: Cloture
Senate began consideration of the en bloc nominations, provided under the provisions of S. Res. 690 (119th Congress).
Page S2224
A motion was entered to close further debate on the en bloc nominations, provided under the provisions of S. Res. 690 (119th Congress), and, in accordance with the provisions of Rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, a vote on cloture will occur on Thursday, May 14, 2026.
Page S2224
Prior to the consideration of these en bloc nominations, Senate took the following action
Senate agreed to the motion to proceed to Legislative Session.
Page S2224
Senate agreed to the motion to proceed to Executive Session to consider the en bloc nominations, provided under the provisions of S. Res. 690 (119th Congress).
Page S2224
Nominations Confirmed
Senate confirmed the following nominations: By 51 yeas to 45 nays (Vote No. EX. 116), Kevin Warsh, of Florida, to be a Member of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for a term of fourteen years from February 1, 2026.
Pages S2207-13
3 Air Force nominations in the rank of general. 31 Army nominations in the rank of general. 6 Marine Corps nominations in the rank of general. 1 Navy nomination in the rank of admiral. Routine lists in the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, and Navy.
Pages S2224, S2248
Nominations Received
Senate received the following nominations: Angela Veronica Colmenero, of Texas, to be United States District Judge for the Southern District of Texas. Daniel Desmond Domenico, of Colorado, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Tenth Circuit. Michael C. Martin, of Michigan, to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Michigan. Kasdin Miller Mitchell, of Texas, to be United States District Judge for the Northern District of Texas. Antonio M. Pozos, of Pennsylvania, to be United States District Judge for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania. Daniel Mack Traynor, of North Dakota, to be United States Circuit Judge for the Eighth Circuit. Routine lists in the Air Force, Army, and Navy.
Pages S2224, S2241-48
Statements on Introduced Bills/Resolutions:
Pages S2239-41
Record Votes
Two record votes were taken today. (Total--117)
Pages S2212-13
Adjournment
Senate convened at 10 a.m. and adjourned at 6:28 p.m., until 10 a.m. on Wednesday, May 13, 2026. (For Senate's program, see the remarks of the Acting Majority Leader in today's Record on page S2241.)
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: 45 of 113 spoken turns were found. Turns without a time are still listed; they just can't seek.
Mr. President, last week, I held 12 Q&As in 12 different counties during our Senate recess. Not in every county, but in some counties, a question like this comes up: What are you going to do about the national debt?
I usually say to the person asking the question: You could have asked me an easier question.
So I come to the floor to speak to an announcement that was made last week--an announcement that ought to scare all Americans but particularly those of us in the Congress of the United States--and it was not a surprise announcement. The United States recently eclipsed a fiscal milestone. At the end of March, the Nation's publicly held debt surpassed the value of all goods and services produced in our economy. Another way to say that is that our national debt as a percentage of our gross national product was more than 100 percent.
Outside of a momentary blip during the pandemic, the Nation hasn't exceeded this mark since 1946. Passing this threshold should be a wake- up call to Congress to get the Nation's fiscal house in order. In 1946, debt relative to the economy hit its peak and precipitously declined thereafter thanks to the end of World War II. Today, it is just the opposite. Our debt is expected to grow faster than the economy indefinitely, and it ought to be a wake-up call to all of us in the Congress of the United States. In fact, interest on the debt alone is costing American taxpayers $1 trillion annually, and within 10 years, interest costs will top $2 trillion a year.
The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office that does this scoring reminds us with every budget update that this fiscal path is unsustainable.
Economist Herb Stein famously quipped:
Our debt cannot grow faster than the economy forever. It eventually will stop. The question is, When and how?
We have this choice as Members of Congress representing the people of this country that are very concerned about this situation: We can either work together today to gradually turn the corner or wait until there is a crisis where draconian austerity measures are forced upon us by the national creditors. For the good of the Nation, we must embrace the former option.
I yield the floor.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant executive clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, last week was Small Business Week, and I was glad to be able to host a business roundtable, last Monday, in Aberdeen, SD, and hear directly from small business owners in my State. I was also able to visit the Business and Health
Small Business Week is an important celebration, but the impact that small businesses have is felt literally every day of the year. Nearly half of Americans in the private sector work for a small business. Small businesses are responsible for a majority of the new jobs in this country, and a lot of Americans' first jobs were at a small business, mine included.
There is nothing small about the impact that small businesses have in our country, and Republicans know that any path to economic strength runs through small businesses. That is why they were a key focus of the tax relief we delivered in the Working Families Tax Cuts last year. This landmark bill locked in the lower small business tax rates that Republicans enacted in 2017, giving them certainty to plan for the future. It also made the 199A small business deduction permanent.
I have heard positive feedback on 199A across industries in my State. In South Dakota, an agriculture cooperative estimates the impact of this one policy at over $100 million since 2017, and that money has been able to be passed on to the farmers who are members of that co-op. I am sure that those farmers, like so many small businesses across the country, are relieved that 199A is here to stay.
Mr. President, 199A is just one of the policies in the Working Families Tax Cuts that help free up money so small businesses can invest in their operations and in their employees. Another is the 100- percent bonus depreciation, which is also now a permanent feature of the Tax Code. Bonus depreciation allows business owners to deduct the full cost of a new piece of equipment the year they start using it, rather than spreading that deduction out piecemeal over several years.
Say you are a farmer, and you need to replace your combine, or you are a manufacturer who needs to upgrade your machinery, or you are a plumber who needs a new truck. Those are all big expenses, especially for a small--maybe even, in some cases, a one-person--operation. So bonus depreciation helps small businesses take on that big expense by allowing them to deduct the entire thing in that 1 year.
And the impact will be significant. In fact, a car dealership in my State was able to build an addition and hire 10 more people because of bonus depreciation.
A lot of our small businesses and farms and ranches in South Dakota are family-run operations. Many of them have been in the family for generations, and the plan is to keep them--keep them--in the family for generations to come. Unfortunately, the death tax has too often threatened these plans. When one generation passes the business on to the next, the death tax can take a big bite out of it. It can be devastating, forcing families to sell all or part of their family business, farm, or ranch just to satisfy a big tax bill, not to mention the costly estate planning expenses that many families incur to keep their businesses from being ruined by a death tax bill.
I am very proud that the Working Families Tax Cuts protects a lot more family businesses from this unfair tax. In this bill, Republicans permanently raised the exemption threshold on the death tax, and a lot of small business owners, farmers, and ranchers have breathed a sigh of relief that they won't have to worry about losing their livelihoods when they lose a loved one.
Last week was Small Business Week. It was also Travel and Tourism Week. In South Dakota, tourism is one of our leading industries. Last year, 15 million people visited the Mount Rushmore State. They came to see that iconic monument, to see the South Dakota Badlands and the bison herds at Custer State Park. Some came for conferences in Sioux Falls, others for our legendary pheasant hunting.
All told, last year, tourism brought $5 billion to South Dakota's economy, and I have to think that a lot of that money was spent at our State's small businesses: at our restaurants, coffee shops, and breweries; with tour operators, hunting guides, and outfitters, and many more.
Like the other small businesses in our State, businesses in the tourism industry are benefiting from tax relief in the Working Families Tax Cuts: lower small business tax rates, investment incentives, and the 199A small business deduction.
Some of the most positive feedback I have heard from small business owners about the Working Families Tax Cuts is how much this bill helps their employees. The ``no tax on tips'' and ``no tax on overtime'' provisions in this bill are especially--especially--game-changing for folks in hospitality and tourism. That includes waiters and bartenders, of course. It also includes people who work as tour guides, entertainers, and drivers.
Many Americans look forward to the summer for a few days away with their families. For those who work in hospitality and tourism, summer means more customers and more money, and the Working Families Tax Cuts ensures that more of the money they earn stays in their pockets.
Democrats may try to claim the Working Families Tax Cuts was about billionaires, but the American people know the truth. Farmers, ranchers, and small business owners know it is helping them free up money to meet their expenses and invest in their operations and in their employees, and hard-working Americans can see that the Working Families Tax Cuts lets them keep more of their hard-earned money. We call it the Working Families Tax Cuts for a reason, and I am proud to report that working families are benefiting.
Mr. President, first, on inflation and the inflation ballroom, inflation is skyrocketing at the fastest pace in 3 years. The American people are hurting, and Donald Trump is to blame. Inflation rose to 3.8 percent in April because of Donald Trump's costly tariffs, his disastrous war with Iran, and failed economic agenda.
So much for Trump's promise to bring down costs on day one--3.8 percent, the highest in 3 years. And, again, it is all because of Trump's tariffs, his war with Iran, his failed economic agenda.
The American people are furious about how Donald Trump and his MAGA majorities in Congress have turned a blind eye to the No. 1 issue facing the American people: their rising costs.
A CNN poll this morning found that 77 percent of Americans say that Trump's policies have raised costs in their community, and that includes a majority of Republicans. Seventy-seven percent, including a majority of Republicans, blame Trump for their higher costs. Only 30 percent of Americans approve of his handling of the economy. That is a record low.
Among the most common words the poll's respondents used to describe their economic situation right now were: uncertainty, stress, dread.
Donald Trump, are you hearing that? The American people look at your economic policies and describe them as filled with uncertainty, fill them with stress, fill them with dread. That is a pretty strong word.
Instead of listening to the American people, Donald Trump and the GOP put forward a reconciliation bill that will
It seems all the President is concerned with these days are vanity projects, not things that make the American people's lives better.
Democrats will fight Republicans' ballroom bill tooth and nail. And Republicans here in the Senate should do the same, if they have any sense.
Can you believe it? You guys are walking off a cliff. Funding a billion-dollar ballroom when people are hurting? It makes no sense. No sense at all.
Mr. President, I come to the floor today because all around the country, people understand it takes far too long to build something in America. It has to do with permitting.
Americans want to build. We are ready to build. People are ready to finance it. The problem is, to build something in America today, it is costly, it is complex, and there is a cumbersome permitting process. In America, amazingly, you need to get permission from the government to build just about anything.
Now, I represent Wyoming. It is an energy State. It is America's energy breadbasket. We have world-class coal. We have abundant supplies of oil and natural gas. We have the richest uranium deposits in the world. And all of these affordable, available, and reliable forms of American energy are ready to power our country, not just now but for generations to come.
We have world-class energy workers in Wyoming, as you do in your home State of Oklahoma, and we do all across the country. These people are ready to do the job. The Federal permitting process is standing in their way.
The Federal permitting process is fundamentally broken. Permitting has become burdened by bureaucracy and weaponized by litigation, and we have a system that will not let us get to work. American energy, mining, roads, bridges, and buildings--all of them are caught in the crosshairs of a culture of saying no.
Energy projects have been especially delayed by the bureaucrats and the trial lawyers. These are individuals who have never built a thing. Yet they believe they deserve veto power over those who do.
Meanwhile, energy demand in America is rising dramatically. The new energy demand across America is adding up like adding an entire new California to the grid. Those are the needs. Every permitting delay costs our economy and our Nation. Delays mean higher utility bills. Delays mean paychecks are lost, money doesn't get earned. Delays mean fewer investments in our communities. This is all unacceptable.
We need to produce more American energy, and we need to produce more in order to lower costs. The best way to spur the government to issue permits is to impose strict deadlines and to stop these endless lawsuits. It seems that builders need a clear yes or no. And once approved, they need certainty that their permits will endure. That has been a real problem.
There is a law called NEPA. It stands for the National Environmental Policy Act. It is the biggest obstacle. NEPA essentially halts any and all development in its tracks. NEPA was enacted in 1970, and it required costly and sprawling environmental reviews.
America was built by men and women of daring. Now they face delays.
Our forefathers laid steel across mountains, they poured concrete into canyons, and they built towering skyscrapers that still inspire the world. Americans forged our Nation's future with speed and with purpose.
We built the Empire State Building in a little over a year. We built the Hoover Dam in just 5 years. We built the 2000-mile Transcontinental Railroad in just 6 years. That was a long time ago. You could get things done.
Today, a single environmental review with NEPA can take 4 years or longer just to get the review done. That means you can't start construction without spending at least 4 years in the penalty box.
It is embarrassing that it takes so long to approve everyday projects today, much longer than it took to build the wonders of the modern world.
Right now, $1.5 trillion in critical infrastructure is trapped. It is trapped in the desks of unelected, unaccountable, heavyhanded bureaucrats. The money can't move, and Americans pay for every year a project sits on those desks.
To make matters worse, NEPA is also the most litigated of all Federal environmental laws. If you want to do something, you are going to get sued. On average, over 100 lawsuits related to NEPA are filed every year. Malicious lawsuits filed by radical environmental activists lead to higher costs, more delays, no progress. Too many prefer legal molasses to affordable oil and gas.
Just last year, the Supreme Court voted unanimously to limit the scope of NEPA in terms of all these environmental reviews, which have grown dramatically. Justice Kavanaugh wrote in the majority opinion that NEPA has become ``a blunt and haphazard tool employed by project opponents . . . to try to stop or at least slow down new infrastructure or construction projects.''
The Supreme Court's unanimous opinion is right. NEPA was once called the ``environmental Magna Carta.'' Today, it is a regulatory Berlin Wall.
Since day one, President Trump has prioritized rolling back burdensome regulations. The President has accelerated the permitting process--rightly so. Americans are already seeing the results. We are producing a record amount of energy. But we can do more, and we must do more, and we must do it quickly.
Now is the time for Congress to act. I am soon going to introduce legislation to break the bottlenecks in Federal permitting. This is the No. 1 way to boost American energy and mineral dominance, and to lower prices, lower costs, and lower what has to come out of people's pockets.
My legislation will encourage access to oil and gas resources on Federal lands and offshore. It will also enact commonsense judicial reforms to NEPA.
The Senate has a good start on the permitting process. Senator Manchin and I introduced the Energy Permitting Reform Act of 2024. We did that when we were at the Energy Committee together. This was bipartisan legislation designed to fix the Nation's permitting process and the rules. It was carefully negotiated over the course of an entire year, and it earned strong bipartisan support. It passed our Energy and Natural Resources Committee 15 to 4.
Today, Senator Shelley Moore Capito of West Virginia and Senator Mike Lee of Utah are taking the lead to advance commonsense permitting reform using this model as a background. Senator Capito chairs the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. Senator Lee chairs the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources. They are the key committees for permitting reform. Senator Capito and Senator Lee are doing exemplary work. It is time for all Senators to find common ground on permitting.
Americans still know how to build. We build the best in the world, and we want to build. We are a nation of builders, and we are not a nation of waiters.
That is where we are. We need to get this done, and it is time for America's permitting process to get out of the way.
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, we are blessed to live in a nation that has withstood the test of time for 250 years. This country has had its fair share of problems, but we have been able to overcome and get by together, at the end of the day, because we believe in America and what it stands for.
America was founded on a core set of values that have persisted through the years and have given hope to so many who were seeking a better life. American values are rooted in liberty, equality, opportunity, self-governance, and the rule of law.
Liberty means freedom--freedom from tyranny, whether it is political, religious, or economic. Since our founding, individual freedoms have been the foundation of American society. You are free to choose what you believe, how you worship, what work you pursue, and how you build a life for yourself.
Equality means that, in this country, we don't have a caste system. We don't tell people they are stuck where they are born. We believe all men are created equal, and everyone has the opportunity to succeed, regardless of their background--an opportunity that makes this country very special.
You know, I used to tell my players all the time: This country owes you nothing but an opportunity to achieve what you want to achieve.
Now, you might get knocked to the ground and not make it to that point as soon as you would like, but the country that you love so much--that we all love so much--gives that chance to get back up and go again.
You know, we are the only country that does that, out of 200 in the world we live in.
What you decide to do with that opportunity, after you achieve it, is up to you. That is the American dream. That is what this country is about--the belief that, if you are willing to work hard, you can build a better life. The American dream is unique to this country alone.
For centuries now, people have fled dictatorships, failed governments, and oppression because they knew that dream was real.
Then there is the rule of law--the cornerstone for why our country is so great. No one is above the law--not citizen, not newcomer, not even the government itself. In America, if you live here, you are expected to follow the law, period.
Those are the values that have made this country great. Those are the values that drew generations of immigrants to our shores over 250 years. Sadly--sadly--today, we are not seeing immigrants with the same mentality moving to this country.
For most of our history, people have come here to become Americans. They came here to assimilate. They worked hard, they learned, they followed the law, and they contributed. That is what this country is all about.
Today, we are seeing large numbers--and I mean large numbers--of people coming to this country with no intention of assimilating into our culture or our way of life. People from third-world hellholes are being let into this country who have no desire to adapt to our way of life. They not only refuse to work, but they also choose to take advantage of America's welfare system, forcing hard-working Americans to bankroll their lives.
The question must be asked, why are we letting these people who don't share our values and refuse to assimilate--why are we letting them into our country?
The word ``assimilate'' is often treated with suspicion because it is often related to racism. But assimilation has absolutely nothing to do with race; it is about values. ``Assimilation'' doesn't mean you abandon your heritage or your faith or forget where you are from; it is about embracing a new, shared belief system.
People that came here in the past understood this. Examples would be Italian Americans, Greek Americans, German Americans who brought elements of their heritage with them, but
So why are we letting people into this country that don't want to assimilate? Why are we doing that? Immigration is a privilege; it is not an entitlement. This country doesn't owe anyone entry. We don't owe anybody. And somewhere along the way, we lost the ability to discern who we choose to welcome into our great country. We lost it somewhere. But it doesn't take a rocket scientist to solve this problem. It really doesn't.
Those who come to this country that want to assimilate, embrace this Nation's core set of values, and contribute to our society should be welcomed with open arms because we are all descendants of immigrants who loved this country. We should accept the best and the brightest, those who are hard workers, intelligent, with skill sets who can provide a quality service to their communities, and people who understand and share the core American values that we all have.
But the problem is that for whatever reason, Western civilization has been guilt-tripped into accepting anyone who wants to come here. That is wrong. That is not what this country was built on.
The Biden and Obama administrations brought in millions of immigrants who have done nothing to make the United States a better place to live--zero. Instead, they have been like leeches, taking advantage of the welfare system and are treating hard-working American taxpayers as their personal ATM machine.
In the last two decades, we have seen a dramatic--I mean, a dramatic--transformation in our society. It has changed and not in a good way. Every time you turn on the news today, you hear about immigrants robbing stores, killing Americans, sexually assaulting and raping women, protesting, and carrying their home country flags instead of the American flag. What is up with this? And where are these immigrants coming from who are committing most of these crimes? Well, you guessed it--from third world countries.
These aren't the kind of people we should be letting into the greatest country on the face of the Earth. It is a privilege, not a right, to live in the United States of America--a privilege--but unfortunately, our immigration system is absolutely broken.
How many more rapes, assaults, murders, stories of these people scamming American taxpayers out of their money do we need to hear before we say enough is enough?
Our immigration system is broken, but no one wants to fix it--nobody in this building or on the other end of this building. Yet, when attempts are made to fix it, Washington resists.
Take temporary protected status for instance. The U.S. House of Representatives a few weeks ago recently voted to extend temporary protected status for roughly 250,000 Haitians. When the Trump administration announced that they were going to terminate the temporary protected status of Haitians, the DC swamp had an absolute meltdown.
You can't do that. These will be voters for us.
As usual, the swamp came out in full force to ensure that these people remained on American soil, putting American taxpayers in harm's way.
According to a House Judiciary Committee report, 91 percent of Haitians with temporary protected status--91 percent--entered the United States illegally and over 50 percent of them are in households that are on at least one welfare program--53 percent. Mind-boggling.
Temporary protected status was never--was never--supposed to be a permanent amnesty program. It was supposed to help people temporarily, give them time to get back on their feet. That is not what is happening. Programs meant to be temporary are becoming permanent right in front of our eyes, and we are not doing anything about it. Policies meant to be limited are being expanded. The American taxpayers are left out in the cold, and the American people are paying every single dime for this huge amnesty bill--billions.
Let me be clear about something: America, this country, is a Christian nation. We are called to love our neighbor and to minister to the poor. That is our job. But we have enough Americans in this country who are in poverty for us to look after and barely enough money to take care of them. We can't take care of all the poor people in the world, folks. That can't happen. For us to remain a society that is free, with values, we have to take care of our own first, and then we take care of other people.
Another problem we are having is immigrants who come here and bring their radical beliefs with them. I have talked to this on the floor many times in the last few months. These people openly chant ``Death to America.'' Yet we allow them to live here among us. You can't make it up.
Middle Easterners who are predominantly Muslim come here, take advantage of our welfare system, which most do, and they refuse to assimilate. Their entire goal is to turn this country into a Muslim country and to be governed by the Islamic cult and Sharia law.
Now, there are good Muslims who come to this country, who embrace the values that we have, contribute to society, don't follow Sharia law, and they are 100 percent welcome to be here. This is not about one group; this is about a group of people that want to change our country and want to kill every American in this country.
The Center for Immigration Studies published a report stating that more than half of the noncitizen households from the Middle East use at least one major welfare program. Think about that. We are having to fund most of these people that are coming here.
Islamists aren't coming here looking for a better life. That is a true fallacy. They are coming here to impose their radical beliefs on us and to mooch off the American taxpayers. ``Game, set, match.'' That is exactly why they are here. They are coming to impose everything they possibly can on the United States of America, get by with it, and tear us down at the same time. They have no interest in adapting to American national identity. They want to change the national identity to mirror their death cult Islamic beliefs. You heard that. They are here to kill us all. They believe that.
Just look at what is happening in Europe. In Europe, they stopped enforcing their own laws. Europe stopped forcing immigrants to adapt to their way of life, and now they are dealing with the consequences.
We are about 10 years behind Europe. Europe is gone. They are being run by a different cult. They have lost all their values. They have lost everything that was built in Europe and in a lot of these other European countries because they closed their eyes, and they thought they were doing the right thing. And politicians got them in trouble.
We should be learning from that, not repeating it.
Americans, open your eyes. Look what is happening. We are losing. We are losing our country as we know it to people that want to destroy us.
But this issue doesn't just affect today; it affects us today and future generations.
Mass migration is destroying our educational system. Listen to me--it is destroying it. Go to any high school, and I can show you examples. More and more American kids are entering the classroom hearing multiple languages being spoken around them every day and having a difficult time making friends because they are now the minority in the schools. We are having enough problems with our education system, and our kids can't understand the language the other people are speaking. That goes with our higher education, which has teachers and professors coming from other countries that can't speak English that are teaching our kids in higher education, and our kids are paying a fortune to go to these 4-year schools.
Enough is enough. This is an English language country, and that is how we speak. That is how we communicate.
Approximately 5 million students in U.S. public schools are classified as English learners. Five million can't speak English in our public schools across our country. It is destroying us. That is 10 to 11 percent of our K-through-12 population and growing every day, and we have our eyes closed.
Our kids already have enough problems. Many of our kids were set back
So now our kids are being left behind in the classroom because school resources are being reallocated for kids that come from other countries. We need to be spending money on our kids to give them better lives. We are leaving our kids behind, and our country will not survive without teaching and developing the next generation.
The purpose of our immigration system should be to benefit hard- working American taxpayers. Do you think mass immigration is benefiting this country? Absolutely not. There is not one benefit to it. It is the exact opposite of what we should be doing.
You know, mass immigration is a leech that is slowly bleeding this country dry, and politicians and the people across our country better open their eyes. There has been a lot of talk over the past few years about deportation, and I am 100 percent for what President Trump is doing. They have to go home. We can't afford it. The American taxpayers--they need help. We can't help people if we can't help ourselves.
We also need to have a national conversation about who we want in this country in the first place. The American taxpayer deserves that right to say who is here and who is not. Politicians are taking credit for letting all these people in. They need to be taking credit for destroying this country.
We need to be asking ourselves, what is our national identity? Many of our immigration laws were made decades ago.
They were made in a different time. That is why tomorrow I will be introducing the Assimilation Act. My bill is simple.
It says America has a right to set immigration policy in the national interest. It says our systems should favor people who will work hard, contribute, support themselves, and strengthen the United States of America. It says we should move away from chain migration policies and away from visa lottery systems that treat every entry into the United States like a raffle drawing.
What an embarrassment.
It says legal immigration should place higher value on skill, merit, economic contributions, and the ability to succeed without becoming dependent on the American taxpayers. It says temporary work programs should serve the American economy, not undercut the American work. It says we should take visa overstays seriously, address parole abuse, and restore credibility to the rule of law.
And it says that citizens in the United States should, once again, reflect commitment, character, and real civic integration.
Now, none of this means America shuts the door. America has always been a nation that can strengthen immigration--history proves that. But it works only when our borders are enforced, the rule of law is followed, and when those who desire to come here build a better life and are expected to assimilate into American culture, not destroy our culture.
Without those conditions, the logic of immigration begins to change. Obama and Biden were hell-bent on changing the immigration landscape of this country. They were letting them in right and left.
A nation can't survive, folks--a nation can't survive--and won't survive when mass migration occurs and there isn't any expectation of assimilation. It is never talked about.
Come on in. Do whatever you want. Preach whatever you want. Teach whatever you want. Destroy whatever you want. We are not going to watch you.
We better open our eyes. There is no obligation for immigrants to commit to participate in the way Americans live. If we don't do that, we will lose our country. We have to start pushing assimilation.
So in that case, I believe we are seeing this right now in the United States. Immigration is no longer a good thing for our society. It is not doing us one bit of good. It is destroying the American dream. It is destroying our generation and the generations to come.
There is a reason why we stopped all immigration in the 1920s. Did you know that? We stopped it all for the same reasons. We had to get back on our feet. Folks, we are $39 trillion in debt and rising. We can't afford these people that can't help themselves.
Mass migration without assimilation will erase our country's identity. We are turning into Europe and in serious danger of losing the core of who we are.
I want to be clear about this. The United States has zero obligation to roll out the red carpet for third-world countries around the world-- zero. We are here to help America first. We have enough of our own problems without taking up everybody else's.
America is a nation built on shared values. People from all walks of life could come here and live peacefully because they understood what being an American meant. Do they know that today? That is what has always made it exceptional because people know what America is about, our core principles. But in a country as diverse as ours, it can only function properly when we accept the duties of citizenship and our Constitution.
Folks, the United States is at a crossroads. We are at a crossroads. We will decide to try sharing a common civic identity, or we will go the way of Europe and let mass migration without assimilation erode the civic duties and responsibilities Americans boldly carried out over the last 2\1/2\ centuries--250 years.
For too long the national conversation around immigration and citizenship has been framed almost entirely in terms of give them rights, protection, benefits, while saying less about loyalty, duty, and shared obligation to make this country better.
A free country cannot survive solely on entitlement. This country was built on hard work. It requires citizens who understand that American life is not just something to receive. It is something to uphold.
If the United States is to remain what it has long claimed to be, it must be clear about the answer to a simple question: What does it mean to be an American?
And we must be willing to insist that the answer still matters because when a nation loses the courage to define itself, it invites others to redefine--redefine it--beyond recognition. We cannot allow people to redefine our country.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from West Virginia (Mrs. Capito), the Senator from Mississippi (Mrs. Hyde-Smith), and the Senator from Nebraska (Mr. Ricketts).
I announce that the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Bennet) is necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 51, 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 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 Kevin Warsh, of Florida, to be Chairman of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System for a 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 West Virginia (Mrs. Capito), the Senator from Mississippi (Mrs. Hyde-Smith), and the Senator from Nebraska (Mr. Ricketts).
Madam President, this week, the Senate adopted the resolution allowing for the consideration of another block or package of nominations, and I want to take a moment to highlight two of these exceptional nominees that President Trump has asked to help him lead portions of the Federal Government.
Of course, we wouldn't be in a position of having to introduce nominations en bloc or en masse if our Senate Democrats would allow us to vote on these nominees on a timely basis, but Trump derangement syndrome is real which means they won't cooperate with even the smallest courtesies that we used to extend to one another, recognizing that eventually the majority will get its way.
Former State Senator, Texas State Senator Brian Birdwell who has been nominated by President Trump to be Assistant Secretary of War for Sustainment is one of Texas' finest sons and one of America's true heroes.
On September 11, Brian was working at the Pentagon when American Airlines Flight 77 deliberately crashed by terrorists into the building just yards from his office. Brian was critically injured, as you might imagine, and yet he survived after enduring 39 surgeries and unimaginable pain.
He turned that survival into a lifetime of service. He served in the U.S. Army for 20 years. And for the past 16 years, he has represented the Texas State Senate District 22 with distinction and honor.
We will miss Brian in the State Senate, but the Nation is gaining a proven leader at the Pentagon. I congratulate Brian and his wife Mel. I thank them for continued service, and I look forward to continuing to working with him now in this new capacity at the Department of War.
Madam President, the Jones Act is a law that we have had for over a hundred years, enacted by Congress, and it simply says that cargo moving between two points in the United States should move on an American-built, American-owned, and American-crewed ship. It supports American workers, American shipyards, and American national security.
The Presiding Officer represents the State of Alabama. Mobile has some very good shipyards; Louisiana, some tremendous shipyards. But they are scattered around our Nation. It could be in Florida, Mississippi, Washington State--I am sure California--Maine.
And the places that build those things that go into the ships, into the boats, could be maritime manufacturing in Illinois, software in San Diego.
This supports American industry.
In my State, Louisiana ports, shipyards, energy producers, and maritime workers are a large portion of the State's economy. I could list you the towns: Houma, Lockport. Thousands of people in Louisiana depend on this industry for jobs that actually support the families.
Now, companies employ Louisiana's skilled workers, and they build vessels for the oil industry, for NOAA, for the Marines, for portions of ships that go to the Navy. And why do we have this workforce and these companies that can build these boats? Because of the Jones Act.
When we waive the Jones Act, like the administration just did and now is doing for another 90 days, we are saying that foreign-built vessels by foreign workers with foreign components--not from San Diego or Illinois or Mobile or Lockport or Houma but someplace else--can put together a vessel that moves goods between one point of the United States and another.
Now, the rationale for waiving the Jones Act was that we need to lower energy prices for California, and when gasoline and diesel go from the gulf coast to California, we are going to magically decrease the price paid at the pump in Los Angeles.
But although waiving the Jones Act can export our jobs to China and to Korea and to India, when you waive the Jones Act, it does not, by any--any--significant amount, lower the prices at the pump in California. Why? California pays $6 a gallon for gasoline because they have shut down refineries. They will not allow them to be expanded. They require a special mix of gasoline.
You could never get a pipeline built from Louisiana to California. It would never have been permitted under the Obama or Biden administrations.
They have taxes upon taxes, deliberately trying to make gasoline more expensive in California, in order to encourage people to buy electric vehicles.
So that is on top of the fact that, because of the hostility in Iran, the international price of oil is much higher.
Put it all together. The high prices of the oil, regulations, lack of refineries in California, no pipeline--that is the reason they are paying over $6 a gallon for gasoline.
To do something cosmetic like waive the Jones Act, to say that you are doing something, actually is more of an excuse to waive the Jones Act than it is to actually lower the price of gasoline in California.
And while you are doing this kind of philosophical ``we don't like the Jones Act,'' it hurts Louisiana workers. It costs Louisiana jobs, and jobs in Mobile, jobs in Illinois, jobs in San Diego. I could keep going down the list. It hurts the American worker for a kind of ``it ain't going to happen'' decrease of gasoline prices in California.
I will point out that the administration is making a big push to restore shipbuilding to the United States. Now, there is a difference between a boat and a ship. A boat is something below a certain size, but it can be really big, and a ship is like what the Navy uses. If you want more shipbuilding in the United States, you don't start doing that by hurting boatbuilding in the United States because the same workers who build boats build ships, the same technology that supports building boats supports building ships, and in some cases, components of that bigger Navy ship are built in a boatyard.
So in our policy of trying to support the American worker, we are actually trying to do things that are important to national security; that support our ability to make a Navy--a blue-water Navy--using American workers and not having to buy an aircraft carrier from Korea with all the kind of ``Are we sure we are getting what we want to get?''
My concern is that the original rationale for the waiver just doesn't make sense to me; it is just not logical. But now it has been extended. So it tells me that there is something motivating that waiver beyond the imagination that it is going to significantly lower gas prices in California. It is somebody who doesn't like the Jones Act, who doesn't like the support that Congress deliberately gave to the workers in our boatyards, the people who are building the engines in Illinois that go into those boats or in any of the other places that are scattered around the country, in our heartland or on the coastline, that support our workers. Somebody philosophically doesn't like it, and they are using this as an excuse in order to kill the Jones Act.
Well, Louisiana cannot afford for this to happen and neither should the country. Once waivers become routine, companies stop investing, workers leave the industry, and America becomes more dependent on foreign operators, and it becomes less prosperous for our Nation's workers.
I agree with the administration in that we should be doing everything we can to lower gas prices--oh, my gosh; families back home are feeling the price at the pump--but let's focus on solutions that work, that provide real relief and protect an industry that Louisiana, the gulf coast, and many in our country rely on.
With that, I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant executive clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, I rise today to honor the men and women who risk their lives every day when they leave their homes so that we can return to the safety of ours--these incredible, hard-working men and women in law enforcement.
This National Police Week, I am reminded of those men and women, but I am also reminded of the ones that never returned home. There are several Alabamians who made the ultimate sacrifice this year while protecting our communities, and I would like to take a moment to recognize them: Conservation Enforcement Officer Shawn Nixon, Police Officer Dallas Hinton, Corporal David Hathcock, and Lieutenant Mark Meadows. All recently lost their lives while serving their communities valiantly.
Shawn Nixon was always known as a ``man on a mission.'' This was evident through his incredible performance in the field, which was rightfully recognized, so much so that he was nominated for an unprecedented 14 ``Officer of the Year'' awards. He was ultimately honored with the Shikar-Safari ``Officer of the Year'' award just 2 years ago.
Shawn wasn't just an incredible officer, though. He was a loving father and a loyal friend. He was remembered by all who knew him--his two children, countless friends, and the entire Alabama police community--as a man whose mission will continue to live on, and they will carry his memory with them.
I would also like to recognize Dallas Hinton. In the greatest Nation in the world, young people are fortunate to have what seems like endless paths they can take in life. Dallas chose one of the most noble paths possible by enlisting in the U.S. Marine Corps.
After his time in the Marines came to an end, Dallas became a police officer with the Thomasville Police Department, just 2 years ago. Dallas served the Thomasville community with the same strength, courage, and valor that he displayed during his time in the Marines.
And at just 25 years old, when he had his whole life ahead of him, his life, unfortunately, was cut short. I am confident it would have been a bright one.
He leaves behind a loving fiancee, a mother, a father, as well as two brothers and two sisters.
It is my hope that we can all lead our lives with the same courage that Dallas did.
He will not be forgotten, and his spirit of service will live on across Alabama with the many lives that he touched.
Only a couple of months ago, the Montgomery community mourned the loss of David Hathcock, a 20-year veteran of the Montgomery Police Department.
Being a part of any community for that long--much less protecting it every single day--you are bound to make a lasting impact. That is exactly what Corporal Hathcock did. He was considered a leader by those around him, even those who were more senior than him in the department. But, especially, young officers looked to him as they rose through the ranks for guidance and as an incredible example. David led with excellence, pride, and courage, which trickled down throughout the entire department.
His memory will live on through his wife and two daughters, as well as countless colleagues and Montgomery residents whose lives he touched.
And, finally, I would like to recognize Lieutenant Mark Meadows. An Army Ranger veteran, Lieutenant Meadows was no stranger to service.
After beginning his career as a police officer in Mountain Brook, in 1992, Mark found his home in Irondale, AL. He became a fixture of that community, serving the Irondale Police Department for over 30 years.
Outside of work, he was a helping hand to all who needed it, helping to coordinate traffic security or the security at his home church. He did that for more than a decade.
Mark was the real deal and will always be remembered as leaning in and helping those who needed it most.
I want to encourage everyone across our Nation this week to thank a police officer. The stories I just told were those of Alabamians who loved their community, their State, and their country. They displayed that every single day. And as we all know, when police officers leave the safety of their home so we can return to ours, we owe them a debt of gratitude.
These men that we just honored didn't have the opportunity to return home. So don't wait until it is too late. Don't wait until after their service. When you see an officer, let them know how much you appreciate it. Let them know how much you appreciate their sacrifice and service. Whether it is here in this building, which we are so grateful for, whether it is back home, whether it is on the street corner, we appreciate the law and order they bring and making sure our communities are safe and sound.
Mr. President, this Chamber has before it a very important question: Will Congress embrace and exercise its constitutional responsibility to decide, as Madison put it, the question of war?
That is a heavy responsibility. It is no small matter to decide whether or not the United States should go to war or to decide whether or not to end a war. It is a question of blood and treasure. The lives of thousands can hang in the balance--the lives of soldiers on both sides, the lives of civilians.
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan resulted in the deaths of more than 5,000 American servicemembers and the deaths of approximately 250,000 civilians in Afghanistan and Iraq and they resulted in massive use of American treasure, some $8 trillion.
It is tempting for Members of this Chamber to shirk this responsibility. The question weighs too heavily on us. ``Let's let the President decide.''
But if you took an oath to the Constitution, as every Member here did, then you know that letting the President decide is unconstitutional. The Constitution did not assign this weighty issue of war to the President. It assigned this weighty issue to all of us here in Congress.
As Madison summarized: The Constitution supposes what the history of all governments demonstrates, that the Executive is the branch of power most interested in war and most prone to it. The Constitution has accordingly, with studied care, vested the question of war in the legislative branch.
With studied care, the Founders said: No one person should decide the question of whether we go to war. The weight of the decision in blood and treasure is too great, so there needs to be debate. There needs to be viewpoints exchanged before such a significant action is taken. And that is why it is assigned to us.
Now the modern version of declaring war is to pass an authorization for the use of military force, or an AUMF. That is the system set up in the 1973 War Powers Act following Vietnam where there was no authorization ever granted, and yet a massive calamity for American servicemembers, some 50,000-plus who died and so many injured and so much treasure expended.
So Congress by law with the signature of the President said: Let's set up a system to take that constitutional provision where the question of war is assigned to Congress and create a format through which it can be considered. And that law--that 1973 law--says the power of war can only be exercised under three possibilities.
One, there is a declaration of war. Second, Congress passes a law and a President signs it into law to create an authorization for war.
And that, in fact, is what happened in the case of Afghanistan and Iraq. The President came to Congress and said: Here are the arguments. I want you to authorize war as required in the Constitution.
This Chamber and the House Chamber considered this question, and we passed an AUMF, an authorization for use of military force.
Those wars were entered into under a constitutional path. And whether or not any one individual agreed with the outcome, at least it was constitutional in that it was the result of studied debate here in this Chamber and down the Hall in the House of Representatives.
The War Powers Act creates a third option. Under a special condition--sometimes it is referred to as ``the condition of imminent threat,'' that we are under attack or on the verge of being under attack. The specific language in the War Powers Act says that the power of war can be exercised if there is a national emergency created by an attack upon the United States, its territories, or its Armed Forces.
But it places a 60-day limit on that. Now many experts would say this option was never triggered in this case because there was not a national emergency created by an attack on the United States. But some Members of this body have said: close enough. The threat from Iran was close enough. We consider that a valid third option.
I would disagree, but others had a different opinion and then said: but when that 60 days are up, that is exhausted and the President must withdraw forces as required in the War Powers Act or must come to us with an authorization for the use of military force, which has not happened.
So if the President fails to withdraw forces and the President fails to come to us with an authorization for the use of military force, then it is incumbent on us to pass a War Powers Resolution that says: Mr. President, you are in violation of the Constitution, and you must end this war. If you want to continue it, come and ask for constitutional authorization. The 60 days are up.
Someone said: Well, the war is not as fierce as it was previously. There is kind of a paper version of a cease-fire in place, and maybe that suspends the clock on the 60 days, a clock that expired on May 1.
But, you know, the War Powers Act does not have a provision that says if the war becomes less fierce, it doesn't count against the 60 days. That is not in the law. That is not in the vision under which this was prepared and written for the exercise of our constitutional responsibility.
And everybody in the world knows that the war has continued. The Navy--our Navy--has continued a blockade of Iranian ports. That is an act of war.
Our Navy has fired on Iranian naval vessels. That is an act of war.
Our Navy has fired on Iranian oil tankers. That is an act of war.
And Iran, they also have continued the war. They have fired on United States naval ships, including the use of drones, missiles, and bullets; fired on
So the war has continued, and the 60 days has expired. And during those 60 days, a lot has happened; none of it benefitting our national security. We strengthened the Iranian hardliners, virtually what always happens when you assassinate religious and political leaders as we did.
We weakened the reformers. We failed to secure Iran's stockpile of more highly enriched uranium, and we have no strategy to extract them.
We have shredded moral leadership as champions of human rights. We enriched and emboldened Russia by easing oil sanctions; and not only could Russia then sell their oil legally at a higher price, but the war raised the value they could get from $60-ish to $120.
We depleted our munitions stockpile. We increased fertilizer costs. We raised prices at the pump for American families.
People keep saying: In our State, it is $4 a gallon and diesel is $5 a gallon. Well, in Oregon, it is $5 for gasoline and $6 for diesel. And we fueled inflation. Last month, April, the highest inflation in 3 years, 3.8 percent.
Those fuel costs are already affecting businesses. A number of airlines have cut flights and cut services. Spirit Airlines went out of business, forcing them to lay off 17,000 workers. And all across the country, farmers and small businesses and large businesses are seeing these inflationary effects and certainly American families are feeling the higher prices on everything. And we have spent from our national treasure somewhere around a $1 billion-plus a day.
During his campaign, our President said: I am going to end wars. I am going to lower prices.
But he has started a war, and he has raised prices. And now, if one embraces the War Powers Act, if one argues that there was an imminent threat--which I do not believe that test was met. But if you believe that test was met and you gave the President 60 days of grace--well, those 60 days are up.
And since the President has not come to us and said, ``I now want an authorization for war'' and we are not debating that on the floor, then our responsibility is to exercise a War Powers Resolution that says: Mr. President, end this war.
It is the right thing for us to do to defend the Constitution we took an oath to. Failure to do so is to violate the Constitution we took an oath to.
So I hope that at this point we will have bipartisan support to embrace the responsibility that the Constitution assigns to us on the question of war. It is a heavy responsibility. It is tempting to shirk that responsibility and let the President decide, but it is neither the moral thing to do nor is it constitutional.
Laws are not suggestions. The Constitution is not an option, not for the President and not for us.
There is no constitutional path for the continuation of this war unless the President arrives today with a proposal for an authorization to be debated. And that has not happened. The only constitutional path left is to vote aye on the War Powers Resolution.
An ``aye'' vote honors the wisdom of our Founders that assigned us this responsibility and honors our responsibility under the Constitution. A ``no'' vote dishonors the wisdom of the Founders who assigned this responsibility to us and dishonors our obligation under the Constitution.
Let's carry this weight, however heavy it may be, and in a bipartisan fashion restore and honor considerations that place--the Constitution places with us the question of war. An ``aye'' vote tomorrow is the right vote.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
Mr. President, I rise today to once again call on my Republican colleagues to listen to their constituents and bring an end to this war of choice.
Let's be clear. Americans do not like this war because they are the ones paying for it. American taxpayers have already been forced to shell out at least $29 billion for a conflict with no end in sight. Hundreds of American servicemembers have been injured, and 13 Americans have lost their lives. And Americans are paying the price for this war at the gas pump every single day as the cost of just about everything seems to be going up.
Today, we learned that inflation tripled in March, showing consumer prices rose by nearly 4 percent. Make no mistake--that jump was almost singlehandedly caused by Donald Trump's war in Iran, which has sent gas prices skyrocketing 50 percent since he chose to start this conflict.
It is not just gas prices and travel costs going up for Wisconsin families; the price of just about everything will increase as transporting goods to markets continues to rise. These cost increases are simply not manageable for many of my constituents and will force them to make impossible decisions.
I am hearing from Wisconsin farmers who are paying through the nose for the fertilizer and diesel they need to plant their crops this spring. As of today, the average price for diesel in Wisconsin is $5.84 per gallon. That is $2.61 higher than 1 year ago. One Wisconsin farmer told the local news that he is paying $2,000 more for diesel fuel this planting season than in previous years. Fertilizer is also getting more expensive because of Donald Trump's war. Fertilizer inputs shot up nearly $700 per ton in late April--nearly $250 more than the day before the war started. According to a recent survey, about 70 percent of farmers nationwide say they were unable to afford all the fertilizer they need for this planting season. For Wisconsin farmers who work on very tight margins, these price increases could be make-or-break for their businesses.
Donald Trump vowed to bring prices down on day one. Instead, he has illegally started a war all on his own that is jacking up the cost of just about everything.
On behalf of our constituents, who are paying the price for this war of choice, I implore my Republican colleagues to do their job and end this conflict. Every day this war drags on is another day that the American people will be forced to pay for it.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. President, I am glad to be on the floor--sixth, seventh, eighth week in a row; I have lost count--this week to support Senator Merkley's resolution to end the war in Iran.
It is simple: This is a war that is making America less safe. It is a war that is costing the people of this country billions of dollars. It has resulted in untold numbers of civilian deaths in the region. The entire world economy is spiraling out of control. Prices for gas are through the roof--$6 a gallon in many parts of the country--and the cost of everything is going to go up very quickly.
But in my short remarks today, I really want to take the administration's war goals at face value and, 74 days into this conflict, assess whether we are closer to meeting those goals or further away.
Secretary Hegseth was before the Appropriations Committee today, and we really got very little information from him as to whether this essential question--the meeting of war goals--is answerable. Let me try to answer it.
The first thing that the administration said they wanted to do was to annihilate Iran's navy. Well, they have essentially destroyed Iran's conventional navy, but they have not destroyed Iran's fleet of speedboats and so-called suicide skiffs that effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz, and it goes without saying that that feat is impossible. The administration will never be able to eliminate all of Iran's small speedboats that drop mines in the strait or threaten to drop mines in the strait and these suicide skiffs, which run these suicide missions at tankers and boats in the strait. So as long as that fleet of small boats is able to harass traffic in the strait, effectively close down the strait, you have not annihilated Iran's navy, and you will never annihilate Iran's navy. So you can claim that you sunk some big boats, but it is the small boats that have closed the Strait of Hormuz and created a global catastrophe.
The second goal that the administration states is to destroy Iran's ballistic missiles. Now, Trump recently claimed that Iran only has 18 to 19 percent of their ballistic missiles left, but according to public reporting, a CIA assessment has found that Iran actually retains 70 percent of its missiles. So we
Similarly, another war aim was to destroy their drone fleet. The CIA assessment says Iran still has 70 percent of its drones. Realistically, drones are so easy to manufacture, there was never going to be a way through an air campaign alone for us to be able to eliminate their drone capacity. It is another reason the strait is closed.
There is no military mechanism available to the United States to open the strait because we cannot find all of their small speedboats, we cannot find all of their drones.
So 74 days of war and billions of dollars spent, over a dozen Americans killed, and Iran still has their drone fleet.
The last goal--and the President has doubled down on this goal--is to stop Iran from ever being able to acquire a nuclear weapon.
Now, we know for sure you can't actually achieve that goal through military action--not without regime change, not without U.S. boots on the ground. The administration has said we are not going for regime change. They seem very comfortable with the new regime, which is, by all accounts, more radical and more dangerous than the regime that they displaced. While Trump still keeps open the possibility of putting boots on the ground, as of today, it doesn't appear that there are going to be hundreds of thousands of American troops going into Iran to take their enriched uranium and their fissile material.
So the only way that you are going to effectuate this goal--stopping Iran from being able to acquire a nuclear weapon--is by taking the same path that we were pursuing under President Obama--a diplomatic path. So the question then is just: Are you going to get a better diplomatic deal today than you got when President Obama was in office? And all the evidence suggests that you are going to get a much worse deal today than you got when President Obama pursued this same path--for two reasons.
First, Iran has much more leverage today. I heard Secretary Hegseth say today in our hearing that America has all the leverage. That is just made up because the facts on the ground are pretty simple.
In 2013, when President Obama was negotiating this deal with Iran, their economy was crippled, but Iran didn't control the Strait of Hormuz. Today, Iran's economy is crippled, but they control the Strait of Hormuz. They have more leverage today than they had in 2013. In 2013, we certainly held open the specter of a military attack, but now Iran has the leverage of knowing that it can survive the best punch that America can throw. After 74 days into the war, the regime is still standing. Their missile program still exists. Their drone program still exists. Their nuclear program still exists. They control the Strait of Hormuz. They have more leverage today than they did in 2013.
The second reason you are going to get a worse diplomatic deal is that the stakes are lower for Iran because, once Trump pulled out of the Obama agreement, Iran pressed fast-forward on their nuclear research program.
Before the Obama nuclear agreement, Iran was enriching to 20 percent. The nuclear agreement brought them down to 3 percent. Since Trump pulled us out of that agreement, Iran has gone from enriching 3 percent all the way up to 60 percent. And we all know that, once you are at 60 percent, it is really just a political decision to get to 90 percent, which is what you need for a bomb.
So Iran now has the knowledge, in perpetuity, to be able to very quickly get to enough nuclear material--enriched at a high enough level--to be able to make a bomb.
Maybe, in this agreement, they agree to go back to 3 percent or maybe they even agree to pause, for a period of time, enrichment. That is a different calculation for Iran today than it was in 2013 because they can easily make that agreement knowing that the minute they decide to rush to a bomb, they can get there much faster now because of Trump's decision to pull out of the agreement.
You are going to get a worse diplomatic deal under these circumstances than you got in 2013.
So I just share that with all of you because, even if you take their warnings at face value--and they seem to be changing by the week--they haven't achieved a single one of them, and there is no hope of their achieving those objectives even if they were to restart the war.
So why are we doing this? Why are we doing this if we can't achieve any of our objectives and if the price of the war is being paid for by American citizens and by American farmers?
I understand that the President is full of hubris and pride. I understand my Republican colleagues, in having backed this war, are having a hard time squaring reality with their stated position of supporting the war.
But it is OK to change your mind. It is OK to look at the facts on the ground, come to the conclusion that the war didn't go the way that the President promised you it would go, and join us and vote to end this war. I know that is difficult for any political figure who has made it all the way to the U.S. Senate to admit that they were wrong.
But my Republican colleagues were wrong. Nobody can come to the floor and make an argument that there is a path through the continuation of this war to eliminate their ballistic missile program or their drone program. I think it would be hard for folks to suggest that the longer this war goes on, the better a diplomatic agreement we are going to get.
So we are going to continue to come to the floor and ask for our colleagues to join us because, out there in the American public, this isn't much of a debate. People want this war to end. They cannot sustain the costs of this war any longer. I appreciate the work of my colleagues in continuing to bring these motions to the floor. This is our one and only opportunity to debate war.
Our Republican colleagues--74 days into this war--have still not brought a resolution before the Senate to authorize the war. That is in violation of the Constitution. Every single day, we as a body are in violation of the Constitution. So it is left to the Democrats to force this debate on a weekly basis, which we will continue to do until this war ends.
Mr. President, today, I come to the floor, once again, after numerous--and I have lost count of how many of these the Democrats have tried--to set the legal record on the war powers straight and in plain terms.
The first thing we need to do is look at what the Democrats are trying to do here. They want to pass this resolution, which states in relevant part:
So what they are asking and telling the President to do is to remove the U.S. Armed Forces from hostilities within or against Iran. Those hostilities do not exist today and have not existed for some time.
So let's look at what has actually happened from a factual basis.
On February 28, the President exercised his constitutional duty to protect American interests--not his right but his duty that he took an oath to do to protect Americans and America's interests. Not only was the military action he took legally permissible under article II of the Constitution, but it was the President's duty to act.
Presidents across both parties, over many, many years--indeed, many of my Democratic colleagues--have consistently maintained that Iran can never have a nuclear weapon, and with good reason. Iran is a country that is run by radical Shia clerics, whose slogan is, literally, ``Death to America.'' This regime has sponsored terrorism and has kidnapped and killed thousands of American citizens since it commenced this war against the United States 47 years ago.
We all remember when it happened. They took possession of our Embassy in Iran, kidnapped the employees we had there, and held them for 400- plus days. All the action we have taken since then has been defensive. They
The actions taken on February 28 comport with longstanding legal precedent, over many decades, from the Presidents of both political parties. The military operations we are talking about were not and are not--nor are they even close to--operations that took place in Vietnam, Afghanistan, or Iraq, nor will they ever be. My friends on the other side of the aisle have tried to put the two together and compare this to those actions. They are not.
Under the War Powers Resolution, the President is supposed to notify Congress within 48 hours after introducing U.S. Armed Forces into hostilities. He did that on March 2, as required, fully consistent with the law.
Now, my colleagues on the other side of the Chamber keep saying that, somehow, the administration is not in compliance with a 60-day clock.
Let me highlight this point: The President's notification to this body on May 1--within that 60-day period--was crystal clear: The operations that began on February 28 had been terminated. The hostilities ended with the April 7 cease-fire. They are over--full stop.
Now, that doesn't say they won't start again. But that operation is over and ended, and we were so notified. Indeed, President Trump's May 1 letter fully informed Congress as to the status of this matter. The War Powers Resolution does not require such reporting. Nonetheless, the President gave it.
In short, this is much more information than previous Presidents have provided to Congress.
For the reasons that I have just stated, I intend to vote against this resolution, and I urge my colleagues to do likewise.
Mr. President, my colleague from Idaho made a few points in his presentation on why he would oppose exercising the War Powers Resolution, and I think it is worth noting those points and considering whether or not they hold water.
First, he said hostilities have ceased because the President says so, but it is the facts on the ground that matter, and the fact on the ground is that the United States continues a blockade--an act of war-- against Iranian forces. We have fired upon Iranian ships, and we have fired upon Iranian tankers. Iran maintains a blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, which is an act of war, and they have fired on U.S. Naval vessels, and they have fired upon U.S. commercial ships, tankers. So it may be at a lower level than the massive bombing that occurred before, but there certainly is nothing close to what we would call a cease-fire and certainly not a withdrawal.
Now, the War Powers Act says that after 60 days, you have to end the hostilities, and you can ask for another 30 days to withdraw forces. Well, we are in that 30-day period now, and the forces are not being withdrawn from the Middle East.
The second factor is my colleague cited article II of the Constitution. What did he mean by that? He referred to the ``Commander in Chief.'' Article II of the Constitution says this in section 2:
When called into service.
And what does the Constitution say about when it is called into service? Well, that is in article I--article I, the powers of Congress, the enumerated powers of Congress, and those enumerated powers laid out in section 8 refer to many of the assignments given, including things like borrowing money on credit or regulating commerce or coining money or providing for the punishment of individuals, establishing a post office. But the key one--this very sizeable responsibility that Madison said ``with studied care'' the Founders vested this responsibility in the legislative branch, not the executive--that is the power to declare war. That is the responsibility.
Yes, once we go to war, the Commander in Chief is the President of the United States, and much of the strategy of the war is conducted accordingly through the Department of Defense and the Secretary of Defense and the Joint Chiefs of the services. But do not confuse the ability to conduct a war with the ability to start a war.
Third, nuclear weapons. My colleague mentioned the threat of nuclear weapons. Well, there is a threat of nuclear weapons maybe, but you have to really kind of understand the framework here, and that is that there was a diplomatic agreement in which Iran enriched to only very low levels, a couple percent, under international intensive supervision with all kinds of monitors in place--not just individuals watching but all kinds of sensors in place. Their enriched uranium that they had previous to that agreement called the JCPOA was stored in Russia. So they didn't have highly enriched uranium. They enriched to very low levels, and they did it under international supervision.
It was only after President Trump in his first administration tore up this agreement and unleashed Iran from its responsibilities under that agreement. That is when Iran later said ``Well, we might enrich to higher levels'' and then proceeded to--up to 60 percent. But that condition only exists because of what President Trump did to tear up the diplomatic agreement.
Then, in June of last year, the United States participated in a massive bombing campaign, employed our very largest bombs to destroy those places where centrifuges were making the more highly enriched uranium. The President proudly declared that the massive bombs--the largest ones we have, the earth-penetrating bombs, the biggest tonnage--had obliterated Iran's nuclear program.
So Iran didn't have a nuclear program en route to a nuclear weapon until Trump tore up the agreement, and even then, the President claimed there was no nuclear program after June of 2025.
So here we are. What had been achieved diplomatically was destroyed by President Trump. Now he proceeded to say that he had already taken care of this threat that is being cited by my colleague as a justification for this war.
By the way, it was not the justification that President Trump cited at the beginning of this war. No. He said: Israel is going to bomb Iran again, and Iran is going to retaliate against regional sites, and that will involve our interests being hit, so we should join Israel.
So Israel was the dog wagging the American tail. Does America not have the spine, the courage, the authority to simply have told Israel no? Well, apparently not--not under this President.
I yield to my colleague from Virginia who has been so instrumental in bringing many, many insights to this debate and helping coordinate this series of War Powers Resolutions as we strive--strive--to honor the oaths we took to our Constitution.
Mr. President, I appreciate my colleague and strongly support his resolution that will be voted on tomorrow, and I have taken the floor often on this topic and don't need to repeat things I have said before. But today, I guess what I want to say is basically this: The American public does not like being lied to by its government. Of course we don't but particularly on matters of war.
I am old enough to remember two tragic circumstances where the American public was lied to by their civilian leadership about war-- many lies were told by successive administrations, beginning with the Eisenhower administration and through Kennedy and Johnson in particular, about the Vietnam war--and how tragic it was when Americans realized that much of what they had been told that led, first, the United States to take over the French colonial project in Southeast Asia and then to engage in war--much of what they had been told was false.
When you are losing your sons and daughters--56,000 U.S. deaths in the Vietnam war--and then you find that the civilian leadership has been lying to you while troops have been serving honorably, it is incredibly embittering in a State like Virginia where there are so many military equities but to every State.
We were lied to about the war in Iraq. We were told that Iraq had something to do with 9/11. That was not
So I come from a State that lost a lot of people in Iraq and Afghanistan and Vietnam, and I join my colleague today to support his resolution because I believe the United States is not being told the truth about the situation in Iran.
First, the administration worked very, very hard up until essentially a week or so ago to avoid any public hearings about the war in either the House or the Senate, in the committees that have jurisdiction over important matters. I mean, not to have a public hearing about a war?
Right now--and I am going to go into this in an Armed Services Committee hearing later in the week--the administration is not even willing to share the legal rationale, the opinion developed by the Office of Legal Counsel at the State Department. They are not even willing to share that rationale with Members of the U.S. Senate. They won't share it with members of the Intel Committee. They won't share it with members of the Armed Services Committee. They won't share it with members of the Foreign Relations Committee. They won't even share the legal rationale. What are they afraid of? That raises some natural suspicion.
In at least two instances, I believe the administration is not being truthful with the American public about this war. One was the assertion of a whole different series of rationales, but one of the rationales that seems to now be the one that they rely on is, well, of course the war is needed to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon. No, it isn't. We had stopped Iran from getting a nuclear weapon by a diplomatic deal that Donald Trump chose to tear up, as my colleague just mentioned. That had stopped Iran's nuclear program.
That deal was a comprehensive deal that took months, even years, to negotiate. It contained some provisions that were time-limited--5 years, 10 years, 15 years, 20 years--but it contained two provisions that were permanent. The first was on page 1 of the deal: that Iran will not seek to purchase or acquire or develop nuclear weapons. That was a permanent pledge by Iran. The second part of the deal that was permanent was Iran agreed to permanent inspections by the IAEA, including inspections according to an additional protocol that had been developed by the nations of the world after North Korea had cheated on a nuclear program earlier.
Those were permanent pledges by Iran to not pursue nuclear weapons and to allow intrusive inspections, and President Trump decided, over the objection of his Secretaries of State and Defense, to tear up the deal. So when President Trump says now: Well, we have to wage war; we have to subject our troops to being killed and being injured and billions of dollars of costs and Americans and people all over the world paying more for gas to stop Iran from getting a nuclear weapon-- that is a lie. Diplomacy had stopped them until President Trump tore it up.
To make matters worse, President Trump, with the United States, following a 12-day war of Israel against Iran to destroy their nuclear capacity, took additional action that the White House said had destroyed Iran's nuclear program.
So if we had controlled it first by diplomacy and then a year ago added on a war waged by Israel against Iran to obliterate the nuclear program, there was not a nuclear program that justified this war. There was no threat of any action anytime soon by Iran to develop nuclear weapons that justified this war.
I don't like to use this phrase. I don't use this phrase a lot: The White House has lied to the American public, and every time they say this war is justified to stop Iran's nuclear program, they are telling the American public a lie.
The second lie they are telling--and I will just say this and then hand it back to my colleague--is a different kind of a lie. If you state a set of facts that are true but you don't state the full set of facts, you are telling a lie. And I have heard President Trump and I have heard Secretary Hegseth say many times: We need to stop Iran because they have been a thorn in our side since 1979. They have been a thorn in our side for the last 47 years.
Our decision makers are acting as if the U.S.-Iran history started in 1979 when the Iranian people toppled their government and then, yes, in the aftermath of that toppling, started to say ``Death to America,'' ``Death to Israel.'' They act like that is the only history. My colleagues will recount Iranian misbehavior--taking over our Embassy, in violation of international law; funding proxies to attack the U.S. Embassy and Marine barracks in Beirut and other locations; funding proxies that attack U.S. troops who are in the region in or near Iran-- my colleagues will cite that information, and they will cite it accurately. And Iran has done a series of horrible things to their own people, to American positions, to other nations in the region. But my colleagues always ignore, the President always ignores, and Secretary Hegseth always ignores that history didn't start in 1979.
If you want to understand the history of this relationship between the United States and Iran, you have to go back to World War II when we were allies. There was a pivotal conference in the middle of World War II in Tehran in 1943 where the allies--the United States, the Soviet Union at the time, and Britain--guaranteed to Iran its sovereignty and its independence and its borders, and the Iranian people loved the United States, and we were allies.
Then in 1953, during the Eisenhower administration, the United States made a catastrophic mistake. There is a recent book by Scott Anderson called ``King of Kings'' that lays this out in clear and unmistakable detail. The United States decided we would topple the democratic Government of Iran. In 1953, the United States, through the CIA, engineered a coup. We toppled the democratic government. We installed the Shah, a dictator. We funded the secret police of the Shah, who tortured, exiled, imprisoned, and killed thousands of Iranians. And the United States basically put this puppet government--a dictator--over the Iranian people from 1953 until they finally tired of it, and they cast that government off in 1979.
Guess what. Twenty-six years of the United States funding a dictatorship killing and torturing Iranians led the new Government of Iran to be--drumroll--anti-United States. We turned Iranians from friends into enemies. We didn't have to do that, but we did it.
Secretary Hegseth and the President never mention that. They don't mention that after Iran overtook our Embassy, we funded Iraq to wage war on Iran. We gave Iraq funds. We gave Iraq intel. And in a 7- or 8- year war, Iraq--we funded Saddam Hussein to wage war against Iran. Hundreds of thousands of Iranians were killed, and they knew the United States was partially responsible for it.
In the late 1980s, a U.S. Navy vessel, the Vincennes, shot down an Iranian commercial aircraft, killing 290 civilians. It took us years to admit that we did it, but we eventually admitted that.
The United States invaded Iran's next-door neighbors to the east and west to topple their governments--Afghanistan and Iraq--and Iran believed: Well, you toppled our government in 1953. You are probably preparing to do it again.
In this recent war on Iran, we have wiped out their leadership, we have killed civilians, and we bombed a school, killing schoolgirls. Now, we all know that the United States does not intentionally decide to target schools. That is not what we do intentionally. But to an Iranian who watched the United States intentionally topple their government in 1953, intentionally participate in an assassination campaign against their leaders, shoot down a civilian aircraft in the late 1980s, intentionally fund Iraq to wage war against Iran--an Iranian will look at U.S. actions and say: Wait a minute. This is part of a pattern. We were friends until you decided to topple our government in 1953.
The point I am making about this is that if you are not willing to be honest about the history and acknowledge not
What is that truth? as I finish. The truth is, if more war between the United States and Iran would bring a solution to any of these problems, then we would have found the answer at some point between 1953 and now. We have had a back-and-forth going between the United States and Iran since 1953, and it has not produced peace, it has not produced stability, and it has not produced anything for the good of the Iranian people or the American people, frankly. For us to think now that, you know what, more war, just a little more war would be the right thing to do to bring a better resolution to this painful 75-year chapter--it shows a profound ignorance of our history and a just shocking level of naivety.
So that is why I have joined with my colleagues every week to look this Senate in the eye and say: As a deliberative body with constitutional powers and an oath that we have taken to provide a check against an Executive--particularly on matters of war--we can't let this go under the radar screen, classified hearings only. We have to be as loud and consistent as can be to say that more war between the United States and Iran is not an answer to anything. It hasn't been an answer to anything since 1953, and it is not an answer to anything now. That is why I support this resolution.
We should not be at war without a vote of Congress. Even if there were such a vote--I would vote against it, but if it were to pass this body and be signed by the President, I would then drop my complaint that the war is illegal. I would say it is unwise, but I would be outvoted, as I am often on events, and thus it wouldn't be illegal.
It is an illegal war. It is an unwise war that demonstrates a profound lack of understanding of the deep, tragic history between the United States and Iran. And for that, to my colleague from Oregon, I strongly support your resolution.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. President, I rise today to oppose the nomination of Kevin Warsh to be the Chair of the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve system.
I want to put this nomination in some context. Donald Trump's chaos is not working for the average American. Housing is more expensive; healthcare is more expensive; groceries are more expensive; American manufactures' inputs are more expensive; and gas is more expensive due primarily to the President's unwise and unauthorized war with Iran.
That is quite a list of higher prices and economic chaos, and it is no secret President Trump also thinks he should control the actions of the Federal Reserve. He has tried to fire some of its members, threatened others, and even launched a criminal investigation meant to force out Fed Chair Jerome Powell.
The Federal Reserve is tasked with combating inflation and helping maximize employment. This dual mandate helps companies succeed and Americans find work and support their families.
The American people need and deserve a Fed Chair who is committed to this task--whose sole motivation is meeting the Fed's dual mandate and who is dedicated to the Federal Reserve's independence.
But after attempting to oust one Fed Governor, as well as the current Chair, President Trump appears to have found an individual who will operate according to his wishes, not the Fed's dual mandate.
And I am not simply speculating. President Trump explicitly told America he would pick a Fed Chair committed to his preferred monetary policy--``someone who believes in lower interest rates by a lot''--and publicly confirmed Mr. Warsh fit that bill.
The President has made clear he believes the Fed should shed its independence, arguing, ``I'm a smart voice and should be listened to.'' And Mr. Warsh himself testified the Fed should not be fully independent.
Undermining Fed independence is extremely dangerous. The last time a President exerted control over the Fed was President Richard Nixon in the early 1970s. The Fed artificially kept rates low--exactly what President Trump wants today--which helped cause, in the case of Nixon, massive stagflation.
Now, President Trump wants total control of the economy by installing his pick to lead the Fed. And based on the President's track record, we should all be very, very wary. Since President Trump returned to the White House 16 months ago, the United States has added only 420,000 new jobs, and that is a huge drop from the 1.5 million jobs the United States added during President Biden's final 12 months in office.
Similarly, workers' real wages grew at a slower pace last year than in 2024, while GDP growth significantly slowed from 2.8 percent to 2.1 percent. Indeed, a greater share of Americans are unemployed now than when President Biden left office.
Zoom out. How did we get here? It becomes clear. The President's tariffs walloped Americans to the tune of $1,000 in new costs per family last year, according to the nonpartisan Tax Foundation.
Gas prices are up 50 percent since the President began his war on Iran, with diesel prices $2 higher and home heating oil prices also jumping up significantly.
Researchers at Brown University estimate Americans have spent an extra $38 billion on gas and diesel since the war began--that is $290 per household in a little over 2 months. The President's war with Iran pushed inflation to a 3-year high in April with prices for gas, food, clothing, and housing increasing significantly.
Making matters worse, President Trump cut nearly $1 trillion from Medicaid last year. As a result, insurance prices and costs are increasing so that roughly 15 million Americans will lose their healthcare insurance over the next decade.
About 1.5 million people have already dropped their Affordable Care Act coverage as a result of the President's cuts. In my home State of Rhode Island, 10,000 people lost their health insurance. The President has created huge new costs for families, and households are stretched thin. Unsurprisingly, credit card balances hit a record $1.3 trillion at the end of last year. People are living month to month on their credit cards, and that is not a hopeful sign for working Americans.
But with the President's help, one set of Americans did exceptionally well in 2025: the ultrarich. Investment bank UBS reports that the number of U.S. billionaires jumped 11 percent last year with their combined wealth reaching $6.9 trillion dollars. That is trillion with a T.
Now if you dig a little deeper, you will see President Trump's billionaires are leaving the rest of America further and further behind. Billionaires' wealth grew 18 percent in 2025. In comparison, the average wage for Americans grew by about 4 percent--18 percent for the billionaires; 4 percent for working Americans.
As a result, wealth inequality--the gap between the ultrarich and the rest of us--is at a record high. According to the Federal Reserve, 32 percent of total U.S. wealth is now held by the top 1 percent of households.
That is a new record. It is a very uncomfortable record to observe. Let me say it again: 32 percent of the total wealth is now held by the top 1 percent.
That is not what America was designed to be. Frankly, that was not what generations of men and women in uniform fought to make America be. They weren't worried about making sure that billionaires had 5 yachts, 25 cars, and 7 mansions. They wanted to make sure that children got fed; that there was affordable housing; that families could not only get by but save a little and give their children a good chance in life.
Now there is a direct and likely intentional line between billionaire profits and the President's policies. President Trump's tax and spend plan was
The rest of America--most of America--got little to nothing. Seventy percent of households received a tax cut below $1,700. What is the comparison? The ultrarich, $250,000 a year; working families, $1,700 a year. And this $1,700 is mostly wiped out by the President's tariffs and gasoline inflation costs.
And if you look at low-income Americans, the bottom 20 percent of earners, they lost money under the Big Beautiful Bill. And the story is the same for our ongoing oil price shock, which President Trump caused by unilaterally attacking Iran, despite knowing a war would close much of the global oil industry.
While working-class Americans are unsurprisingly paying the price, recent research found that during the last global oil shock following Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the wealthiest 1 percent of Americans received about half of resulting global profits, with the vast majority of profits flowing across the top 10 percent of households. And that situation will likely be replicated now.
In other words, oil shocks seem to actually help the President's rich friends. Inflation predominantly hurts working- and middle-class Americans who have less wiggle room to cover high costs. And now the President is talking about making changes to the gasoline tax.
What he could do more appropriately is impose a limit on the amount of oil that could be exported from the United States and let the market cause gas prices to go down.
Now creating these new financial pains for Americans is economic malpractice, intentional or otherwise. This is not how a President should pursue economic policy. Our tax, healthcare, and broader economic system must be geared towards most Americans, not the privileged few. I am concerned that confirming Mr. Warsh to be Fed Chair will only enable President Trump to further ruin our economy by propping up the wealthy.
Like President Trump, Mr. Warsh has shown a proclivity for focusing on the interests of industry and wealth rather than the average American family. While previously at the Fed, Mr. Warsh pushed for higher interest rates during the great recession, a policy we know now, if followed, would have extended our recession and prevented many struggling Americans from finding work.
Before that, he was in charge of financial regulatory policy at the George W. Bush White House where he oversaw deregulatory policies that contributed to the 2008 financial crisis.
Now Mr. Warsh's new dovish monetary policy outlook is predicated on the belief that AI will turbocharge the economy, despite many economists projecting that AI adoption will eliminate huge swaths of middle-class jobs.
There is nothing inherently wrong with being successful and wealthy as Mr. Warsh certainly is. But when the only people appointed to serve in top economic posts have net worths in the hundreds of millions of dollars or even billions, often with intermingled business dealings, you must wonder if they are attuned to the needs of most Americans.
My focus is affordability, lowering housing costs, healthcare costs, and food and gas costs, and fixing our economic mess to better support hard-working Americans. Reorienting the Fed so the President can help billionaires moves the United States away from these goals.
I urge my colleagues to do what is best for the many Americans struggling with high prices and reject this nomination.
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, I am here now for the 307th time with my trusty and increasingly battered ``Time to Wake Up'' chart to warn this Chamber about how America's worst polluters have occupied the Trump administration from within.
These polluters are up to no good. They are desperate--desperate--to pollute for free. That is their business model, to pollute for free, even though polluting for free is wrong--wrong under the laws of economics, wrong under the laws of morality, wrong under the laws of nature. But they are desperate to pollute for free because the stakes are huge. And the stakes are really huge. The International Monetary Fund has calculated that the fossil fuel industry's subsidy from being allowed to pollute for free is over $700 billion every year.
Mr. President, $700 billion every year is a lot of money, and it is a lot of motive to fund a lot of mischief.
The polluters deny the science of what their emissions are doing to Earth's natural systems. Indeed, they have mounted a massive fraud operation to propagate their climate denial. As I have said in earlier speeches, that is actually phase 2. Phase 1 was when their own scientists warned them what their emissions would do to Earth's natural systems and they chose to hide that information and cover it up.
But once it became more standard science to know that, then they went into the phase 2 part--a massive fraud operation to propagate their climate denial.
Phase 3 was to spend massive amounts of dark money--massive amounts of dark money--to influence and control American politics, specifically to control the Republican Party. I was here when it was OK to be a Republican on a serious climate bill. That was true until January of 2010, the day that Citizen United was decided. And at that point the amount of money that fossil fuel offered made it irresistible for the Republican Party to become the party of climate denial.
And that fossil fuel industry doesn't operate in its own name. It operates through many, many front groups, front groups which they play like piano keys. It amounts to corruption at epic scale.
Today, I highlight the polluters' latest corrupt trick, which is to use the powers of government, a Federal Government that is theirs now to corruptly command, to block low-cost clean energy from getting to the grid.
What is happening is that the polluting industries' expensive polluting plants are being outcompeted--outcompeted by reliable renewable clean energy like wind and solar. The polluters know that their only chance of survival against less expensive, cleaner power is to interfere using government.
So what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions of dollars into the Trump campaign. We know it is hundreds of millions. It could have been the whole billion that Trump asked for; but given how complicated dark money is, it is hard to tell. We do know they put at least hundreds of millions of dollars into the Trump campaign.
And the result is a Trump administration that is paying them back to the tune of billions of dollars. And here is the rub: They are using your money to pay them.
From the Environmental Protection Agency to the Department of the Interior to the Department of Energy, polluters have infiltrated the government itself and are using its levers to shut down their clean energy competition.
From EPA Administrator Zeldin to Interior Secretary Burgum to Energy Secretary Wright, the Trump administration first started by telling the big lie--the big lie that clean energy is more expensive than dirty, polluting fossil fuel energy. That is, in fact, a lie. But that was the opening premise, and then they went to work killing clean energy.
At EPA, Administrator Zeldin went after congressionally appropriated and obligated funds that supported the rollout of affordable clean energy. He attacked the Greenhouse Gas Reduction Fund, costing consumers potentially $52 billion in lost energy savings, money out of consumers' pockets.
He went after Solar for All funding, costing Americans as much as $350 million per year in lost energy savings--billions lost to consumers over time.
Zeldin canceled grants totaling over $1.7 billion, including congressionally
The trick is that the extra cost paid by consumers was more money in the pockets of fossil fuel polluters--Trump's big donors. That is EPA.
Over at Interior, Secretary Burgum went after the companies trying to build and operate affordable clean energy projects. Early in 2025, Burgum halted construction on two offshore wind projects off the coast of Rhode Island and New York. Later, he ordered a second halt to five offshore wind projects--the two he had already stopped that were back operational and three more projects in Massachusetts, Virginia, and New York.
That stalled nearly 6 gigawatts of clean electricity. If those gigawatts were off the grid, that would mean polluting oil, gas, and coal plants would be picking up the slack. That extra 6 gigawatts of polluting oil, gas, and coal would, in turn, mean billions of dollars to the polluters.
Thankfully, the courts stepped in again against the illegal Trump orders. And the projects continued, but they were stalled.
Now Interior has a new plan: With taxpayer money, pay off companies to walk away from offshore wind leases and, instead, invest the payoff money on fossil fuel projects--again, clean renewable energy off the grid; increased costs for consumers but more profits for polluters-- Trump's big donors. Three different companies have made these dirty deals so far. That is Interior.
Over at the Department of Energy, Secretary Wright made it his mission to ``revive''--their own word--beautiful, clean coal, even where no one seems to want it. Trump's Energy Department announced that it would provide 625 million taxpayer dollars for retrofits, recommissioning, and life-extension projects for coal plants, including at least one instance where neither the grid operator nor the local utility wanted this intervention.
DOE then announced $175 million more from taxpayers to extend the life of six coal-fired power plants in Kentucky, North Carolina, and Ohio. The Department of Energy may have illegally repurposed funds Congress had appropriated for carbon capture programs to subsidize those coal plants.
The net result of all of this--increased costs for ratepayers because of the expense of running these polluting plants but more profits in the pockets of fossil fuel polluters--Trump's big donors.
These attacks from polluters, who have infiltrated the government, drive up costs for consumers by billions. The excess costs consumers must pay flows to fossil fuel. You know how the grid works. They run the clean energy first because it is least expensive. If you can back off that low-cost clean energy, the grid has to climb up the generation stack to more and more expensive fossil fuel plants. And all that added money goes straight to fossil fuel industry pockets--from consumers to the fossil fuel industry, a crooked money pump driving up costs for consumers.
You don't even have to kill the plant. Every day that low-cost clean energy is delayed is another day that money is steered from consumers' pockets into the pockets of the owners and fuel dealers of the expensive, polluting fossil fuel units. Those billions are the polluters' rewards from Trump.
In an America deeply concerned about the cost of stuff, this corrupt extraction of money from consumers to pay off Trump's big donors won't go over well. Cost and corruption are what most concern voters, and this scheme is on the wrong side of both, which brings us to the coming election.
Trump is in desperate political trouble. Costs are exploding, and corruption is epidemic. Voters are angry. So the big polluters need to corrupt the election. A corrupt attack on our elections is the last gasp of the big polluters' and creepy billionaires' grasp on power. They would rather rule corruptly in an oligarchy than live lawfully in a democracy.
Their attack on democracy uses the corrupted Federal Government as its agent. It is an attack coming from inside our own house.
Just recently, the captured Supreme Court delivered yet another vote- suppressing service to billionaire-funded Republicans with its destruction of the Voting Rights Act in Louisiana v. Callais.
The Callais case is the culmination of a yearslong ``judicial project to destroy the Voting Rights Act,'' quoting Justice Kagan.
As we all know, in a normal world, judges are supposed to, as Roberts once said ``call balls and strikes,'' not have projects to destroy legislation crafted by Congress.
So Justice Kagan using those words is powerful. Discarding decades of precedent and ignoring mountains of factual findings made by Congress, the Court supercharged Republican partisan gerrymandering across the south. And, boy, did it work.
In just 2 weeks, we have already seen Louisiana, Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, and Mississippi begin redrawing voting maps to disenfranchise minority voters and benefit Republican candidates.
This all comes on top of the Court's other persistent mischief-- defending, for instance, billionaires' dark money flooding our elections and defending Republican red map gerrymandering.
Even here, Republicans desperately tried to pass the vote-suppressing so-called SAVE Act, supposedly based on the bogus claim that undocumented immigrants are committing widespread voter fraud. That, as experienced in States that have looked at similar legislation shows, is unequivocally false.
What would have happened is that the bill's excessive restrictions would have disenfranchised millions of legitimate voters, just not the kind that Republicans wanted voting.
As we close in now on the November election, the Trump Federal Agencies are already seizing voter files. At least 48 States have received requests for their complete voter registration lists. The Department of Justice sued 30 of those States and Washington, DC, for their refusal to turn over the voter information.
The administration even faked a criminal investigation to seize records in Fulton County, GA, after the DOJ had failed to obtain those records through civil proceedings. I won't explain that here because I have given a speech on that subject, laying out all of the mischief and shenanigans behind that search warrant.
Even the Director of National Intelligence, Tulsi Gabbard, seized voting machines in Puerto Rico.
The plot here is simple. It is to make sure the corrupt billionaires keep their control of the government so that they can use their control of the government to prop up their pollute-for-free business model and keep gouging you on cost. Well, to keep gouging Americans on cost and to keep polluting for free and to maintain their corrupt influence over the Trump administration, they have got to mess with the election. So be alert.
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, here is a simple truth: Climate change is real.
Earlier this year, I came to the floor and asked my colleagues if they could all agree on this simple scientific fact. This being the Temple of Mammon, run by fossil fuel, to no one's surprise, they could not.
So I hoped that if I broke down the reality of climate change into smaller simple truths, we could then find areas of agreement. But 2 weeks ago, when I asked on the floor if we could all agree to the simple truth that sea levels are rising, I was once again met with an objection.
So let's give it another go. Today's simple truth: The oceans are warming. Can we agree on that?
I have come to the floor several times to talk about the fact that the oceans are heating by the zettajoule. So let's talk for a minute about what a zettajoule is.
A joule is the standard unit of energy--heat energy. A zettajoule has 21 zeroes behind it. It is a spectacularly enormous number.
In the past, I have reported that our oceans are measured absorbing around 14 zettajoules of excess heat every year. If you want a comparison, you can image that that is the equivalent of seven Hiroshima atomic bombs detonating in the ocean every second. That is the size of the heat transfer, and, indeed, that is the number in this resolution.
Sadly, since we introduced this resolution, that measure has increased. Our oceans now are warming by 23 zettajoules a year. We are breaking the ocean heat content record for the ninth consecutive year.
To put that in context, the total energy consumption of all humankind on planet Earth is about one-half of a zettajoule per year--all of it, every turbine, every boiler, every engine. All of our energy is one- half of a zettajoule.
That means that, for the fossil fuel component of that one-half of a zettajoule that human beings create, we add 23 zettajoules of excess heat to the oceans. It is a 50-to-1 magnification, nearly, and it is driving ocean temperatures skyward.
Since 1955, the top 2,000 meters of the global ocean have gained approximately 372 zettajoules of heat. And, as you can see, the trajectory is that things are going to get a lot worse.
By 2100, it is projected that the rate of ocean warming will be somewhere between two and six times greater than the rate of warming at the 14-zettajoule level of annual excess heat. A world in which the ocean is warming at six times 14 zettajoules of excess heat every year rapidly becomes an unlivable world for a great many human beings.
This amount of heat has horrific effects on biodiversity and sea life, happening already--happening already. Fisherman know that fish populations are moving across international boundaries or out into the high seas, causing economic uncertainty and harm for fishermen.
Warming sea surface temperatures shrink populations of the world's most abundant phytoplankton, significantly damaging the ocean food webs on which so many humans ultimately depend. Warming and acidification combined prevents species from being able to create their calcium carbonate shells.
I have often spoken on the Senate floor about the humble pteropod--a species that I think nobody cares very much about here, but they are enormously abundant in the oceans. They have been measured as suffering extreme shell damage in the oceans. And they are not a very long trophic hop from things we do care about, like salmon. When you kick the foundation out from under a food chain, it collapses.
Harmful algal blooms grow in warmer water and become more and more severe, taking a toll on fisheries, on public health, on recreation and tourism. If you want a description of what rotting algae on beaches does to tourism, just look at the stories about what Florida has experienced.
Warmer oceans increase evaporation rates, which increases atmospheric humidity, which fuels extreme precipitation and stronger hurricanes. Those stronger, wetter storms and other climate change-induced threats crashing into insurance markets pose a roughly $25 trillion risk to the global housing market over the next 25 years. When the climate risk gets so severe that it crashes insurance markets, that cascades into mortgage markets, and that cascades into property values. That is where the $25 trillion estimate comes from. If you want to look more locally, Florida now leads the country in property value loss as the first and worst exposed to this climate risk.
The threats don't end there. The risks that stronger, wetter storms pose to agriculture and food production, insurance, tourism, infrastructure, the energy sector, and more are very, very real. Mature and responsible warnings abound.
As we noted in my last resolution, 30 percent of Americans live in coastal areas. Ten trillion dollars of goods and services are produced in coastal counties across the United States each year. There is a lot in jeopardy due to our warming oceans.
It is the simple truth: Climate change is real. Sea level rise is real. Ocean warming by the zettajoule is real. And all of it is already disrupting American lives, pocketbooks, and families, and it is getting steadily worse.
Mr. President, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation be discharged from further consideration and the Senate now proceed to S. Res. 552; further, that the resolution be agreed to, that the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
I was down here a couple weeks ago when the Senator from Rhode Island had a similar type of what he called a simple-truth resolution, but it is not that simple.
The purpose of his putting forth this resolution is he wants to do something about it. I am not a climate change denier. I am just not a climate change alarmist. I am not subscribing to Chicken Little scare tactics here.
The problem with trying to do something about climate change is there is nothing we can really do to impact it. We have spent, according to testimony in the Budget Committee when the Senator from Rhode Island was chair, $5 to $6 trillion globally. I saw a recent speech given by Secretary of Energy Wright saying that we had spent about $10 trillion trying to hold back the tides, trying to address this climate change emergency--which, by the way, two Nobel laureate physicists, Dr. Ivar Giaever and Dr. John Clauser, signed on to a ``World Climate Declaration: There is no Climate Emergency.'' There isn't.
What we have done, though, is we have taken a $6 to $10 trillion cost--the largest malinvestment in human history--and we obviously haven't even dented climate change because we still have the Chicken Littles here claiming a climate change emergency.
So, again, this isn't a simple truth. The simple truth is, yes, climate has always changed. It always will. And I would argue the simple truth is there is not much we can do about it. There is no consensus in terms of the extent that man may impact the climate. We certainly can impact the environment, and we all are--from my standpoint, we are all environmentalists. We want a clean environment. But just think what we could have done with that $6 to $10 trillion rather than spending it--wasting it--trying to hold back the tide.
Mr. President, I would just note for the record that the University of Wisconsin in the good Senator's home State teaches the science of climate change, teaches courses with names like ``Climate and Climate Change,'' ``Climate Change, Human and Planetary Health,'' ``Climate Change Ecology,'' ``Ice and Climate Dynamics,'' ``Climate Change and Health Disparities,'' ``Soils and Climate Change,'' ``Climate Change Medicine,'' ``Climatic Environments of the Past,'' ``Agricultural Weather and Climate,'' ``Climate Action Planning: Sustainable Transportation,'' ``Case Studies Exploring Infrastructure, Sustainability and Climate Change,'' ``Climate Change Governance,'' ``Climate Change, Sustainability, and Education,'' and as a lawyer, I would add ``Climate Change, Human Rights, and the Environment.''
I would strongly recommend that all of my colleagues who are unfamiliar with what is happening in the real world with climate change go to their home State universities that teach the stuff and listen to what their home State universities have to say.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule XXII, the postcloture time with respect to the Warsh nomination be expired and the Senate vote on confirmation of the Warsh nomination at 2 p.m. tomorrow; further, if confirmed, the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nominations en bloc: Calendar No. 719 through Calendar No. 724, with the exception of Rear Adm. Douglas L. Williams, Calendar No. 725 through Calendar No. 726, and all nominations on the Secretary's desk in the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, and Navy, with the exception of PN681-4, PN835-2, PN919, and PN925; that the nominations be confirmed en bloc; the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order to any of the nominations; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The nominations considered and confirmed are as follows:
On page S2224, May 12, 2026, second column, the following appears: Col. Ronald Iammartino, Jar.
The online Record has been corrected to read: Col. Ronald Iammartino, Jr.
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, section 36(b) of the Arms Export Control Act requires that Congress receive prior notification of certain proposed arms sales as defined by that statute. Upon such notification, the Congress has 30 calendar days during which the sale may be reviewed. The provision stipulates that, in the Senate, the notification of proposed sales shall be sent to the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
In keeping with the committee's intention to see that relevant information is still available to the full Senate, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the notifications that have been received. If the cover letter references a classified annex, then such an annex is available to all Senators in the office of the Foreign Relations Committee, room SD-423.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Mr. President, section 36(b) of the Arms Export Control Act requires that Congress receive prior notification of certain proposed arms sales as defined by that statute. Upon such notification, the Congress has 30 calendar days during which the sale may be reviewed. The provision stipulates that, in the Senate, the notification of proposed sales shall be sent to the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
In keeping with the committee's intention to see that relevant information is still available to the full Senate, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the notifications that have been received. If the cover letter references a classified annex, then such an annex is available to all
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Mr. President, section 36(b) of the Arms Export Control Act requires that Congress receive prior notification of certain proposed arms sales as defined by that statute. Upon such notification, the Congress has 30 calendar days during which the sale may be reviewed. The provision stipulates that, in the Senate, the notification of proposed sales shall be sent to the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
In keeping with the committee's intention to see that relevant information is still available to the full Senate, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the notifications that have been received. If the cover letter references a classified annex, then such an annex is available to all Senators in the office of the Foreign Relations Committee, room SD-423.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
DETERMINATION UNDER SECTION 36(b)(1) OF THE ARMS EXPORT CONTROL ACT
kuwait, qatar, the united arab emirates, and israel, under section
Government of Qatar--PATRIOT Missile Replenishment of National
United Arab Emirates--Advanced Precision Kill Weapons System-II
DETERMINATION UNDER SECTION 36(b)(1) OF THE ARMS EXPORT CONTROL ACT
KUWAIT, QATAR, THE UNITED ARAB EMIRATES, AND ISRAEL, UNDER SECTION
Mr. President, section 36(b) of the Arms Export Control Act requires that Congress receive prior notification of certain proposed arms sales as defined by that statute. Upon such notification, the Congress has 30 calendar days during which the sale may be reviewed. The provision stipulates that, in the Senate, the notification of proposed sales shall be sent to the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
In keeping with the committee's intention to see that relevant information is still available to the full Senate, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record the notifications that have been received. If the cover letter references a classified annex, then such an annex is available to all Senators in the office of the Foreign Relations Committee, room SD-423.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to a true patriot, a dedicated public servant, and a lifelong defender of the United States: Major General Arthur Holmes.
Major General Holmes celebrates his 95th birthday this month. As such, I would like to honor his distinguished career of service to the United States. Major General Holmes was a founding member of my U.S. Service Academy Advisory Board and served over 20 years as its leader. In that capacity, he played a key role in advising me on the nominations of the young men and women who will enter the service academies and become the future military leaders of our Armed Forces. Major General Holmes carried out his duties with thoughtfulness, integrity, and a deep understanding of the qualities that are required to serve our country in this significant way. I am grateful to him for his two decades of service on my advisory board.
Our country owes Major General Holmes immense thanks for his devoted service to our community and Nation in a myriad of ways.
Arthur Holmes, Jr., was born on May 12, 1931, in Decatur, AL. He earned his bachelor's degree in chemistry from Hampton University and his master's degree in business administration from Kent State University in Ohio. Major General Holmes is also a graduate of the Naval War College.
Major General Holmes began his military career through the Reserve Officers' Training Corps (ROTC) Program and was commissioned as a second lieutenant in 1952. He served in both the Korean and Vietnam wars, holding various positions, including maintenance battalion commander, member of the Logistics Directorate for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and chief of ordnance branch at the U.S. Army Personnel Center. Major General Holmes made history as the first combat service support officer to serve as executive officer to the Secretary to the Army. Holmes later commanded the U.S. Army Tank Automotive Command. He retired as a commanding general, earning the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star Medal, and the Distinguished Service Medal.
Major General Holmes also contributed 12 years of tremendous service to Maryland's Montgomery County. He served as the director of Go Montgomery!--an agency dedicated to implementing the county's master transportation plan--before assuming the role as director for the department of transportation. Notably, he worked to significantly improve transportation infrastructure surrounding Walter Reed National Military Medical Center after the Base Realignment and Closure Act of 2005.
In all his endeavors, Major General Holmes has been continually strengthened by the faithful partnership of his wife Wilma Holmes, with whom he has enjoyed 47 years of marriage. He is also supported by his daughters Deborah Cook and Sharon Key; his stepdaughters Sharon and Ricki Fairley; and six loving grandchildren--all of whom are his pride and joy.
In short, Major General Arthur Holmes is an American hero. I am honored to call him not only my constituent but also my friend, and I am truly grateful for all that he has done to make a difference in our community and in our Nation. I had the privilege of his leadership on my academy advisory board, and I know that his contributions will continue to guide the board in the years to come. I ask my colleagues to join me in thanking this outstanding American for all that he has done for our country.
Mr. President, as chair of the Senate Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship, each week I recognize an outstanding Iowa small business that exemplifies the American entrepreneurial spirit. This week, it is my privilege to honor Interpower Corporation of Mahaska County, IA, as the Senate Small Business of the Week.
In 1975, Bob Wersen founded Panel Components Corporation in Berkley, CA, that specialized in supplying power systems. During a recession in the electronics industry, Bob strategically shifted the business to a mid-size customer base and relocated to Oskaloosa, IA, in 1993. Over the next 10 years, the business steadily grew and opened additional offices in Ames, Lamoni, and the United Kingdom. In 2004, Bob renamed Panel Components Corporation to Interpower Corporation. Today, more than 50 years later, Interpower Corporation remains dedicated to simplifying how customers design, build, and maintain products across global markets. The company strives to meet all power sourcing needs, supplying country specific plugs to hospital-grade products. Their mission is to be the premier supplier of power system components for worldwide markets.
Bob Wersen continues to serve as president, overseeing 50 employees who
Outside of serving their clients, Interpower Corporation lends a helping hand in the Oskaloosa community. They host blood drives and provide students with internships through partnerships with Oskaloosa High School and William Penn University. They also participate in charities throughout the county showing their dedication to their community.
It is my honor to recognize Bob Wersen and the entire Interpower Corporation team for their outstanding contributions and presence in their community. I look forward to their continued success and wish them the very best in the years to come.
Mr. President, today I acknowledge and congratulate the International Hearing Society, IHS, on their 75th anniversary. IHS is headquartered in Farmington Hills, MI, and is responsible for representing the Nation's 10,000 hearing aid specialists. IHS and its members have been serving the millions of Americans with hearing loss since 1951.
IHS's work has supported countless patients and providers, in Michigan and across the country, by empowering hearing healthcare professionals with education, specialized training, and professional development.
IHS's commitment to the hearing aid community is unmatched and their passionate work is appreciated in Michigan and beyond. Congratulations on 75 years of advocating for education, growth, and innovation in hearing healthcare.
Mr. President, I rise today to recognize and congratulate Michael A. ``Mike'' Gordon on his induction into the Order of the Long Leaf Pine, one of the highest honors in the State of North Carolina.
Mike Gordon has spent his life in service to his community and our State. He served for 24 years in the North Carolina Army National Guard, retiring as a senior noncommissioned officer, where he demonstrated strong leadership, discipline, and a deep commitment to duty. Those same qualities carried into his civilian life, where he became a pillar of the Archer Lodge community.
In Johnston County, Mike has led in many capacities. He dedicated nearly two decades to the Archer Lodge Volunteer Fire Department, including 10 years as president, and also served as president of the Johnston County Firemen's Association. He went on to serve as mayor of Archer Lodge from 2009 to 2018, helping guide the town through a period of growth while preserving its strong sense of community. As the town's first administrator, he helped establish the structure and operations that continue to serve residents today.
Mike's commitment extends well beyond public office. He has spent more than 30 years volunteering with the Archer Lodge Community Center and played a key role in the creation of the Archer Lodge Water District, supporting critical infrastructure and public health in the community. He has also remained active in honoring veterans and supporting local families and is a longtime member of White Oak Baptist Church.
The Order of the Long Leaf Pine is reserved for individuals who have made a lasting and meaningful impact on North Carolina. Mike Gordon's lifetime of service reflects that standard in every respect. I congratulate Mike on this well-deserved recognition and thank him for his continued service to Johnston County and the State of North Carolina.
<bullet> TRIBUTE TO BRITTANY CLARK Mr. WICKER. Mr. President, in January, Mississippi endured a historically catastrophic ice storm. At the height of the bad weather, nearly 90 percent of north...
Mr. President, in January, Mississippi endured a historically catastrophic ice storm. At the height of the bad weather, nearly 90 percent of north Mississippi had lost power. The situation demanded swift thinking and a massive response. As always, State and local authorities responded--but so did everyday Mississippians, who stepped up to assist with recovery.
One Mississippian responded with particular fervor. Brittany Clark, a family nurse Practitioner and mother, has long dedicated herself to serving her community. Through volunteerism and other acts of service, she has built a reputation for compassion, leadership, and reliability in times of crisis. During Winter Storm Fern, she built on that legacy.
With remarkable courage and resourcefulness, Brittany mobilized critical relief efforts. She ensured that vulnerable communities had access to essential supplies, beginning first with those most at risk. By prioritizing the elderly and families without adequate resources, she ensured that none slipped through the cracks. Because of her efforts, many Mississippians found safety, warmth, and support during a time of dire need.
Brittany grew up in Pontotoc, MS, and later acquired her bachelor's and master's degrees in nursing from the Mississippi University for Women. She and her husband Trent Clark reside in New Albany with their two children.
Brittany's action during Winter Storm Fern inspired others to step forward and serve, strengthening community bonds and contributing to a more resilient Mississippi. She helped reflect the very best of our State. I join my fellow Mississippians in expressing deep gratitude for Brittany's outstanding work.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the text of the bill be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the text of the bill was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
S. 4501. A bill to bar aliens from admission to the United States to give birth on United States soil or remaining in the United States to undermine the sovereignty of the United States through birth tourism; to the Committee on the Judiciary.
Mr. President, on another matter, I am introducing a bill
In the United States, we grant citizenship to virtually everyone born on U.S. soil except for children born to diplomats and a few other categories. And indeed, there is a case now pending in the U.S. Supreme Court to determine what the breadth and depth of what that birthright citizenship should look like under the Constitution.
But America is one of the few countries to allow individuals to obtain citizenship at birth regardless of parentage or immigration status, and our generosity was never meant to be exploited by our adversaries.
You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe that some of these individuals may even use this cover of citizenship in order to engage in espionage against the United States, indeed, especially the People's Republic of China.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, more than 30,000 births in the United States each year are to women on tourist visas, while many more are born to women who are here illegally or people who simply overstay their temporary visa.
Worse, entire cottage industries have sprung up over the past several decades designed to actually help facilitate foreign nationals to visit the United States on a temporary basis solely to obtain the coveted privilege of U.S. citizenship for their children.
In 2020, a report from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee found that several companies--these are businesses-- several companies existed to assist individuals trying to exploit America's generosity in this regard. One such company, Ada International, worked largely with Chinese individuals while another was known as Miami Mama, which specialized in helping Russian nationals secure U.S. citizenship for their children.
When we start to see foreign nationals securing U.S. citizenship for their children but with no intention of staying here or actually assimilating into our society and pledging allegiance to our Constitution and laws, it becomes clear that something is terribly wrong.
Citizenship in this country, the greatest country in the world, is a great privilege. And the practice of birth tourism undermines what it means to be an American.
This is why I am introducing the BACK OFF Act which will make aliens involved in birth tourism inadmissible and deportable from the United States.
This bill would also require the Department of Homeland Security to detain aliens who commit crimes related to birth tourism. It would require anyone engaged in this practice who entered the United States from Mexico or Canada to return to those countries for legal proceedings while they are pending, which would prevent them from actually giving birth here in the United States while they await the decision of their case.
And it would also prevent people from using the Biden-era Visa Waiver Program to give birth in U.S. territories. This legislation would create new criminal penalties and enforcement actions against those running birth tourism rings, including new criminal penalties under the Immigration and Nationality Act for those who facilitate this practice.
Finally, it would create a task force to investigate and refer cases to the Department of Justice for prosecution involving individuals and organizations that are involved in birth tourism schemes.
There is no greater privilege in the world than to be a citizen of this great country, and we must treat U.S. citizenship as such. But the practice of birth tourism trivializes this great privilege, and I hope the Senate will adopt my legislation to crack down on this atrocity.
Mr. President, on another matter, I am introducing a bill
In the United States, we grant citizenship to virtually everyone born on U.S. soil except for children born to diplomats and a few other categories. And indeed, there is a case now pending in the U.S. Supreme Court to determine what the breadth and depth of what that birthright citizenship should look like under the Constitution.
But America is one of the few countries to allow individuals to obtain citizenship at birth regardless of parentage or immigration status, and our generosity was never meant to be exploited by our adversaries.
You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe that some of these individuals may even use this cover of citizenship in order to engage in espionage against the United States, indeed, especially the People's Republic of China.
According to the Center for Immigration Studies, more than 30,000 births in the United States each year are to women on tourist visas, while many more are born to women who are here illegally or people who simply overstay their temporary visa.
Worse, entire cottage industries have sprung up over the past several decades designed to actually help facilitate foreign nationals to visit the United States on a temporary basis solely to obtain the coveted privilege of U.S. citizenship for their children.
In 2020, a report from the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee found that several companies--these are businesses-- several companies existed to assist individuals trying to exploit America's generosity in this regard. One such company, Ada International, worked largely with Chinese individuals while another was known as Miami Mama, which specialized in helping Russian nationals secure U.S. citizenship for their children.
When we start to see foreign nationals securing U.S. citizenship for their children but with no intention of staying here or actually assimilating into our society and pledging allegiance to our Constitution and laws, it becomes clear that something is terribly wrong.
Citizenship in this country, the greatest country in the world, is a great privilege. And the practice of birth tourism undermines what it means to be an American.
This is why I am introducing the BACK OFF Act which will make aliens involved in birth tourism inadmissible and deportable from the United States.
This bill would also require the Department of Homeland Security to detain aliens who commit crimes related to birth tourism. It would require anyone engaged in this practice who entered the United States from Mexico or Canada to return to those countries for legal proceedings while they are pending, which would prevent them from actually giving birth here in the United States while they await the decision of their case.
And it would also prevent people from using the Biden-era Visa Waiver Program to give birth in U.S. territories. This legislation would create new criminal penalties and enforcement actions against those running birth tourism rings, including new criminal penalties under the Immigration and Nationality Act for those who facilitate this practice.
Finally, it would create a task force to investigate and refer cases to the Department of Justice for prosecution involving individuals and organizations that are involved in birth tourism schemes.
There is no greater privilege in the world than to be a citizen of this great country, and we must treat U.S. citizenship as such. But the practice of birth tourism trivializes this great privilege, and I hope the Senate will adopt my legislation to crack down on this atrocity.
Mr. President, I have six requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.
Pursuant to rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:
The Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, May 12, 2026, at 3 p.m., to conduct a business meeting
The Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet in closed and open session during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, May 12, 2026, at 9:30 a.m.
The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, May 12, 2026, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing.
The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, May 12, 2026, at 3 p.m., to conduct a closed hearing.
The Subcommittee on Airland of the Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, May 12, 2026, at 4:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing.
The Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities of the Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet in open and closed session during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, May 12, 2026, at 3:30 p.m.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent for the following interns in my office to be granted floor privileges until August 7, 2026: Olivia Amason, Lewis Carter IV, Braden Baker, Anna Dickey, Betsy Howard, Jamison Duncan, Carl Evans, Mary Jane Bussian, Georgia Hairston, Ella Grace Tippins, Henry Lapeyrouse, Sadie Leland, Carter McCullough, Phillip McPhail, Jane Reindhart, and Emma Jane Stricklin.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the concurrent resolution be agreed to and the motion 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 concurrent resolution (H. Con. Res. 73) was agreed to.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate now proceed to the en bloc consideration of the following resolutions, which are at the desk: S. Res. 725 and S. Res. 726.
There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the resolutions en bloc.
I ask unanimous consent that the resolutions be agreed to, the preambles be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table, all en bloc.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The resolutions were agreed to.
The preambles were agreed to.
(The resolutions, with their preambles, are printed in today's Record under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Wednesday, May 13; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, and the Senate be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each; further, that if Senator Merkley or his designee makes a motion to discharge S.J. Res. 163, the Senate vote on the motion to discharge at 11:30 a.m. tomorrow; that following disposition of S.J. Res. 163, notwithstanding rule XXII, the Senate vote on the cloture motion with respect to the motion to proceed to S. Res. 526; that if cloture is invoked on the motion to proceed to S. Res. 526, all postcloture time be expired, and the Senate vote on adoption of the motion to proceed at a time to be determined by the majority leader in consultation with the Democratic leader, no earlier than Thursday, May 14; further, that at 2 p.m., the Senate proceed to executive session to execute the order with respect to the Warsh nomination, and that following disposition of the Warsh nomination, the Senate resume legislative session.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
