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25Senate Resolution 738: Recognizing the Significance of Jewish American Heritage Month and Calling on Elected Officials and Civil Society Leaders to Counter Antisemitism
Eighteen bills and four resolutions were introduced, as follows: S. 4560-4577, S.J. Res. 192, and S. Res. 738- 740.
Pages S2372-73
Measures Reported
S. 736, to increase the penalty for prohibited provision of a phone in a correctional facility. S. 825, to require the Attorney General to propose a program for making treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder and acute stress disorder available to public safety officers, with amendments. S. 3041, to allow the U.S. Marshals Service to assist in certain Tribal criminal matters, with an amendment in the nature of a substitute. S. 3897, to revise administrative procedures relating to public safety officers' death benefits, with an amendment in the nature of a substitute. S. 3966, to prohibit the enforcement of certain contractual clauses that restrict disclosure of sexual abuse of minors. S. 4394, to amend the Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act of 1968 to improve the COPS program with respect to training command-level personnel, with an amendment in the nature of a substitute.
Page S2372
Measures Passed
Jewish American Heritage Month: Senate agreed to S. Res. 738, recognizing the significance of Jewish American Heritage Month and calling on elected officials and civil society leaders to counter antisemitism.
Pages S2350-51
Honoring the life of Senator John Seymour
Senate agreed to S. Res. 739, honoring the life and legacy of John Seymour, the late Senator for the State of California.
Page S2381
Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month
Senate agreed to S. Res. 740, expressing support for the designation of May 2026 as ``Motorcycle Safety Awareness Month''.
Page S2381
Measures Considered
Hostilities Within or Against the Islamic Republic of Iran: By 50 yeas to 47 nays (Vote No. 129), Senate agreed to the motion to discharge the Committee on Foreign Relations from further consideration of S.J. Res. 185, 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, pursuant to 50 U.S.C. 1546a and in accordance with section 601(b) of the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act, and the measure was placed on the calendar.
Pages S2352-62
Appointments
United States Commission on International Religious Freedom: The Chair, on behalf of the President pro tempore, upon the recommendation of the Democratic Leader, pursuant to Public Law 105-292, as amended by Public Law 106-55, Public Law 107-228, and Public Law 112-75, appointed the following individuals to the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom: Rachel K. Laser of the District of Columbia (reappointment) and Gunisha Kaur of New York.
Page S2381
Rikhye Nomination: Agreement
Senate resumed consideration of the nomination of Evan Rikhye, of the Virgin Islands, to be Judge for the District Court of the Virgin Islands for a term of ten years.
Pages S2351-52
During consideration of this nomination today, Senate also took the following action
By 50 yeas to 47 nays (Vote No. EX. 128), Senate agreed to the motion to close further debate on the nomination.
Pages S2351-52
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 a time to be determined by the Majority Leader in consultation with the Democratic Leader, on Wednesday, May 20, 2026.
Page S2352
A unanimous-consent agreement was reached providing that at 11:15 a.m., on Wednesday, May 20, 2026, Senate execute the previous order in relation to the nomination.
Page S2381
Nominations Confirmed
Senate confirmed the following nominations: By 52 yeas to 38 nays (Vote No. EX. 127), Sheria Akins Clarke, of South Carolina, to be United States District Judge for the District of South Carolina.
Pages S2349-50, S2351, S2381
During consideration of this nomination today, Senate also took the following action
By 57 yeas to 38 nays (Vote No. EX 126), Senate agreed to the motion to close further debate on the nomination.
Page S2349
1 Navy nomination in the rank of admiral.
Pages S2362, S2381
Statements on Introduced Bills/Resolutions:
Pages S2375-81
Record Votes
Four record votes were taken today. (Total--129)
Pages S2349, S2351-52, S2355
Adjournment
Senate convened at 10 a.m. and adjourned, as a further mark of respect to the memory of the late John Seymour, Senator for the State of California, in accordance with S. Res. 739, at 7:03 p.m., until 10 a.m. on Wednesday, May 20, 2026. (For Senate's program, see the remarks of the Acting Majority Leader in today's Record on page S2381.)
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: 37 of 110 spoken turns were found. Turns without a time are still listed; they just can't seek.
Mr. President, you might wonder how this Senator from Iowa gets involved in issues of foster youth.
Thirty years ago, I hired a staffer from Urbandale, IA, by the name of Sarah Gesiriech. Sarah now works for the First Lady in the White House on this issue of foster care.
On page S2343, May 19, 2026, second column, the following appears: Thirty years ago, I hired a staffer from Urbandale, IA, by the name of Sara Gesiriech. Sara now works for the First Lady in the White House on this issue of foster care.
The online Record has been corrected to read: Thirty years ago, I hired a staffer from Urbandale, IA, by the name of Sarah Gesiriech. Sarah now works for the First Lady in the White House on this issue of foster care.
lot of things wrong with the foster care system in the United States.S o she said to me: Do you care if I work on that issue as well as the other issues you hired me to work on?
So that is the story behind my being involved with foster care issues.
You learn to listen to these kids who go from home to home maybe three times a year and change schools three times a year. If you listen to them, they say: I would like to have a mom and dad. I would like to have a permanent home. And that touches your heart.
The need to support children in America who want a mom and dad is more important now than it was even 30 years ago.
In 2025, there was an increase in the number of children who entered and were in foster care compared to 2024. Now, that increase is not the case in each and every State. For example, in Iowa, there was a slight decrease in the number of children in foster care from 2024 to 2025, demonstrating Iowa's success in supporting children and families.
At the Federal level, I am committed to exploring policy solutions that improve long-term outcomes for children in foster care. So the bill that I am introducing--the bipartisan bill that goes by the title of Recruiting Families Using Data Act--modifies decades-old Federal requirements and empowers States to develop family partnership plans that incorporate best practices with quality data. By integrating quality data and best practices, States are better equipped to address the needs of children in their care.
Today, I am releasing the discussion draft of legislation to support older youth in foster care. I do that by providing an opportunity for States to expand on services that help these young people achieve independence.
My draft legislation would also require the Government Accountability Office to study the funding formulas used to allocate Federal funds to States as part of the John H. Chafee Foster Care Program for Successful Transition to Adulthood. That is a long name for a program written 25 or 30 years ago by former Senator Chafee of Rhode Island, who was also very much interested in this issue.
In January of 2025, the Government Accountability Office published a report that studied how States use the Chafee program to support older foster youth who are transitioning out of foster care, which is natural when they reach a certain age. Sometimes it is 18. Sometimes it might be a little bit older. Aging out of foster care is a traumatic time for these kids.
I asked for this report after it was brought to my attention that Chafee dollars were being returned while also hearing that not all eligible youth were being served by the program. As a cofounder and cochair of the Senate Caucus on Foster Youth, I continually hear of the challenges that foster youth face as they approach adulthood and how they can be better supported.
By the way, I would like to thank Senator Lujan of New Mexico for his
Now, after getting this report, I look forward to getting feedback on how Federal programs can encourage foster youth to achieve self- sufficiency. We have a responsibility to protect children and their well-being.
As we recognize the month of May as being National Foster Care Month, it is my hope that we can continue to find solutions to see that every child has the chance to build a bright future and an opportunity for permanent and loving homes.
I want to congratulate First Lady Trump for her efforts in this area and in her recently holding a hearing in the House of Representatives on this issue.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, yesterday marked 500 days of the Republican majority here in the U.S. Senate, and what a busy 500 days it has been. We have taken close to 800 votes since last January, confirmed just under 500 nominees to posts across the Federal Government and judiciary, and we have passed bills out of the Senate and into law to make life better for the American people.
When Republicans took over last year, we set out to address cost-of- living issues and put more money in Americans' pockets. We lifted costly Biden-era regulations, from rules that would have driven up the cost of household appliances to rules that would have forced Americans into expensive electric vehicles.
At the start of this year, we took action to drive down the cost of prescription drugs at the pharmacy counter. In March, the Senate passed the 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act--a bill that cuts redtape that has prevented the construction of new housing and kept too many Americans waiting to realize the American dream of home ownership. I am proud of the broad bipartisan support this bill received here in the Senate, and I hope these commonsense reforms will make it to the President's desk in short order.
Lifting costly regulations and taking action to lower the cost of prescriptions and housing are significant actions, but what I consider to be the most consequential action not just of this majority but of my entire time in the Senate is the Working Families Tax Cut. And I say ``most consequential'' because of the permanent tax relief Republicans delivered in this bill--tax relief that puts more money in hard-working Americans' pockets. That was the centerpiece of this bill, and a whole lot of Americans saw that last month when they filed their tax returns and saw a significantly higher refund.
Hard-working Americans were able to take advantage of permanently lower tax rates, an increased standard deduction, and the 2,200 child tax credit. Six million workers deducted income from tips, 25 million workers took advantage of no tax on overtime, and 30 million seniors were able to reduce their tax burden with the $6,000 senior deduction created by this bill.
The Working Families Tax Cut lets hard-working people keep more of their hard-earned money. It also strengthens America's small businesses and family farms and ranches. Lower tax rates and the 199A small business deduction free up money for them to invest in their operations and their employees. Investment incentives like 100 percent bonus depreciation and immediate research and development expensing help them upgrade and innovate. And a lot of family business owners, farmers, and ranchers breathe a sigh of relief when this bill passed because it protects them from a potentially devastating death tax bill, not to mention the costly estate planning expenses that come along with this tax.
These measures are part of Republicans' focus on strengthening America's economy. An important part of that is strengthening our agriculture economy. America's farms and ranches have faced some serious headwinds lately. Higher input costs, depressed commodity prices, higher interest rates, and natural disasters and disease are just some of the challenges ag producers have faced in recent years. So Republicans set out to deliver some much needed relief to the ag sector.
In the Working Families Tax Cut, we made lasting reforms to strengthen the farm safety net. Thanks to this bill, reference prices for commodity programs more closely reflect the actual market conditions farmers are dealing with. We bolstered crop insurance, and we improved the Livestock Indemnity Program and Livestock Forage Disaster Program to help ranchers and other livestock producers through challenging times. But we still have more to do to strengthen the agricultural economy. Senators Boozman and Hoeven are working on a farm relief package to address the challenges facing farmers right now.
Allowing the year-round sale of E15 fuel is another priority. Year- round E15 is something that helps not only the ag economy but the overall economy by reducing fuel costs and allowing for more homegrown energy. The House has passed a bill to allow year-round E15, and we will be having discussions on how to accomplish that goal in the Senate in the near future.
Republicans have also made it a priority to combat waste, fraud, and abuse in the Federal Government. The Working Families Tax Cut included a number of reforms to focus Federal dollars on those most in need, guard against the abuse of taxpayer funds, and hold States accountable for the Federal funding they receive.
New measures in the law prevent noncitizens from receiving Federal healthcare and nutrition benefits and refocus those programs on serving American citizens. The law requires States to be good stewards of Federal programs like Medicaid and nutrition assistance, and it takes aim at duplicative enrollment in Federal healthcare programs, which CMS estimates costs taxpayers as much as $14 billion per year.
Earlier this year, President Trump signed into law Senator Kennedy's bill that helped prevent the payment of Federal benefits to deceased individuals. And after revelations of widespread fraud in the State of Minnesota at the end of last year, we confirmed the first-ever Assistant Attorney General for National Fraud Enforcement.
Then there are our actions to ensure Washington is a better steward of taxpayer dollars. The Working Families Tax Cut prevented Americans' tax dollars from funding big abortion providers for 1 year. Last summer, Republicans passed a rescissions package that targeted funding that had gone to some egregious misuses of taxpayer dollars, like a pride parade in Lesotho and promoting vegan food in Zambia. We continue to work to ensure that taxpayer dollars are not being wasted.
I said at the outset of this Congress that I wanted to restore regular-order consideration of appropriation bills, and we were largely able to accomplish that goal, even after Democrats tried to derail the process with the longest government shutdown in history this past fall.
This year, we were able to pass 11 of the 12 full appropriations bills into law, and many of those bills actually spent less money than if we had just put spending on autopilot through a continuing resolution.
The only reason we haven't passed 12 out of 12 full appropriations bills this year is that Democrat colleagues apparently don't believe in securing our Nation's borders. Their refusal to provide even a dollar for the Border Patrol in this year's DHS funding bill is ample evidence of that.
Republicans most certainly believe in border security. In fact, addressing the dangerous situation at our southern border was one of our top priorities when we took over last year. The first bill we passed was the Laken Riley Act to ensure that illegal immigrants who committed certain crimes are not allowed back on our streets. We passed the HALT Fentanyl Act to give law enforcement the tools it needs to go after this deadly poison, much of which flows across our southern border.
The Working Families Tax Cut made a generational investment in border security, and we are seeing the results of
Democrats are clearly trying to undo that progress, but Republicans won't let that happen. As soon as this week, we will take up a bill to fully fund Border Patrol and Immigration and Customs Enforcement for the remainder of the Trump administration and ensure the Democrats cannot put our Nation's security in jeopardy by defunding law enforcement.
I mentioned earlier that we have confirmed almost 500 civilian nominees since last January, and that has been in the face of a historic--historic--level of obstruction from Democrats. After months and months of unprecedented Democrat obstruction, last year, Republicans took action to restore the Senate's tradition of confirming largely noncontroversial nominees in batches. Last night, we confirmed the fourth package of Trump nominees and effectively eliminated the backlog of nominees awaiting confirmation.
Speaking of Democrat obstruction, Democrats have also blocked several pieces of commonsense legislation here in the Senate. They blocked Senator Tuberville's Protection of Women and Girls in Sports Act, which would have simply prevented biological men from competing in women's sports. They blocked Senator Lankford's Born-Alive Abortion Survivors Protection Act, which would have required that babies who survive abortion are given the same level of care as babies born at the same gestational age. Democrats wouldn't even let us debate these bills--I have to imagine because their position is completely indefensible.
Then, just recently, Democrats blocked the SAVE America Act. We had a robust debate on this bill for several weeks. Republicans gave Democrats opportunities to support the whole bill, and we had standalone votes on some of the individual and very commonsense components of the bill: requiring proof of citizenship to register to vote, requiring a photo ID to vote, protecting children from gender transition surgeries, keeping biological men out of women's sports. Democrats are on the record against all of it, and we will be sure the American people know that Democrats are blocking commonsense policies that have broad support from the American people.
I have mentioned a number of accomplishments this morning, but there is more work to be done. Last week, the Banking Committee advanced the CLARITY Act--a market structure bill for cryptocurrencies that builds on the GENIUS Act that became law last year and which was the first- ever crypto bill passed into law.
I expect the Senate will also take action on an artificial intelligence bill this year that builds on the AI framework the White House has put out. Legislation dealing with name, image, and likeness in college athletics is also on the agenda, as is legislation ensuring continued funding for our Nation's transportation infrastructure.
In the near term, we will also need to extend FISA and ensure that this critical national security program does not go dark. We will soon begin work on the fiscal year 2027 National Defense Authorization Act, which will continue Republicans' efforts to modernize America's military, and, of course, we will continue to prioritize efforts to make life easier for hard-working Americans.
Mr. President, 500 days ago, Republicans had a long to-do list. We have checked a lot of things off, but we still have more to do, and we are not about to take our foot off the gas.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, Donald Trump looks at the Federal Government and sees one thing: a cash register full of Americans' money--and he keeps trying to ring himself up.
Nearly $2 billion for his MAGA slush fund, a billion more for his gilded ballroom, and not one serious plan to lower costs for families forced to pay the bill.
This week, Trump showed us again exactly what his Presidency is about: not helping Americans, not lowering costs, not making life easier for working families; but finding new ways to turn taxpayer dollars into political payouts, personal perks, and vanity projects.
Just look at this nearly $2 billion slush fund. Just look at it. It is enough to make you cringe.
Trump settled with himself in his own lawsuit against his own government to funnel taxpayer money to his political allies, January 6 insurrectionists, and far-right loyalists.
Let me say that again: Donald Trump settled with himself in his own lawsuit--have you ever heard of something like this?--against his own government to take taxpayer dollars to his political allies, stuff it in their pockets, and, for all we know, his pocket.
Trump didn't bother making a deal with the Devil. He just made a deal with himself to set up this MAGA slush fund.
That is not justice. That is not law and order. That is corruption-- corruption in broad daylight--no disguise, no shame, no attempt to hide it.
And this is the through line of the Trump Presidency: If there is taxpayer money on the table, Donald Trump wants a big cut of it.
Trump wants to fill his coffers. That is why he created this MAGA slush fund. That is why he keeps demanding taxpayers bankroll his billion-dollar ballroom, and it is why his family business always seems to be lurking around the business of government.
Americans are working harder than ever just to make ends meet, while Donald Trump schemes to turn their tax dollars into personal payouts and vanity projects.
And where--where--are the Republicans, here in the Senate and elsewhere? Are they going to stand up for the taxpayer, or are they so afraid of Donald Trump that they will let him raid the Treasury in broad daylight?
The American people are watching, and they will remember who fought to lower their costs and who helped Donald Trump line his pockets.
Mr. President, since January, Democrats have refused to fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement; they have refused to fund U.S. Border Patrol. Month after month after month, Democrats have tried to defund law enforcement in America. When illegal immigrant criminals roam freely, our communities are less safe.
The Biden administration tried an open borders approach. From Fairfax County, VA, to San Francisco, CA, Democrats' sanctuary cities all across America continue this dangerous and deadly experiment. Consider the families of Laken Riley, Stephanie Minter, and Sheridan Gorman. These families are mourning the tragic loss of their loved ones, each murdered by an illegal immigrant criminal.
It is time for Congress to fully fund Immigration and Customs Enforcement. ICE and Border Patrol keep our communities safe. They protect our country at great risk to themselves personally. The work they do is important, it is urgent, and it is necessary. And the results are undeniable. For the last 12 months, absolutely zero illegal immigrants have been released into our communities through the Biden catch-and-release program.
Republicans are going to make sure that our Border Patrol is fully funded--all of it. This week, the Senate will vote on the SECURE America Act. The SECURE America Act will keep our Nation strong, and it will keep our communities safe. The SECURE America Act funds ICE and Border Patrol. It does it for 3 full years. It builds on the border security successes of the Laken Riley Act, the HALT Fentanyl Act, and the Working Families Tax Cut law. Most importantly, the SECURE America Act guarantees Democrats cannot defund American security during the administration of President Trump.
The SECURE America Act also improves training for Secret Service agents. This prepares agents to counter the evolving threats that we face. It safeguards major national events and every American who attends them. This weekend is the Indianapolis 500. The World Cup is coming up. The 2028 Olympic Games are right around the corner. Americans from coast to coast will be safer when the SECURE America Act becomes law.
Every single Democrat here in the Senate opposes the SECURE America Act. Senator Schumer vowed to fight it. He said he would use ``every tool in our arsenal.'' Why is he saying this? Because Democrats believe in open borders. They are the party of open borders. They are the party of ``defund the police.''
Democrats' outright opposition to protecting the American people contrasts sharply with their own personal demands, which is opposite of what they want for the American people. Democrats are demanding more personal security for themselves but not for the American people.
Following the murder of a State representative last year, Senator Schumer complained and said:
Senator Chris Murphy of Connecticut warned that limited resources, he said, ``should not be the reason why an assassination of a member of Congress is successful.''
Do you know the amount of money that Democrats have demanded? One
The message from the Democrats is this: Our Nation's safety and security doesn't matter.
My message is this: The safety and security of our citizens and our communities should be the No. 1 priority of everyone serving in the U.S. Senate.
Republicans are going to stand up to protect American citizens. We will pass the SECURE America Act, and we will continue to keep American communities safe.
Mr. President, if you follow the U.S. Senate priority agenda, you are realizing at this moment in time, we are in the midst of a national emergency--a national emergency. What would you guess that would be? The war in Iran? Well, certainly, when it cost America 14 lives at least at this point and when you have billions of dollars being spent. I believe the figures--the latest one reported was $29 billion. Is that the national emergency? No.
Is the national emergency in the Senate the pending invasion of Cuba? No.
How about the President's tariff taxes--tariff taxes that have raised the cost of living across the United States? No, that is not the national emergency.
Gasoline prices--would that be a national emergency to the Senate leaders? It was $5.49 a gallon in Chicago last weekend. But that is not it.
How about grocery prices, utility prices, rent prices, daycare prices? No, that is not on the Republican agenda as a national emergency.
What is on the agenda as far as the Senate is concerned is the billionaire boondoggle ballroom--ballroom. America desperately needs a new ballroom, and they are asking for $1 billion--$1 billion--to build it.
I thought the President promised that his golfing friends and business leaders were going to pay for this, not the taxpayers. Well, that has all changed.
This weekend, the Senate Parliamentarian ruled that funding President Trump's personal pet project, his gold-plated ballroom, as currently written cannot be included in the Republicans' partisan budget reconciliation bill before the Senate. To that, I say thank heavens.
I distinctly recall the President's promise that the American people were not going to pay for this ballroom. How quickly he retreated on his word and asked taxpayers to cough up $1 billion--another broken promise.
This ruling by the Parliamentarian in response to a challenge brought by Senate Democrats is a win for the American people across the country, but don't kid yourself--Senate Republicans are already back to the drawing board for this ballroom emergency which we face, attempting to revise the provision so it can be included in the reconciliation bill.
Americans continue to struggle with high prices at the grocery store and at the gas station. Republicans have shown where their priorities lie: appeasing the President and writing him a blank check for a new ballroom and a mass deportation campaign.
This much we know: When President Trump has his way with his billion- dollar ballroom emergency project, there will continue to be no room on the Trump dance card for America's working families.
President Trump's war of choice in Iran, as well as his continued tariffs, is squeezing American families hard--in housing, groceries, and fuel costs and utility bills; inflation that surged to 3.8 percent--the highest level since the pandemic and is outpacing wage growth.
In Illinois, drivers are paying more than $5 a gallon for gas--as I mentioned, last week, $5.49 a gallon in Chicago. Illinois electricity bills are up by more than 15 percent on President Trump's watch, and grocery prices had the biggest 1-month jump in nearly 4 years. Fresh vegetables are 44 percent more expensive than they were just 3 months ago. Ask the shoppers at your local stores; they know this personally.
I recently heard from a constituent of mine from Southern Illinois: Reverend Dr. Anthony Paulson. He wrote about the cost-of-living issues. Reverend Paulson told me that, as a pastor, he witnesses the impact of rising costs on his family, friends, and neighbors. Residents come to his church seeking help with the cost of food, housing, and gas to meet their basic needs. The reverend said he offers the church's compassion and support to anyone in need, but the church and the people he serves have been stretched thin, thanks to the across-the-board price hikes we have under the Trump administration.
I think about Reverend Paulson and the countless other constituents who have called my office to sound the alarm whenever I cast a vote in regard to this issue.
But President Trump said he doesn't think about Americans' financial hardships ``even a little bit.'' He continued:
President Trump.
Tell that to Reverend Paulson, tell him you don't care about his concerns or the concerns of the people he serves.
I will also note that just yesterday the President's politicized Department of Justice settled a $10 billion lawsuit against the Internal Revenue Service. What did the President get because of this settlement? A so-called Anti-Weaponization Fund of nearly $1.8 billion. And what will this money from the taxpayers be used for? The administration says it is for, ``victims of lawfare and weaponization.''
Hold on to your hats and let me tell you the whole story. The whole story starts here on January 6. I was seated in my chair. The other Senators were seated. We were counting the electoral votes.
The Vice President of the United States Vice President Pence was presiding. It was about 2 p.m., at which point the Secret Service came through that door, grabbed the Vice President from where he was sitting in that chair, and removed him from this room.
We sat here and waited, and a minute later, a member of the Capitol Police came before us in uniform and said: Stay in this room, there is a mob outside, but we will make this a protected safe room.
Not 10 minutes later that same officer came before us and said: Cancel everything I said. Evacuate as quickly as possible.
And the Senators of both political parties filed through that door to escape the mob that was invading the U.S. Capitol building where we meet today. It was the most amazing thing to happen in this building since the invasion of the British in the War of 1812. Those of you who have any questions as to whether it actually occurred, look at the video, look at the proof, look at the evidence. The net result was a melee that almost cost more than two or three human lives.
They had over 140 members of the Capitol Hill Police protecting Members of Congress, protecting the Vice President of the United States, and protecting visitors to the Capitol from the mob that President Trump sent to make an impression on the Capitol and the people who were working here. Over 140 instances where these mobsters and insurrectionists beat up the local police who had their lives on the line. You can see the videos. Don't believe a word I said, take a look at the videos and judge for yourself.
The net result was, when it was all over, some 1,500 to 1,600 individuals were arrested and prosecuted for crimes committed that day. Many of them ended up in jail as they should have.
What was the result when President Trump was reelected for a second term? On his first day in office, he gave full and unconditional pardons to all of those mobsters and insurrectionists who invaded the Capitol and attacked our police force. Attacked our police force. Members on the other side come to the floor and talk about who has respect for the police, not one word was said in opposition to the President's full and unconditional pardon to these people who attacked our local police doing their job. Two people as a result of that, two of our officers, died in subsequent days from the trauma that they endured. That is the reality.
Now, what does the President want to do? What has been the promise from the start? We are not only going to release full and unconditionally all of those arrested as an insurrectionist mob on the Capitol. We are going to give them compensation.
How much is it worth to be on the good side of the President with this new MAGA slush fund of $1.8 billion? That money is headed to the pockets of the individuals who crashed this Capitol. Can you think of anything worse, any incentive to attack police worse than that? I can't think of it.
Lawyers for those January 6 insurrectionists who Trump pardoned have already said they are going to apply for compensation. They are going to ask for money to be paid to them for committing a crime. Forget that working people are paying more for gas and they still haven't seen a dime in refunds in Trump's illegal tariffs that pushed up the prices of groceries and clothes and appliances. The President is making sure that those who fought to undermine a free and fair election and those who attacked this Capitol building cashed in, not the hard-working families of America who are struggling mightily to get by.
That should tell you all you need to know about what the President's priorities are. Democrats will fight this unprecedented and unacceptable slush fund, and this week, we will continue to push back on Republicans' partisan reconciliation bill and billionaire ballroom emergency bill every step of the way.
We will work to halt the flow of taxpayers' dollars to Trump's ballroom, his arches, God only knows what he will dream up next, and his mass deportation campaign. And when this bill comes to the floor later this week, the Republicans get to go on record on exactly what their priorities are going to be moving forward. Will our Republican colleagues support our efforts to drive down these family costs, or will they side with President Trump?
The last point I would like to make is from a statement made by a previous speaker on the Republican side. He said that we don't have any respect for law and order and the policemen and law enforcement officials who enforce it. This MAGA slush fund of $1.8 billion for those who came into the Capitol and sacked this building and did their darndest to hurt our law enforcement agents speaks for itself.
What we feel on the Democratic side is that the men and women of law enforcement deserve our respect, and they should be held to the same standards in the Capitol and in the Federal Government as they are held in every State. I don't know of any masked State troopers in my State or in Wyoming. They don't wear masks because they are proud of what they do for a living. Whereas, the ICE agents are just the opposite; they are hiding their identity. And the Republicans want to protect them. I don't understand why.
Mr. President, in May of 1944, before the Allied forces landed on the beaches of Normandy, Dwight Eisenhower signaled out one American service branch for their loyalty, courage, and fortitude. When Operation Overlord was complete and victory won, he predicted:
No organization
The Supreme Allied Commander was correct, but the credit he spoke of was never given to this service branch in proportion to the sacrifices made. After all, no branch suffered losses at a greater rate during the war--not the Marines, not the Army, or Coast Guard, not the Navy. Of the 243,000 merchant mariners who joined the fight, nearly 9,500 paid the ultimate price.
As we prepare to observe Memorial Day this coming weekend, we remember the fallen sailors of the forgotten service, and we honor a young Hoosier who gave his life aboard one of its ships. Without the sacrifices of the Merchant Marine, America's military would be unable to win its war or to defend its people.
In war, our civilian mariners and commercial vessels transport and supply our soldiers, sailors, and airmen. They are the critical link between the homeland in the front, the one that has made the difference between victory and defeat for 250 years.
During the Revolution, they delivered the gun powder the Continentals used to beat the British. In the War Of 1812, they armed their clippers and sloops with cannons. They ran the enemy's blockades, and they brought clothes and guns to our troops. Throughout the Civil War, they carried coal, horses, and food to the Union soldiers along the Atlantic Coast and on the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers.
Wherever our men and women in uniform have gone in the world to defend liberty, the Merchant Marine has followed in support. Whenever America's soldiers have raised our flag in victory, its mariners helped to make the triumph possible. And they have always done this in the face of grave danger and at great cost.
Commercial sailors were among the casualties in America's first naval battle at Machias off the coast of Maine. They were killed by the enemies' fire on the oceans and the Great Lakes. From the Republic's beginning, merchant mariners have died in every major conflict, including Vietnam and Korea, as well as Operations Enduring and Iraqi Freedom.
These civilians transport their cargo into war zones with minimal defense. Because of their vital mission, they are the target of and often sunk by warships and aircraft.
In no conflict was the peril greater than World War II. They left from America's coasts. They headed for the front carrying the Sherman tanks and Mustang fighter planes, steel and lumber, bandages and antibiotics, mail from home, rations, and even chocolate.
On board those ships were what was required to defeat the Axis and to make a soldier's life just a little bit less miserable while doing it. That is, if they made it to their destination; 733 of America's merchant ships were sunk during the war. The Samuel Q. Brown was one of them.
The tanker was on its way from New Orleans to Honolulu carrying 80,000 barrels of fuel when it was struck by a torpedo from a German submarine 100 miles south of Cuba. The ship erupted into fire. Its crew jumped overboard and swam to the lifeboats and the rafts that they had cut loose after the explosion. Two men were lost. The rest watched as the U-boat launched another torpedo and sank the Samuel Q. Brown.
After 13 hours afloat, a Navy patrol plane spotted the survivors who were eventually rescued. The five injured among them were transported to a hospital in Key West, FL. All survived but one, a messman named Harold Dossett. He died on June 1, 1942.
Harold was 27 years old. He was from Princeton, IN. He came from a line of heroes. Members of the Dossett family fought in the Revolutionary War, the War of 1812, and the Civil War. No surprise then that he was active in the history club at Princeton High School before his graduation in 1932.
He was well-known and well-liked in Princeton, a fixture of the downtown square, where the local newspaper noted he was often seen at the front table in the local restaurant the Alco. At the end of the 1930s, Harold relocated to Texas where he found work in the oil industry and ended up as a messman on the Samuel Q. Brown, which was owned by the Tide Water Associated Oil Company.
He had served aboard two other ships before the Samuel Brown; both were sunk after his transfer. ``The third one was fatal,'' his mother later said.
It was during that ship's mission that he joined the list of Americans who have laid down their lives so that their countrymen could live in freedom.
After his body was brought back to Indiana from Florida, Harold's mother was presented with the Mariner's Medal. This is the Merchant Marine's highest honor, and its equivalent to the Purple Heart. Another honor arrived later to address the incredible losses of commercial vessels during the war, American industry mass produced Liberty ships to speed supplies to the front.
In 1945, one of these Liberty ships, the SS Harold Dossett was completed. Ultimately, it was the men aboard those Liberty ships who helped win the war.
As Dwight Eisenhower said, the merchant mariners ``brought us the tools to finish the job. Their contribution to final victory will be long remembered,'' he said--a contribution that cost many lives.
So let us not lose sight that Memorial Day is not just the beginning of summer. It is a solemn day, when we honor and do what little we can to give thanks to the men and women who have died so we can remain free. It is also a time to keep the families of the fallen in our hearts and those serving in danger now in our prayers.
And let us not forget to pay tribute to all--all--of the lost. And one place we can do that is outside of the Gibson County Courthouse in Princeton, IN. You see, a monument there is inscribed with the names of local men who never came home from the World Wars.
Hoosiers, go there. And among the marines, soldiers, and sailors, you will find a merchant mariner, Messman Harold Dossett. Never forget the debt we owe them all.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Washington.
Mr. President, 26 years ago, almost to the day, I came here to the Senate floor to speak about a mom in Washington State and a member of my staff. Mary Glenn had come to Congress with Senator Feinstein, a few years before, to share the story of her son Shaun, who was tragically killed by gun violence, and to advocate for change.
As a mother myself, I couldn't imagine the pain that she had gone through, but I could absolutely recognize her passion and her resolve to respond to challenges and hardships, not by getting discouraged but by getting determined to make a difference.
So not long after Mary brought her story here to the Senate, I brought Mary herself onto my team in Seattle, in September of 1995, and it was the best decision I could have made.
Over her 31 years on my team, Mary has handled well over 20,000 constituent cases. That is astounding--20,000. Each case represents an individual or a family seeking help, usually under difficult circumstances. Mary gave everyone who reached out compassion, and she got them results: helping people who were struggling to keep their utilities on and connecting them with social services that could assist them; helping families stay in their homes and fight off eviction.
And no one--absolutely no one--could do more to help seniors get their Social Security and Medicare benefits than Mary Glenn. In some cases, Mary helped people finally get hundreds of thousands of dollars they were owed by the government.
We are talking about life-changing and lifesaving victories for people back in my State.
I remember, during the 2008 economic crisis, she saved so many families from losing their homes that we heard lobbyists here in DC were complaining about her for being too effective. My response to that: Too bad.
Whatever the case, whatever the challenges, Mary has never been afraid to go against big Agencies, navigate complicated systems, or even go toe to toe with powerful special interests.
Now, after many years and countless victories for Washington State families, Mary is moving on to a well-earned retirement. We all wish her the best as she spends more time with her family--her daughter Tiffany, her son-in-law Jon, and especially her grandkids Adalyn and Ellis--and more time at Dawson's, her home away from home.
We are all going to miss her dearly at our office because Mary is more than a trusted resource for our constituents. She is also an invaluable resource to everyone she works with, someone we all turn to for her knowledge, her advice, and her guidance. She exemplifies a true commitment to public service.
When I came to this floor to share Mary's story all those years ago, I came here to speak about a mom who had the strength to speak out after a painful tragedy. Today, I am speaking about a mom but also a grandma, an incredible champion for Washington State families, and a friend.
Mary, thank you. I know Shaun would be so proud of everything you have done to fight for change. You have helped so many families through your hard work, and you have inspired so many people through your resilience, including me.
I yield the floor.
Mr. President, I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
(The remarks of Mr. Ricketts pertaining to the introduction of S. 4560 are printed in today's Record under ``Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions.'')
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 Sheria Akins Clarke, of South Carolina, to be United States District Judge for the District of South Carolina, shall be brought to a close?
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn), the Senator from North Dakota (Mr. Cramer), the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis), and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville).
Further, if present and voting: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis) would have voted ``yea''.
Mr. DURBIN: I announce that the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Bennet) is necessarily absent.
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 57, nays 38, as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote the yeas are 57, the nays are 38. The motion is agreed to.
Madam President, I rise today to honor an important community in our country that has done so much for our country--Jewish Americans.
America as we know it would not exist without the contributions of Jewish Americans. From Jewish service men and women who have served in every conflict since the Revolutionary War to great minds like Albert Einstein, who helped us to understand the world we live in, their contributions helped to build this Nation. This includes Gertrude Elion, who helped to develop groundbreaking drugs for leukemia and other lifesaving treatments, and Sergey Brin, the cofounder of Google.
The success of our Nation is intertwined with the achievements of Jewish Americans. We can never walk away from our Jewish fellow citizens. I am more committed to this relationship than ever before. I am glad we finally have a President who shares that commitment.
President Trump has been the most pro-Israel President we have ever had. He moved the American Embassy to Jerusalem. He appointed the most pro-Israel Cabinet ever assembled, and he is committed to defending Israel, combating terrorism, and protecting Jewish citizens.
But still, unfortunately, we have seen a rise in anti-Semitism and in anti-Israel hate since the October 7, 2023, attacks. What we have seen in that time are some of the darkest parts of humanity on full display. We have seen Hamas sympathizers take over college campuses, destroy property, and do everything they can to instill fear into Jewish students. From being spat at to being verbally harassed, what some of these students have gone through is unconscionable. Countless stories at some of America's best universities, like Columbia, UCLA, and Rutgers, have all the same stories.
Anti-Semitism has cut its way into our political discourse. A new report from Axios this week shows how lawmakers right here in the Capitol are facing an ``explosion of antisemitism.'' Jewish lawmakers on both sides of the aisle, in the House and the Senate, are receiving death threats, harassment, and profane insults that should be out of bounds for American politics.
None of this is OK. We should all be concerned about the rise of anti-Semitism because it is un-American and because it is fundamentally inhumane.
George Washington knew that too. In 1790, Washington made it clear that America ``gives to bigotry no sanction, to persecution no assistance'' in his letter to the Hebrew Congregation of Newport, RI. He understood and could see back then the importance our Jewish citizens would play in preserving the American experiment.
Make no mistake, the growth of anti-Semitism will not end with anti- Semitism. The Venn diagram of people who spread anti-Semitism and want to destroy Western civilization is just a circle. They are just starting with our Jewish friends. If it grows, everyone suffers. Just like the jihadist adage in the Middle East goes, ``First the Saturday people, then the Sunday people,'' and then it will come for everyone else.
This hatred, this evil--we have to root it out. We have to get it out of our schools, our neighborhoods, and our media. We need to call it out wherever we see it. When we go silent, that is when rot festers, and that is what anti-Semitism is. It is rotten to the core and has no place in American society.
The United States must always stand with Israel and the Jewish people. More than ever, we must remain committed to rooting out this evil. That is why I am here today with Senator Rosen to ask for unanimous consent to adopt a resolution recognizing the month of May as Jewish American Heritage Month.
Taking a stand against anti-Semitism and celebrating Jewish Americans mean we are fighting to protect our Nation and the blessings we enjoy. I am proud to lead this effort.
I yield to my good friend from Nevada Senator Rosen.
Madam President, Jewish American Heritage Month is an opportunity to honor the generations of Jewish Americans who have helped to build this country, who have helped to strengthen our democracy, who have helped to enhance our country and advance the promise of America. And this year's celebration feels especially significant as our Nation approaches 250 years of independence.
For centuries, Jewish Americans have been part of the American story. From the Jewish immigrants who arrived here on our shores in 1654 seeking refuge and freedom and opportunity, to Haym Salomon's helping finance the Revolutionary War, to the scientists, artists, teachers, entrepreneurs, servicemembers, and public servants who helped shape this country into what it is today, the story of Jewish Americans is the story of America. It is a story rooted in resilience, in perseverance, in faith, in community, and in an enduring belief in the promise of a better future.
Those values have guided the Jewish-American community for generations. These are the values that taught us to pursue justice, to repair the world, to care for our neighbors, and to stand up for those who are the most vulnerable. They are the values that have inspired Jewish Americans to contribute so profoundly to every corner of American life, from medicine to music, from business to civil rights, from the military to public service. They are the values we continue to carry forward today.
But as we celebrate all that Jewish Americans have contributed to this Nation, we must also acknowledge the challenges our community continues to face because while Jewish history in America is filled with achievement and opportunity, it has also included moments of exclusion, discrimination, and hate.
Unfortunately, we are once again living through a deeply troubling rise in anti-Semitism. Since Hamas' October 7 terrorist attack in Israel, anti-Semitism incidents have skyrocketed across this country. We have seen Jewish students harassed on college campuses. We have seen synagogues and Jewish institutions threatened. We have seen Jewish Americans verbally attacked, physically assaulted, and even murdered simply because of who they are. And all of it--every single bit of it-- is unacceptable. There can be no excuses and no ambiguity when it comes to condemning anti-Semitism.
For me, this work is deeply personal. As one of only a handful of Jewish women ever to serve in the U.S. Senate--the third, to be exact-- and as the first and only former synagogue president in the Senate, my Jewish identity is part of who I am, and it is part of how I lead. The experiences that my family has endured and the hate that I have personally faced have only strengthened my determination to fight anti- Jewish hatred wherever it exists because even in difficult moments, the Jewish people have always found ways to move forward with hope and perseverance. Those are two qualities we hold dear. Jewish Americans are people who have endured--a people who have persevered through hardship time and time again and a people who continue to believe in the hope and the possibility of a brighter tomorrow. Hope is part of our heritage--the very essence of our faith. Hope is a part of what carried generations before us
In celebration of that heritage and in recognition of our history, I am so proud to work with Senator Rick Scott to pass this bipartisan resolution for Jewish American Heritage Month. In doing so, let us celebrate not only the accomplishments of Jewish Americans throughout our Nation's history but also the values that continue to strengthen both our community and our country.
Let us recommit ourselves to fighting hate in all its forms. Let us continue building bridges across all communities. Let us ensure that future generations will grow up in a country where they can live openly, proudly, and safely as Jews and as Americans.
Madam President, as if in legislative session, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 738, which was submitted earlier today.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report the resolution by title.
The senior assistant bill clerk read as follows:
There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the resolution.
I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The resolution (S. Res. 738) was agreed to.
The preamble was agreed to.
(The resolution, with its preamble, is printed in today's Record under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn), the Senator from North Dakota (Mr. Cramer), the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty), the Senator from Mississippi (Mrs. Hyde- Smith), the Senator from Montana (Mr. Sheehy), the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis), the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville), and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker).
Further, if present and voting: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) would have voted ``YEA,'' the Senator from Tennessee (Mr. Hagerty) would have voted ``YEA,'' the Senator from Mississippi (Mrs. Hyde-Smith) would have voted ``YEA,'' the Senator from Montana (Mr. Sheehy) would have voted ``YEA,'' the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis) would have voted ``YEA,'' and the Senator from Mississippi (Mr. Wicker) voted ``YEA.''
I announce that the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Bennet) is necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 52, nays 38, 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. By unanimous consent, 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 Evan Rikhye, of the Virgin Islands, to be Judge for the District Court of the Virgin Islands for a term of ten 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 Texas (Mr. Cornyn), the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis), and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville).
Further, if the present and voting: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis) would have voted ``Yea.''
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 50, nays 47, as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. On this vote, the yeas are 50, the nays are 47. The motion is agreed to.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that notwithstanding rule XXII, the postcloture time with respect to Executive Calendar No. 737 be expired and the Senate vote on confirmation of the nomination at a time to be determined by the majority leader in consultation with the Democratic leader, 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 resume legislative session and be in a period of morning business with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I rise to talk about the next vote the Senate will have on a War Powers Resolution, and this will be the eighth such vote. I want to dig into the topic for a minute why this vote is different than the earlier seven. Before I do, let me just kind of dig into the procedural nature of this vote.
War Powers Resolutions, like other Senate legislation, get referred to a committee--in this case, the committee of jurisdiction is the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, of which I am a member.
The committee does not have to take up legislation, and it is often the case--and I have often filed legislation that has never been taken up, not just by SFRC but other committees as well. If there is not a critical mass, it may not be taken up.
In matters of war, the drafters of the War Powers Resolution deemed the topic so important that they created a proceeding by which a single Senator could ask that the committee be discharged from consideration of the bill and the bill be reported out of the committee without a recommendation for actual consideration on the floor.
And so War Powers Resolutions in the instance of hostilities that have not been authorized by Congress, a Senator can file a resolution, a certain number of days elapse, and then we can come to the floor and ask for the committee to be discharged.
We have had seven earlier votes--all unsuccessful--asking that this war, which is now, I believe, on day 81, be--if a committee is not going to take it up, let's at least have the debate on the floor of the Senate that the Constitution intends.
And so the formal vote that we will have later is not a vote on the resolution itself, which says no war in Iran absent a vote of Congress, but it is a vote to discharge that resolution from the committee and allow it to be debated on the Senate floor. That is what we are voting on.
Should a matter that is in committee, that has been held in committee with no action for now 80 days during the midst of a pending war in which 14 American troops have been killed, hundreds have been injured, and we have spent north of $29 billion--if we are not going to have committee action on the bill, can we not take it up on the floor of the Senate and debate it in front of the American public?
So now to my question: Why is this vote different than the vote we had last week? And I would argue there are a couple of reasons that make this vote different and the stakes higher that should suggest a need to finally take this matter up on the Senate floor.
First, we are now well past the 60-day deadline in the War Powers Resolution that, under the view of some, provides a President the ability to unilaterally take the Nation to war without a vote of Congress. I don't read the statute that way, but a number do, and we can have a good-faith disagreement about what the statute means.
But last week was the first time we had a vote after the 60-day deadline. The clock keeps running. We are now, I believe, at day 81. We are well past the statutory time that might give a President an argument that ``I don't need to come to Congress to get a war approved.''
The fact that we are now well past that deadline--a deadline that many of my colleagues on both sides of the aisle say should be an important milestone in terms of congressional review--is important.
The second thing that is important is we are in a cease-fire, but kind of a particular cease-fire right now. We are in a cease-fire where there is no active bombing, but there are still hostilities--the blockade of Iranian ports by the United States, the significant closing of the Strait of Hormuz by Iran's military action--action taken against both military ships and commercial ships. We are in a cease-fire, but we have not ended hostilities, but the cease-fire entered a new phase just within the last day or two.
As you know, President Trump indicated that he was within an hour of ordering the restart of the bombing campaign but decided that it would be a good idea to engage in discussion with regional nations about: Could there be a path forward to find a diplomatic end to the war?
And my argument, Mr. President, to you and to all of my colleagues and to the American public is this: If we are in a cease-fire where we are trying to find a diplomatic path forward, rather than precipitously start a bombing campaign again, this is exactly the time where Congress should be having a debate about the rationale for the war, the status of the war, the plans to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, what a likely diplomatic off-ramp would look like, what the costs of the war are, how much U.S. munitions have been depleted, how much U.S. military facilities have been damaged.
When we are in this cease-fire period trying to find a diplomatic off-ramp, this seems, to me, to be the perfect time for the Senate to have the deliberate discussion about the need for a war that we should have had before the war began on February 28. Let's take advantage of this moment.
One issue in particular that is important right now is that Iran is transmitting to the President of the United States proposals for a diplomatic solution. As all know, Iran presented a proposal to the United States--to President Trump that he immediately dismissed as garbage. Guess what. No one in this body or in the House has been shown what that proposal is. None of us know what was in the proposal that the President dismissed as garbage.
This body contains many Members who have served in the military. This body contains many Members who have been on the committees of jurisdiction--the Armed Services Committee, the Foreign Relations Committee, the Intel Committee--not just for years, but in some instances for decades.
I assert that in the Senate and in the House, there are many people who would have some significant expertise about analyzing a proposal from Iran and determining whether or not it had merit.
Maybe it is a hundred percent garbage. Maybe it is a good offer. Maybe it is somewhere in the middle where there are pieces of it that are good but more needs to be done. But thus far, not a single Member of the 535 public servants serving in the House or the Senate know anything about the deal that the President has thrown out, and that is a very important fact.
Do we want to let--we have let one President take us to a war that has
Are we so willing to let this President tell our sons and daughters: You are going back to war because I have determined that the peace proposal, the diplomacy proposal, is garbage without letting anyone in the article I branch even review it?
I think the fact that there have been peace proposals presented to the President that we have not seen is also something that is extremely important as we contemplate this War Powers Resolution.
Let's have the discussion, including analyzing proposals that have been made, so we can offer our advice to the President about whether diplomacy seems like it is realistic or doable and not have him dismiss deals out of hand without sharing the contents.
And, finally, there is one additional matter that puts this in a different light than last week. It was only last week right before the vote that some of us were informed by the White House that the White House refused to share with Congress the legal rationale for this war. Any administration that takes the Nation to war does so bound to follow the law, and any administration that takes us to war does so on the basis of a legal opinion developed by the Office of Legal Counsel at the Department of Justice. And that has been the case during all of the administrations that I have served under including President Trump term 2.
The boat strikes that President Trump's administration were carrying out in the Pacific and Caribbean, the military operation in Venezuela-- they were both justified by a legal opinion.
Now, I was disappointed that the President was unwilling to make that legal opinion available to the public, but the White House did allow us--the Members of the Senate and House--to read it in a classified setting so we could at least read what the legal rationale was and reach our own conclusion about whether we thought the legal rationale made sense.
To my knowledge, in my now nearly 13 years in the Senate, this is the first instance of a President taking us into military action and refusing to show the House or Senate the legal opinion. There is a legal opinion that has been drafted to justify this war, but the administration will not let any of us--I thought it might just be me-- they turned down my request to look at the legal opinion--but I have gone to the leadership of the Armed Services Committee and the other key committees, and they haven't seen it either.
Are we really willing to go to war on the basis of a legal opinion that the administration is unwilling to even show to us who are Members of the U.S. Senate? I mean, it sort of raises the question: What are they hiding? If they feel confident about their legal rationale or about the factual assertions they would make in the legal rationale, they would be willing to show it to us--as they have with respect to other military actions as recently as the attack of Venezuela to depose the Maduro government.
So I would argue that one important feature of this motion at this time to discharge the committee would be it would force the administration to come forward and finally show us the legal rationale upon which they base this, in my view, illegal and unwise war.
So those are at least four or five reasons why this vote this week to discharge this matter from the committee and finally bring it to the floor of the Senate is different than any of the seven votes we have had before. We are well beyond day 60. We are in this fragile cease- fire. That is the perfect time to have a discussion before we start up the war again.
The President is receiving peace and diplomatic proposals that he is throwing into the trash can without sharing them with us. We might have some ideas about the merit and validity of those proposals, and we ought to be able to decide whether they have merit enough that that is the path we should take instead of sending our sons and daughters back into harm's way by reengaging in the bombing campaign.
Finally, if the administration is unwilling to share with us the legal rationale for the war, that should be a flashing red light to every Member of this body.
So, Mr. President, within a short period of time, I will come to the floor and make the motion, and we will have this vote on an eighth motion to discharge. It is my hope that it is successful and we finally move to having a debate about this most consequential war in full view of the American public.
With that, I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. President, I am glad to join Senator Kaine on the floor today in support of his resolution. I have admittedly lost count on how many of these resolutions we have brought before the body. This must be our seventh, eighth, or ninth. That is extraordinary, duplicative, redundant, but necessary because, at least in my time in the Senate, never before has this country engaged in such a significant, consequential, deadly, and costly military operation overseas without the consent of the people and without the consent of Congress.
The Founding Fathers were really intentional in lodging the warmaking power not in the executive branch but in the legislative branch. There are few questions we confront that are more serious than about when we send our men and women to die overseas, when we decide to expend such a sizable amount of our hard-earned taxpayers' money on military operations. And it should not--it cannot--be simply one individual who makes those decisions. It has to be all of us.
So these are increasingly heartbreaking motions to make because it shouldn't be up to the minority party. The majority, who asked for the consent of the governed to lead this Senate, should do their responsibility under the Constitution and have a full debate on an authorization for military force.
Here is my guess: It would not pass. If Leader Thune brought an authorization for military force against Iran here in the Senate, it would not pass. I don't think it would even get 50 votes. It might not get 40 votes. It would fail, and the President would not have the authorization to continue these operations.
I am going to just talk about two, I think, important topics that I have yet to address on the floor. The first is the consequences of spending this much money on a war that is making us less safe. I have made this case before on the floor, and I won't go into it again, but this war is not making us any safer. This war is jeopardizing our security around the world. But at what cost?
In hearings last week, the administration suggested that the cost of the war is about $29 billion. To most military experts, that just didn't pass the straight-face test, the smell test. In fact, one group of experts actually did an accounting based upon what they know of the costs of an engagement like this, which has largely been an air campaign but has required a massive deployment of forces into the region. They said it looks to be about $15 billion in mobilization, administration, and combat cost, general operations costs; $41 billion when you look at all of the weapons that have been expended; about $12 billion in losses, damages, destroyed assets. And we are learning that there is a really extensive amount of damage that has been done to our fixed resources in the region. Then we probably spent another $3 billion or so supporting our partners in the region. That is about $72 billion that has been spent just in the first 70, 80 days of war.
And I get it. Even, I think, for my colleagues, you kind of lose the value of money when you are in this place and allocating tens or hundreds of billions of dollars on a regular basis for the operations of the Federal Government. And for my constituents, they even lose track of what is a big number anymore at the Federal Government.
What does $72 billion mean? Well, let me give you a little bit of context. What is the entire operations budget for the National Park System on an annual basis? Is it $71 billion? No. Is it
How much do we spend on elementary education--elementary, middle, and secondary education? Every year, about $33 billion. So if you took the amount of money we spent on the Iran war and dedicated it all to K- through-12 education, we would triple the amount of money that our elementary, middle, and high schools get in this country. What an important investment that would be. What would it mean to your child's elementary school to have triple the amount of Federal funding? That would mean that you could reduce class sizes, you could hire more paraprofessionals. Urban school districts could hire guidance counselors and social workers for the first time. New school buildings would go up. Leaks would be fixed.
How about medical research? The total budget of NIH and CDC? About $60 billion. So if we had taken this money that we have spent in just 2\1/2\ months of war and applied it to medical research, we would double--double--this year's budget for medical research. If you doubled the NIH and CDC budget this year, I guarantee you we would cure at least one disease; we would find a treatment years ahead of schedule; we would save lives, thousands of lives. But, instead, we are spending this money on a war that is making us less safe and driving up costs for millions of Americans.
Again, I am just telling you the cost to the government of this war. Of course, we are seeing billions of dollars being spent by businesses, by farms, by consumers because gas prices are out of control. This week, they will probably hit $5 a gallon in Connecticut. That will put a lot of my small businesses out of business if gas prices remain at $5 through this summer. There will be lots of families in my State--who for the first 60 days were probably able to manage that extra cost--who are going to have to cancel a week or two or three of summer camp for their kids this summer because they are going to have to make a choice as to whether I fill up my tank to get to work or whether my kids get to go to basketball camp. Those are the decisions that families are going to make.
The second thing, very briefly, I want to talk about is another cost. The President is not spending his time right now trying to end this war. Reports are that the President has become bored of the Iran war, and that is why we are in a stalemate. Nothing is changing. Nothing is happening. We are blockading the Strait of Hormuz. The Iranians are blockading the Strait of Hormuz. Peace negotiations are stuck. And so day, after day, after day, grocery prices climb, gas prices climb, and the reports suggest it is because President Trump has lost interest in the war.
What is he interested in? Well, we found out this week. Instead of spending his last several weeks trying to end the war and bring down costs, the President has been engineering a novel, new corruption scheme to pad his pockets and his supporters' pockets. We learned this week that the President is settling a lawsuit that he lodged against himself for $1.7 billion. The President sued himself. He sued the IRS-- but essentially he was suing himself--and then he settled with himself for $1.7 billion to be deposited into a slush fund that the President can use at his discretion to reward his political supporters.
We found out just hours ago that in that settlement is included a provision that stops the IRS from auditing the President or his family. So instead of ending the Iran war, instead of trying to do something about these spiraling prices and costs that are being borne by families and the Federal Government, the President has spent the last few weeks reaching his hand into the Treasury, stealing from the American people $1.7 billion to be put into a slush fund that he controls, to reward his political supporters, and securing an agreement with the IRS that no matter how much fraud or illegality he and his family and his business entities engaged in, they are getting off scot-free. Everybody else in this country plays by the rules, can be audited by the IRS, and is subject to the Tax Code. The President, as of today, is no longer subject to the Tax Code. His past fraud, his past illegality has been immunized, and he is getting $1.7 billion of your money to give away to his political supporters.
That is why the war is still happening. That is why these costs-- right now, likely $70 billion to the taxpayer, billions more in increased costs--that is why they continue to go up and up and up-- because the President has become bored by the war. He doesn't pay the cost of the war. In fact, every day, he gets richer because, instead of ending the war, he is spending his time finding new, novel, and corrupt ways to reach his hand into the Federal Treasury and get paid by the taxpayers of this country.
I am glad that we are getting closer to 50 votes. I imagine that when we come back from recess, after many of my Republican colleagues have heard about the misery that is being visited on this economy because of these high prices, we will reach enough votes to pass this resolution. But we will not stop bringing these measures before the Senate until that day comes.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Wisconsin.
Mr. President, I rise today in opposition to President Trump's war of choice in Iran that has cost taxpayers billions and taken the lives of 13 American servicemembers.
Since this war began over 11 weeks ago, it has been abundantly clear that Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth don't know what they are doing. They have offered shifting rationales for why we are at war, moving the goalposts by the hour. There seems to be no plan or timeline for when this war will end. This administration has also been caught flat-footed at every turn, including not anticipating that the Strait of Hormuz would be closed and the skyrocketing gas prices that followed.
It is not just Americans at home who are paying the price for this conflict. American servicemembers are sounding the alarm, too, that the Trump administration wasn't prepared to keep them safe. First, we learned that servicemembers who were injured in Kuwait in a March 1 drone strike had to wait nearly a month to get care for their traumatic brain injuries. Now we are learning that troops in the same unit had their calls for support from the Army ignored. Soldiers stationed in Kuwait asked for additional medical personnel and medical supplies before the war began, but that request was denied. These same soldiers also recount that they did not get the proper training for responding to an attack.
They were told: Don't worry about protection.
MAJ Stephen Ramsbottom told CBS News that he believed MSG Nicole Amor, an Army reservist who was killed in the attack, could have survived her wounds had the military been properly prepared for retaliatory strikes on U.S. bases.
All of this points to a larger problem and a larger pattern of Donald Trump and Pete Hegseth being totally reckless, starting a war without the careful planning necessary to protect Americans. And while two in three Americans say this war was the wrong decision, President Trump keeps threatening to ramp up this conflict, putting our troops further into harm's way. He has even hinted that he is interested in starting another war in Cuba.
Americans didn't ask for this war of choice. Their elected representatives in Washington didn't even vote on it. And yet it is Americans who are paying the price every single day.
I am glad to see more of my Republican colleagues are listening to their constituents, and I was pleased to see another vote to stop this reckless and illegal war.
But it is not enough. It is time for Congress to finally be a check on this President.
Stand up for your constituents and our servicemembers, and join us in voting to stop this war.
Mr. President, well, earlier today, Trump said he was just an hour away from launching another wave of attacks on Iran before he changed his mind.
Trump says: ``We may have to give Iran another big hit''--that ``we're all set to start'' bombing at a moment's notice.
This President is like a toddler playing with a loaded gun. If there was ever a time to support our War Powers Resolution to withdraw troops from hostilities with Iran, it is now.
We have long since passed the War Powers Act's 60-day threshold to end hostilities that many of our colleagues cited as the time their position on this war would finally change. Every second we wait to end this war is another second Donald Trump puts our servicemembers at risk.
If Republicans truly believe that this war is going well, that Trump is some strategic genius, then why are they hiding behind shifting deadlines and fake notifications of the ``end of hostilities''? Why do Republicans pretend Trump's war ended after 60 days, when it clearly has continued, with U.S. and Iranian forces exchanging fire in the Strait of Hormuz?
And the lack of planning in this whole war is just appalling. It is obvious even to a layman that the greatest vulnerability we faced, if we challenged Iran, was the Strait of Hormuz. And yet, despite the fact that many said, ``Secure the strait before you do anything else,'' Trump ignored it.
And look at what is happening now: Gasoline is $4.50 and going up.
How can anyone believe this President has a strategy, has a plan, knows what he is doing?
Senate Republicans are silent on Trump's war because they know it is a massive blunder, but they are foolish to think that silence will spare them. The American people's outrage over skyrocketing costs is right at their doorstep.
Americans took note all seven times this Republican majority passed up the opportunity to support our War Powers Resolution to end this disaster, and they will take note of those Republicans who pass up the eighth time--the eighth opportunity--to stop this war, which will occur shortly when we vote.
I thank Senator Kaine for his leadership on today's resolution.
Every week this war continues and Republicans continue to sit in silence, Democrats will force a vote on the War Powers Resolution and make Republicans go on record with their support for this war.
Let me be clear: Reasserting Congress' authority on matters of war and peace isn't a partisan issue. It never should have been one. It is a constitutional issue. It has been what this country has stood for, for centuries.
This vote is about fulfilling our most basic responsibility as Members of the Senate.
Directing the Removal of United States Armed Forces from Hostilities Within or Against the Islamic Republic of Iran That Have Not Been Authorized by Congress: Motion to Discharge
Mr. President, pursuant to 50 U.S.C. 1546a and in accordance with section 601(b) of the International Security Assistance and Arms Export Control Act, I move to discharge the Committee on Foreign Relations from further consideration of S.J. Res. 185.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will report.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. BARRASSO: The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Texas (Mr. Cornyn), the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis), and the Senator from Alabama (Mr. Tuberville).
The result was announced--yeas 50, nays 47, as follows:
The motion was agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The joint resolution is discharged and will be placed on the Calendar.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from California.
Mr. President, before I offer remarks this evening on voting rights, I want to take a moment to acknowledge a horrible tragedy that struck my home State of California just yesterday.
Yesterday afternoon, two assailants opened fire at the Islamic Center of San Diego, in what authorities are now investigating as a possible hate crime. Three people were killed: a security guard and father of eight named Amin Abdullah; Mansour Kaziha, a store manager at the mosque for 40 years; and Nader Awad, a member of the mosque who lived right across the street and whose wife was a teacher at the school.
Amin is credited with sounding the alarm bells as soon as the incident began, heroically saving the lives of everybody who was inside the mosque. And while authorities are still piecing together exactly what happened, what we do know is that Mansour and Nader somehow drew the shooters away from the mosque, into the parking lot, long enough for them to choose to flee the scene, as hundreds of police officers arrived.
Their sacrifices and their bravery were not in vain. Mr. President, 140 children were inside the center's school at the time, and they are all OK, now reunited with their parents.
Our prayers are with the victims, their families, and everyone impacted by this horrific act of violence.
I want to share my particular gratitude with the women and men of the San Diego Police Department and other first responders who responded literally within moments of first being alerted about the shooting, saving hundreds of lives in the process.
I want to echo the words of San Diego mayor Todd Gloria, who said yesterday:
Colleagues, we must remain united against hate in all its forms and reject those who spread Islamophobia and White supremacy of any type.
And I want the Muslim community of San Diego, the community throughout California, throughout the country, who may be angry or anxious at this moment to know this: We stand with you. We mourn with you. And we will not allow hate and violence to divide our country or define us.
Mr. President, our late friend and colleague Congressman John Lewis once said:
Today, that sacred right is under assault. And with its recent Callais decision, the Supreme Court of the United States has dealt our right to vote another devastating blow.
Sadly, this ruling did not happen in isolation. It is the culmination of a decades-long effort to undermine the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the promise of American democracy itself. As Justice Elena Kagan wrote in her dissent, this decision marks the ``latest chapter in the majority's now-completed demolition of the Voting Rights Act.''
All in what appears to be Donald Trump and his allies' attempt to cling to power--not by addressing the exploding costs of living that are crushing so many families across America, not by ending this unauthorized war in Iran, but by undermining our democracy, rigging electoral maps, and gaming the system in their favor.
What is clear with the Callais decision and earlier voting rights decisions by the Supreme Court is that they have rejected both the text and the purpose of one of the most important laws of American history.
You see, the Voting Rights Act was born out of struggle, including the struggle of Americans who marched across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, decades ago, and endured incredible violence and persecution simply for demanding that democracy in America truly include everyone.
When the Voting Rights Act finally became law 61 years ago, America made good on a promise: that our democracy would truly belong to everyone. And the results were undeniable. In just the first decade after its passage, the disparity in voter registration rates between Whites and minority communities dropped from 30 percent to 8 percent-- huge progress. And communities that had long been denied a meaningful voice in their government gained representation in local city halls, in State legislatures, and--yes--right here in Congress.
The law enjoyed decades of bipartisan support. Its initial passage and every reauthorization had been bipartisan. In fact, the last time Congress reauthorized the Voting Rights Act, in 2006, it passed the Senate unanimously.
Yet we know there have been always those determined to undermine and weaken this landmark law, including Chief Justice Roberts himself. When he was a young lawyer in the Reagan administration, he wrote memos attacking the Voting Rights Act and devising legal arguments to undermine it. And he succeeded. Beginning with the Supreme Court's 2013 Shelby County decision, he and the Court's extreme majority began dismantling the law's core protections.
In the Shelby decision, the Court declared that the law's preclearance protections were no longer necessary because of how far we had come as a country, ignoring the mountain of evidence that they were presented with, showing the chronic problem that voting discrimination continued to be.
The consequences of that decision were both predictable and swift. Republican State legislatures immediately unleashed a flood of new discriminatory voting bills. Many turned into laws--everything from restrictive voter ID requirements to closing polling sites in minority communities, to restricting voter registration drives and attacking early voting.
It is no surprise, then, that the participation gap between White and minority voters soon began growing again, after decades of narrowing, including and especially in the States that were previously covered by section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. According to one Brennan Center analysis, as many as 9 million more ballots would have been cast in the 2020 election without the Shelby decision of 2013.
And, now, the Callais decision goes even further. This decision has already thrown elections into chaos, with States racing to redraw political maps ahead of this November's midterm elections.
You don't believe me?
The Supreme Court has already given Alabama permission to use a map found by a lower court to be intentionally racially discriminatory. But the Supreme Court is sanctioning Alabama's use of that map.
The State of Louisiana, which just had a primary election yesterday, dropped the State's House primary elections, even after absentee voting had already begun, in order to redraw congressional districts for the current year.
And, as we speak, in South Carolina, they are debating whether to redraw the map to entrench Republican power.
Colleagues, this is not representative democracy; it is a political power grab. Sadly, Callais is just one part of a broader effort to skew our upcoming elections and make participation in our democracy process harder for millions of Americans. We see it in efforts to purge voters from the rolls using flawed Federal databases. We see it in attempts to impose burdensome ID requirements that threaten to disenfranchise women, students, seniors, Native communities, and both rural and blue- collar voters who may lack passports or their original birth certificates. And we certainly see it in Trump's obsession with the SAVE Act, which would make it harder for eligible Americans to register to vote, stay registered to vote, or actually cast their ballot.
Colleagues, all of these efforts are rooted in the same dangerous idea: that political power can be preserved by restricting rather than expanding voter participation.
That is un-American.
We are living in a pivotal moment for American democracy. In the difficult days of Jim Crow, Americans chose to organize, to march, and to sacrifice to pass the Voting Rights Act. And now, following their example, Americans today are marching again.
Last weekend, thousands from across the country gathered in Alabama and returned to the Edmund Pettus Bridge, determined to carry the legacy of the Voting Rights Act and the civil rights movement forward. A new generation is taking up the torch to defend the principle that, in a democracy, every voice matters and every vote counts equally.
Colleagues, we have a duty to join them, beginning with the passage of the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act to restore the protections gutted by the Supreme Court.
Mr. President, first, let me thank my good friend Senator Padilla from California for his good work on this issue and so many other issues of civil rights and of keeping our democracy secure and safe, of voting rights. He is an amazing asset not just to this Senate but to California and to the country, and I thank him for his continued, ever-present leadership on these vital issues, which I know he feels so deeply about.
Now, in America, voters choose their leaders; leaders don't choose their voters. But MAGA has launched a coordinated campaign to handpick the electorate in 2026. That effort spans all three branches of government.
Donald Trump has virtually made election denialism a prerequisite for serving in his administration. You have to lie about the election--lie to yourselves, lie to other people--to get a job in any sensitive area in this administration. Trump and his band of MAGA loyalists have jumped at every opportunity to intimidate election officials, to attack vote-by-mail, to seize voter data, and to undermine our elections in any way they can.
In Congress, Trump's MAGA majorities keep pushing the SAVE Act, which we know would disenfranchise tens--tens--of millions of voters.
With the SAVE Act, Republicans would purge millions of American citizens from the voter rolls through a screening algorithm designed by none other than the trio--the evil trio--of
And as I have been saying for months--I started saying this months ago--it is Jim Crow 2.0. And when I started saying it, now when I say it, the MAGA right goes crazy. They get angry. They get apoplectic. Do you know why? They know it is true.
They know it is Jim Crow 2.0, and they know they are doing everything they can to steal our election, rather than compete in our election.
The radical rightwing majority on the Supreme Court has aided Trump's assault on our democracy every step of the way. The Callais decision was the MAGA Court's latest move to resurrect Jim Crow South, upending half a century of precedent and progress when it gutted the Voting Rights Act for which Martin Luther King, Jr. and so many others marched, bled, and ultimately gave their lives.
The decision issues a deliberate blow to democracy, stripping voters of protections while handing MAGA politicians free rein to rig maps that drown out their voices, especially those of historically disenfranchised communities. Callais did not come out of nowhere. Oh, no. For years, beginning with Chief Justice Roberts in the awful and evil Shelby County decision, the Republican-appointed majority, led by Roberts, chipped away at the Voting Rights Act in decision after decision.
Indeed, Roberts began railing against the Voting Rights Act since the early eighties. Now Roberts says his job is to call balls and strikes-- bull. For someone who famously said that his job is ``to call balls and strikes, and not to pitch or bat,'' John Roberts sure is swinging for the fences to help Donald Trump subvert our elections. Democrats are not going to wait until the damage is done. Oh, no. That is why Senate Democrats launched our Election Protection Task Force, the most expansive election protection effort our caucus has ever undertaken.
We are going to bring together lawyers and observers, rapid-response teams, cyber security experts, State and local officials, and the most renowned election experts in the country to protect our democracy before, during, and after this election. We are going to fight like hell to make sure our elections belong to the voters--not to Donald Trump.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant bill clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, I rise to join my colleagues in standing up for democracy where every eligible American has a voice and the right to vote.
I want to thank Ranking Member Padilla for organizing this floor block today and for his leadership in the fight for our democracy. The freedom to vote is the bedrock of our government, and it is fundamental to all of our freedoms. It is how Americans make their voices heard and hold their elected officials accountable.
It has stood the test of wars, economic strife, and a global pandemic. And now, despite continued attacks on access to the ballot box, we must continue the difficult but critical work of protecting and advancing this right. It is on every generation to do that.
That work hasn't always been easy. Throughout our country's 250-year history, there have been moments when we have needed to course correct and take action to ensure that our country lives up to its ideals. This is one of those moments.
On April 29, in a decision joined by six Supreme Court Justices, the Court in the words of Justice Kagan: Completed the demolition of the Voting Rights Act.
In doing so, it undermined fair representation across the country and made it harder for all Americans to have an effective voice in our political process; and it created chaos, including in Louisiana where ballots were already being cast.
Congressman John Lewis once said that voting is the most powerful tool we have to create a more perfect Union. It was John Lewis' faith in our country and our democratic ideals that led him to Selma, AL, where he helped lead 600 marchers across the Edmond Pettus Bridge on that dark day that became known as Bloody Sunday. The horrific events of the day shocked the Nation. Soon after, President Lyndon Johnson came to the Capitol and, as he said, with the outrage of Selma still fresh urged Congress to guarantee the freedom to vote.
Months later, with the help of former Minnesota Senator and Vice President Hubert Humphrey, whose desk I stand behind right now, whose name is carved into this desk, the Voting Rights Act was signed into law.
And historically, protecting meaningful access to the ballot box has brought both sides of the aisle together. The Senate reauthorized the Voting Rights Act in 1982 by a vote of 85-8, including 43 Republicans; in 1992, by a vote of 75-20, including 25 Republicans; and in 2006, with a unanimous 98-0 vote, 51 Republicans.
But now so much of the progress that Americans have fought and even died for is at stake. In case after case, these Justices have gutted critical statutes that protect Americans' constitutional rights and diminish our voice in democracy. In cases like Citizens United, the Court unleashed a wave of special interest spending in our elections. In the Shelby County and Brnovich decisions they led to a flood of laws that made it harder for eligible Americans to vote.
The Court has barred Federal courts from policing partisan gerrymandering as well. And now in Callais, it has allowed States to dilute minority votes. In parts of our country, these actions are already effectively shutting minority voters out of the political process. Six Justices overturned Congress' express purpose and effectively eroded section 2 of the Voting Rights Act. The Court has green-lit racial gerrymanders that undermine fair and equal representation, and in the words of Justice Kagan in dissent ``threatens a half-century's worth of gains in voting equality.''
In her dissent in Brnovich, Justice Kagan noted that the Voting Rights Act reminds us of the best of America because it, in her words ``marries two great ideals: democracy and racial equality''--and the worst of America because it was and remains necessary. That couldn't be clearer today. After the Callais decision came down, Republican legislatures immediately started the process to carve up majority- minority districts. In some cases, like in Louisiana, they did so even though the votes had already been cast.
The fact that all these States have rushed to change their maps to dilute the votes of certain communities shows that the Voting Rights Act is needed now more than ever.
It shows, as Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg noted in her dissent in Shelby County, the shortsightedness of undermining a law that is serving its purpose, likening the Court striking down at that time section 5 of the Voting Rights Act to ``throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.''
And yet it also demonstrates the power of the vote, the power that the American people hold when they exercise their constitutional rights and hold their leaders to account. In election after election, it is clear the American people are demanding change. This is no surprise. This administration has been hurting people across the country with their costs, chaos, and corruption.
The President went into a unilateral war without coming to Congress, and in a significant vote today, Congress said no. Congress should have a say. The Senate should have a say.
Americans, why are they so angry? Well, they are seeing rising costs, not just for gas prices from this unauthorized war, but also for food and housing and healthcare costs from these tariffs and refusal to extend the ACA, the Affordable Care Act tax credit, and a refusal to step back and say: Perhaps we should just have targeted tariffs instead of pushing the economy into a tailspin with these across-the-board tariffs. And then trying to do it again and again and again even when the Court says that the IEEPA tariffs were illegal.
The President himself has said:
Americans heard that loud and clear.
The fact is our colleagues know that this agenda is not right. They know that they shouldn't be rubberstamping everything the President has done, as a number of our colleagues just showed with this vote on the war powers.
Well, now we ask them to join us, to listen to the American families and change these policies. This administration is doing all it can to make it harder for the American people to have a meaningful say in our democracy.
You know, Democrats win sometimes; Republicans win sometimes. And when you lose an election, as we have been seeing in these races across the country, then you should listen. You should say: We should maybe change our policies or maybe we should change our candidates or maybe we shouldn't just listen to everything about what the President wants or who the President wants us to vote for. That is how a democracy works.
But instead with both the SAVE America Act and with this court ruling, they are trying to change the rules of the election and trying to change the people who can vote instead of changing their policies and candidates, which has historically been how Americans have been able to find agreement and a party is able to win because they actually find policies and ideas that people want to hear about and that they think will change and improve their lives.
So the SAVE America Act, legislation that Donald Trump, by his own admission, has said ``will guarantee the midterms,'' that bill would create burdensome hurdles for people to register to vote and result in voters' sensitized data being turned over to the Federal Government, something the Justice Department has already tried to illegally pressure States to do, and that is far from the only attack on elections by this administration.
The President has repeatedly threatened to nationalize election administration, replacing the judgment and experience of State and local officials--Democrats and Republicans--going so far as to say:
Now, Minnesota and 18 other States have sued and have won a preliminary injunction because, as the judge wrote, the Constitution does not grant the President any specific powers over elections. Undeterred, the President continues to float illegally ending mail-in voting nationwide and directing the Postal Service to simply refuse to deliver some voters' mail-in ballots.
There are also concerns that Federal agents could be deployed to polling locations to intimidate voters--something that is of special concern in my State given what we saw with the overrun of ICE agents doubling the number of Minneapolis-St. Paul police for months.
Make no mistake, six Supreme Court Justices have damaged our democracy, but they do not have the last word because, as Justice Ginsburg, whom we miss very much, noted in her Shelby County dissent:
It is long past time for Congress to pass the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, and it is long past time for us to pass other commonsense bills, like the effort I worked on alongside the ranking member of the Rules Committee, Senator Padilla, and Senator Schumer, to advance the Freedom to Vote Act--legislation that, instead of creating barriers to the ballot box, expands access to the polls to ensure all eligible Americans can vote regardless of their ZIP Code.
Ultimately, the final check on a Supreme Court weakening our democracy and an administration that is doing all it can to rig the rules--that check is the people. Americans are seeing what has happened, and it really makes them mad. They have turned out to vote in municipal elections, in the Mar-a-Lago legislative election, in cities from Omaha to Miami, in places like Texas--all over this country.
In Selma, the police brutally attacked the peaceful marchers. John Lewis' skull was fractured, and he bore the scar for the rest of his life. The images were broadcast nationwide and shocked the American people.
Every year since, there is a ceremony to commemorate Bloody Sunday. I was there a number of years ago with Congressman Lewis. That weekend, after 48 years, the White police chief of Montgomery handed his police badge to Congressman Lewis and publicly apologized for the police not protecting him and the freedom marchers. Nearly half a century later, that apology came.
Mr. President, 48 years is a long time to wait for an apology, and it only happened because people like Congressman Lewis never quit fighting for progress, for civil rights, for economic justice, and to defend the voting rights of every American. So today, less than 1 month after the Callais decision, when the challenges we face are clear, we cannot quit either.
Just this past weekend, thousands again protested in Selma and Montgomery for the fundamental freedom to make their voice heard in our democracy because the people of this country will not be silenced. They marched because, in Congressman Lewis' words, ``The right to vote is precious and almost sacred, and one of the most important blessings of our democracy.''
When those marchers did what they did and proved then what we must remember now and what those marching in Selma and across the country remind us today is that although progress may not be without setbacks-- and we are in a major one right now--no obstacle will block the American people from having their voice heard.
Mr. President, the issue is our right to vote in this democracy and in this country. For many of us, that has never been a big question. We registered. We vote regularly. We show our identification. We get our ballots, do our civic responsibility, push the ballot into the machine in my hometown, and get a little sticker to wear on your lapel that says ``I voted.'' It is simple, easy.
But I can remember when voting was not so easy for a lot of people. The year was 1965, and I was a college student here at Georgetown in Washington, DC. We heard about a march that was going to take place in Selma, AL, and a number of my fellow students and I sat up one night and said: Why don't we go? Let's go. Let's be part of this.
So we talked about it, and here is the way the conversation went:
Do you remember what happened in Mississippi last year when those three guys from up north--New York and places like that--went down to Mississippi for the Civil Rights Movement, and they were murdered, and they never found their bodies?
At that point in time, they had not found their bodies. They did later.
They associated the murders with members of the Ku Klux Klan who were out to get these foreign meddlers who were coming into Mississippi, pushing for the right to vote for Black people.
We talked about it and said: Well, is it safe to go down there and march?
We went back and forth and back and forth and ultimately decided not to go. Bad decision. I wish I had gone.
Why were they marching in Selma, AL--a town you haven't heard of except for that march? It was over the issue of the right to vote for Black Americans in that town.
Here are the numbers. There were 15,000 eligible Black voters in Selma, AL. How many were actually registered to vote out of the 15,000? There were 335. What happened? Why didn't more register? Because they put a test down, a literacy test, before they could vote, and you had to pass that test to be eligible to vote. They asked constitutional questions like ``The Constitution has the phrase `letters of marque and reprisal.' What does that mean?'' I am not sure I can answer it standing here today as a Senator. They couldn't answer it, either, and they were denied the right to vote.
That was the reality of the voting crisis in America in the 1960s that led to the Civil Rights Act.
Let me fast-forward in my story to a much more recent time. It was about 25 years ago. I was on a trip down to Alabama, this time with John Lewis, my friend and fellow Member of Congress, who actually marched in Selma the day that I didn't go. We went to a number of places and saw a number of key locations in Birmingham and Montgomery, AL, where important civil rights events had occurred.
The highlight of the trip was going to be on Sunday. After breakfast, we were going to go march together across and down the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, AL. Unfortunately, I was called back home. I had to leave to catch a flight.
I said to John Lewis: I am sorry to miss this opportunity, my friend. I really wanted to be there finally to march in Selma.
He said: What time is your plane?
I said: 8 o'clock.
He said: We are going to get up at 5 and go over there, you and me, and I will march with you down the Edmund Pettus Bridge and show you where they almost killed me.
I said: I wouldn't miss it for the world.
We got up at 5 o'clock, took the drive over to Selma, and marched down and across that bridge. And I thought of all the times I had seen the video and film of John Lewis--this young, idealistic Black man-- wearing a tan raincoat, marching with the folks across the Edmund Pettus Bridge, and the troopers coming up and battering him so badly, they fractured his skull and almost killed him. He survived, thank God. And he talked about that day and what it meant to him. I wish I had been there. I hope I would have survived it, as he did. I hope I wouldn't have had to go through the beating that he did.
When we talk about the right to vote and the Voting Rights Act, it was created here in Washington the next year by Lyndon Baines Johnson, as President, because he said: Once and for all, we have to put an end to this. We have to say that every American, regardless of race, creed, or color, has an opportunity to vote, and they can never be denied for their racial composition or whatever it might be.
We are back debating the same issue, and, of course, the question is: Do we need a Voting Rights Act? Senator Durbin, you are talking about something that was passed 50-plus years ago. Why do we have to continue to have a provision in the law to protect your right to vote?
Well, my experience as a Congressman and as a Senator has been that there are nefarious, devious ways to make it tough to vote. You can draw a map that basically says you will never get to vote for anybody you want. You are always stuck in the wrong district, the wrong place. That is called gerrymandering or redistricting to deny a constitutional right. Or you can basically be the object of discrimination. That can happen too.
So the issue of voting is so sacred and key to our democracy that I believe the Voting Rights Act should be in place. As a warning to those who would violate it, there is a price to be paid. That, to me, doesn't seem like too much to ask. In fact, it gets down to the heart of who we are and where we are today.
You hear a lot of people now talking about illegal and ineligible people who are trying to vote. There have been suggestions that some of them are illegal, undocumented people living here who should never have come into this country and once here, should never be allowed to vote.
In fact, the other side has proposed--the Republicans have proposed that people prove they are American citizens before they can vote.
The interesting thing is, they say: We want to see your identification before you vote.
Well, what identification would you produce? The same thing you produce every day--your driver's license, right? Everybody uses their driver's license. I do to prove who I am when I buy a plane ticket or something.
But the Republican approach says that a driver's license is not eligible to be used for identification under their new law. Under their new law, you basically have to produce one of two things.
A passport.
Well, I have a passport. Doesn't everybody?
No. Half of Americans don't own a passport.
Well, then get one before the election.
I have a problem. I need $165 to buy a passport, and I have to wait a few weeks, maybe a few months if it doesn't come through quickly.
So that is one proof of identification, which many people don't have and can't get in time for an election, not for sure.
The second thing they would like you to produce is your birth certificate that proves you are who you say you are because your name is on it. It is OK for me, if I can ever find the darn thing up in that box in my closet. But I can find my birth certificate that has my name on it.
My wife is not so lucky. It has her maiden name on her birth certificate, of course, so she has to go ahead of time and obtain a new birth certificate, pay for it, and get it delivered with her married name on board.
Why? The basic premise is to make sure that you are an American when you vote.
Well, this must be a real problem. If we are going to ask people to produce a passport or a birth certificate with their birth name on it because we want to keep ineligible people from voting, this must be a real problem.
Well, we took a look at it, and here is how it turns out. Over a span of 20 years of voting in America--imagine the millions and millions of votes that were cast--they found a number of people who were ineligible because they weren't citizens of the United States, who actually tried to vote.
Out of 40 million people, how many do you think they found? Seventy thousand? No. Seven thousand? No. Seven hundred? No. Seventy-seven. Seventy-seven people who tried to vote who were ineligible.
Now the other side--the Republicans--is coming up with the idea to go buy a passport to prove you are eligible; go find a birth certificate that fits the law to show you are eligible.
The point I am making is this: 77 people who were stupid enough or devious enough to try to vote and weren't eligible shouldn't create a hardship for every other conscientious American who gets up regularly and never misses the opportunity to vote. To put some new identification requirement in there for registration just makes no sense to me whatsoever. That is why we continue to debate about voting.
Incidentally, let's say the obvious. One of the reasons we continue this debate is that a former President, and now President again, has decided he never lost an election. He says, in the year 2020, he never lost to Joe Biden.
It has reached a ridiculous point, where nominees to become a Federal judge for life--attorneys--come before us; take an oath; and testify in the Judiciary Committee, where I am the ranking member.
We ask these judicial nominees a basic question: Who won the election in 2020?
I will bet you, if I went to the Galleries up there, everybody could answer: Why, of course, Joe Biden won that election.
These nominees cannot say those words. They are afraid of the reaction of Donald Trump when he hears that they are not promoting the Big Lie--that he never lost an election.
Think I am exaggerating?
Just 2 or 3 weeks ago, Senator Coons of Delaware started asking those nominees who had won a lifetime appointment on a Federal bench another basic question. The amendments to the Constitution include an amendment that says: If you have been elected two times as President of the United States, you can't run for a third term. So Senator Coons asked these nominees that question: Do you believe that because Donald Trump was elected twice as President that he is prohibited from running for a third term?
They refused to answer. ``It may be an issue on a case before me someday.'' That is not what it is all about.
Donald Trump likes to hold out the possibility that he will run again, even though it is clearly, clearly unconstitutional for him to even consider it. But these nominees are in such fear that he will end up vicing them or taking them off the list to be judges that they won't answer these basic questions about who won the election or whether or not Donald Trump can run for a third term. That is the ridiculous extreme we have reached in this country.
There will come a day for some of these people--and they will be put on the Federal bench by my colleagues on the Republican side--when somebody is going to assemble a video of their testimony. It will be a moment of embarrassment for them to think what they had to do to finally get approval before the Judiciary Committee.
Today, the right to vote is under attack in this country. We are witnessing a brand of politics we have never seen before. The Trump administration has shown they are dead set on restricting Americans' right to vote by pushing for partisan gerrymandering, restricting mail- in voting, and demanding unreasonable voter registration requirements, such as those I just mentioned.
Incidentally, the President of the United States says he wants to eliminate vote-by-mail, which many of us have used over and over again, because of the fraud involved in it. How did the President of the United States vote in this last election in Florida? He voted by mail. Go figure. This is supposed to be a corrupt form of voting in America. Yet the President, who wants to end it, uses it himself.
All Americans need to have a fair say in who represents them, but in being led by a President who tried stealing an election, Republicans have lost all respect for election integrity. We are now witnessing a never-before-seen political pressure campaign to rig our elections by enabling politicians to choose their voters, not the other way around.
Rather than tit-for-tat political games, the American people deserve stability at the voting booth. The Voting Rights Act used to be an overwhelming bipartisan sentiment that we are all in this together and that we don't want anyone to cheat their way into public office.
In the most recent Supreme Court case of Louisiana v. Callais, the Court had an opportunity to protect this representation for all Americans, especially those who have been historically disenfranchised by gerrymandering and other discriminatory voting practices. Instead, the Court's conservative supermajority has again turned its back on the promise of an equal right to vote, further gutting the Voting Rights Act.
The impact is already being felt. Across the South--primarily in the former Confederate States--you see decisions being made to eliminate African-American Representatives from congressional districts.
Justice Kagan, in writing for the dissent, said the Voting Rights Act was ``born of the literal blood of Union soldiers and civil rights marchers.'' We cannot allow that blood to have been spilled in vain. We must fight these dangerous attempts to restrict the right to vote, and we must restore confidence in our democracy by ensuring that every eligible American has access to the ballot.
That is why, in honor of my late friend and voting rights pioneer Congressman John Lewis, I have been proud to introduce a bill that bears his name. It is the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, which would restore and strengthen the Voting Rights Act.
It has been an honor to work with Senator Warnock of Georgia, who is cosponsoring this bill with me. We are going to try to make sure it has its day in court--or its day in the Senate, as we say.
We also need to advance additional tools against current voter suppression efforts. Attacks on voting rights aren't happening in a vacuum. Across this country, Republican lawmakers and litigators are using every trick in the book to rig the rules of the game. Why? They are afraid of losing in November. Purging voter rolls, closing polling places, restricting mail-in voting, and undermining the Voting Rights Act all serve one purpose--to limit access to the ballot box.
America is better than that.
Some Democrats will continue to stand up and push back against this effort. It is about time that this became a bipartisan effort again.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. President, I am honored to follow my colleague from Illinois on the topic of paramount interest to this body and to the American people.
You know, future generations of Americans will read the Supreme Court's decision in Louisiana v. Callais with dismay and embarrassment. Right now, there are a lot of Americans reading it with not only dismay and embarrassment but with outrage and fear because, in that decision, the Court gutted section 2 of the Voting Rights Act--landmark legislation that ensured minority communities had the opportunity to elect a representative of their choice--in other words, the people picking their political representatives, not the political representatives picking the people, the constituents whom they will represent.
That decision was not handed down in a vacuum. It comes as President Trump and his handpicked Supreme Court majority launch a two-front attack on our elections: voting rights and the democratic structure. Trump has sought to purge voters from the rolls, has demanded voters' most sensitive data, has threatened to send ICE to the polls, has raided election offices to seize ballots, has tried to kill mail-in voting, and has claimed he will nationalize elections.
That is his word--``nationalize'' elections--meaning have the Federal Government take over elections, which constitutionally are the States' responsibility under the law, under the Constitution.
Meanwhile, the Supreme Court lent a helping hand to President Trump, inflicting generational damage on our democracy as well. In its decision demolishing voting rights, the Supreme Court decided that it knows best when it comes to societal, political, electoral conditions on the ground. The people's elected representatives simply can't be trusted in their determination that every American ought to have a meaningful right to vote. Election rights are too important to be left to elected representatives. The Supreme Court knows best.
Justice Alito's majority opinion blithely justifies the decision on the grounds that the ``Voting Rights Act led to `great strides' '' in electoral opportunities, since it was enacted, such that section 2 is no longer necessary.
Of course, if you want the definition of an activist Court out of control, it is a Court that makes the judgment on what it thinks are the facts without having any factual evidence that a provision of law is no longer necessary. That provision of law was passed by the U.S. Senate and the U.S. House of Representatives, but the U.S. Supreme Court thinks it knows better.
As Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in her dissent to a previous ruling of this Court diminishing voting rights, the logic of tossing away section 2 because it has worked so well--that is Justice Alito's logic--``is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet.'' That rainstorm now has come. Before the ink was dry on the Court's decision, States were already carving up Black majority districts with reckless abandon.
So, with the President and his Court majority's hostility toward American democracy, there is only one branch of the Federal Government left standing to protect our voting rights, and it is the branch that the Constitution actually entrusts with authority over elections--the U.S. Congress. Yes, us. Now, more than ever, it is incumbent upon the Members of this institution to take action to preserve our great Republic.
As Benjamin Franklin said, it is ``a republic, if you can keep it.''
Now is the time that we are called upon literally to keep it. We have done it before in circumstances not dissimilar to the crisis we face today.
In 1965, when our democracy was at an inflection point, as millions of our fellow Americans were being blocked from exercising the franchise, our predecessors passed the original Voting Rights Act in the face of unprecedented political resistance. You need not be a constitutional or a historical scholar to remember the great fight that was entailed in the Civil Rights Act of 1965, which guaranteed voting rights.
Then, in 1982--much like today with the Supreme Court's gutting of section 2--Congress passed and President Reagan signed a law overruling the Court and emphasizing that Congress meant what it said: All Americans--all Americans--must have the opportunity to choose representatives as they wish.
Now, to be sure, we face a new and profoundly dangerous situation today. The sitting President of the United States is actively seeking to undermine free and fair elections in our country, and the Supreme Court has entirely abdicated its responsibility to safeguard our fundamental rights. The Supreme Court is doing his bidding. It is in his pocket. The Justices of the Supreme Court are regarded these days by
We ought to learn from the courage of civil rights leaders, legislators, and ordinary people who have come before us. Their insistence that our democracy belongs to all Americans was the force that led to the passage of the Voting Rights Act and its later amendments.
We, too, now must act with urgency. Healing the damage done to voting rights and rebuilding our democratic structures will take substantial reforms. We can start right now, today, with measures that should be uncontroversial.
We must pass, for example, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act. I am proud to be a supporter of it. I have tried to help lead it. We must significantly increase election security grant funding to ensure that local election officials can smoothly and securely administer our elections as these midterms approach--smoothly and securely administer elections.
And that kind of support is more essential than ever at a time when elections are under real threat. We must significantly work with and support State leaders who have stood up to the administration and refused to hand over voters' most sensitive information.
We must defeat the attempt to further disenfranchise voters through the so-called SAVE America Act. It seems moribund, but we need to be wary that it could be revived.
And we must ensure that this evermore Supreme Court does not have the final word on the right to vote in America. Just like in 1982, Congress has an obligation and an opportunity to pass a voting rights statute so powerful and unambiguous that not even this Court can find a way to overrule it.
We are approaching our Nation's 250th anniversary, a great milestone for a republic that Benjamin Franklin said we would have to work to keep. Now is our time to keep it.
Callais reminds us that the American experiment has been an ongoing struggle to fulfill the ideals of the Revolution for all people of the country. By and large, that history has been one of expanding rights, embracing more people with liberties and power to control their own lives and a say in the government that makes decisions about those lives. We have expanded voting rights, until now. And, right now, voting rights are in the balance.
Our history has not been linear. Every two steps forward, sometimes a step back because of reactionary backlash to advances in rights and liberties, but Americans have never stopped fighting to ensure that all this Nation's people have a say in determining how we can make our Union more perfect.
The Supreme Court's decision in Callais--dangerous and misguided as it is--will not stop us from continuing that 250-year fight. Now I ask all of my colleagues to join in this effort to preserve our democracy.
Mr. President, I thank my colleague the senior Senator from Connecticut, and I too want to join him in commenting on the Callais decision. And I want to put the decision also in a context of what the Supreme Court has been doing consistently since at least Bush v. Gore, and that is, on the one hand, they have been stripping the House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate--the legislative body--of their legislative powers. On the other hand, they have been extending unprecedented extension of powers to the executive. It is a threat to democracy. The Supreme Court is doing real damage to everyday people in all of our country by upsetting the constitutional order of the separation of powers in coequal branches of government.
Let me talk a little bit about the Callais decision. You know, I was inspired to get involved in politics, in public service, by the civil rights movement in the sixties. In 1967, I dropped out of college. I hitchhiked to Chicago, and I began working against housing discrimination against African-American citizens on the West Side of Chicago. And it was amazing to me two things: one, how much of the discrimination they suffered was legal. A veteran who served in World War II, if he was Black, could not get a mortgage. Banks were allowed to redline districts where it meant nobody who lived in them--and they were Black neighborhoods--could even get a mortgage. It was legal.
But what I was also astonished by and aspired by, as I am to this day, was the generosity, the resilience, and the determination of people who were on the receiving end of what, in effect, was Jim Crow discrimination to forge ahead, to help each other, and to make changes.
The civil rights struggle in that decade culminated with the legal protections delivered by the Voting Rights Act.
The Supreme Court's recent decision in Louisiana v. Callais literally turns the clock back on that hard-won progress. Already--already--in an instant, States from Louisiana to South Carolina to Tennessee have called for redistricting ahead of the midterm elections in 6 months. And hundreds of thousands--if not millions--of voters are being impacted by this decision.
In addition, in my view, being wrong on the merits and incredibly damaging, the Supreme Court's decision is the latest example of what the Court is doing that is, in fact, eroding our democracy. A trail of decisions has led us to this remarkable moment. Look at what has happened over just the last decade and a half.
In 2010, Citizens United, the Supreme Court opened the door to unlimited gargantuan sums of money in our elections. Money is speech. And, of course, what has happened is that, literally, billionaires dominate funding for elections. And it is not about what the country needs; it is about what they want.
In 2013, in Shelby County v. Holder, the Court removes the Federal oversight of potentially discriminatory State voting restrictions that threatened the access to the ballot itself. Since that decision, States have added nearly 100 restrictive voting right laws.
In 2018, Rucho v. Common Cause, the Court refused to act on partisan--wildly partisan--gerrymandering.
And by the way, both parties have engaged in that. So I am condemning that radical gerrymandering, regardless of which party uses it for their own advantage.
But now, across the country, in light of this recent decision, we are literally seeing a race to the bottom where Members of Congress--pardon me--where members of State legislatures, with the assent of many Members of Congress, are choosing their voters by this radical gerrymandering on a partisan basis where the goal is to get your side elected and to do that by picking your voters. And then we are seeing the spectacle of redistricting every 2 years instead of every 10 years. It is stripping away the right of the voters to be the ones picking their leaders, as opposed to the leaders picking their voters.
And, of course, in 2024, Trump v. United States, that decision defied our 250 years of history which said that no person, including the President of the United States, was above the law.
Every single one of these decisions by the Court has made our democracy less democratic. And now this Court's decision in Callais can be added to that really damaging list.
The Court has gutted section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, as passed by Congress, making it exceedingly difficult for plaintiffs to prove discrimination. They have to prove ``intent''--impossible burden with 535 Members and every one may have a different intent. They have to disregard, now, the actual impact of the map that is put together by partisan State legislators.
The Court decision has also given the green light for States to reduce the electoral role that minorities have played in our democracy, unraveling one of the last opportunities for minorities to elect people of their choice.
Let me go through a few of the States. In Louisiana, a third of the population is African American. Joe Biden won 40 percent of the vote there. Yet after Callais, Louisiana has proposed a map that won't even come close to one-third representation for African Americans--and by the way, that might be a Republican or a Democrat; it is the voters' choice. There will only be one Black Representative out of six House Members.
The Supreme Court knows exactly what it is doing. By blessing partisan
Equally concerning, partisan gerrymandering all but guarantees that the politicians will choose who wins elections--not the people of their State and their district. They are picking their voters. This is a race to the bottom that is detrimental to the country and should be rejected by both parties.
It is very concerning to me as well how the legislative branch, by its passivity, has allowed this to happen. Under the Constitution, the Congress--as I mentioned, the branch most responsive to the will of the people--is supposed to be the counterweight against the other branches of government. But as Congress has stood on the sidelines, the executive branch, aided by the Supreme Court, has unleashed the unrestrained power in our campaign financing system of billionaires to play an oversized role--a decisive role--to select their own political elite.
But the outcome of Callais is not just about the degradation of our democracy. The Supreme Court reached its judgment based on its own individual assessment of the protections that were codified by the judgment of Congress that recognized and protected against racial discrimination in voting. Congress said those protections continue to be necessary. The Supreme Court casually blew that off and said: No, they are not necessary. Now the Supreme Court has overruled Congress on a question of policy which was within the purview of this institution to make.
Congress has reauthorized the Voting Rights Act five times in recognition of the need to prevent voting discrimination in this country. And despite such clear instruction, the Court has still taken it upon itself to encroach upon Congress' prerogative by requiring victims of racially discriminatory gerrymandering to prove that States had a discriminatory motive--an impossible task to prove, even when the impact is absolutely clear.
Justice Kagan, dissenting from the Callais decision, put it plainly:
It is incumbent on us that we, as Congress, reassert our authority to make judgments about what is best in terms of access to the ballot.
My view, by the way, is that this race to the bottom is going to be a killer for our democracy, and I believe both parties should renounce radical partisan gerrymandering, and I believe both parties should support eliminating these every 2-year redistrictings that all have, as their stated goal, advantaging one party over the other.
I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to executive session to consider the following nomination: Calendar No. 741; that the nomination be confirmed; that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate; that no further motions be in order to the nomination; that the President be immediately notified of the Senate's action and the Senate then resume legislative session.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The nomination considered and confirmed is as follows:
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate Procurement Regulations amendments and Senate Procurement Regulations, as amended, be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Mr. President, I was necessarily absent for rollcall vote No. 125, the confirmation of the en bloc consideration of 49 nominations on the Executive Calendar pursuant to the provisions of S. Res. 690. Had I been present for the vote, I would have voted nay.
I was necessarily absent for rollcall vote No. 126, motion to invoke cloture on Executive Calendar No. 735, Sheria Akins Clarke, of South Carolina, to be United States District Judge for the District of South Carolina. Had I been present for the vote, I would have voted nay.
I was necessarily absent for rollcall vote No. 127, confirmation of Executive Calendar No. 735, Sheria Akins Clarke, of South Carolina, to be United States District Judge for the District of South Carolina. Had I been present for the vote, I would have voted nay.
Mr. President, I am proud to represent the great State of Nebraska. Agriculture is our No. 1 industry in Nebraska. I am also proud to represent our farmers and ranchers, who are the best in the world. Agriculture is the heart and soul of what we do in the State of Nebraska. We produce the finest products and the safest food. We feed and fuel our great Nation.
Now, it is no secret that our farmers and ranchers have had some challenges. We have seen low commodity prices and high input costs. We have also seen a drought in my State as well as wildfires that are the worst in our State's history--burning over 1 million acres. But our farmers and ranchers, they are tough and resilient. They find ways to come together and get through the tough times, and they contribute to their communities. Despite all of this, they continue to invest to make sure that we have a strong agricultural sector in Nebraska. This is also important for our country, as food security is national security.
Last week, the Senate passed my resolution to proclaim May as Beef Month throughout the entire country. Again, this is our leading industry in Nebraska: the beef industry. We are the leading State for exporting beef--$1.7 billion worth. We are a leader in every category of beef production. In fact, we have over 6 million head of cattle, and the 3 highest beef-producing counties in the country are in Nebraska. We are very proud of our beef industry, and, of course, it is the best tasting beef in the entire world--even if the Presiding Officer doesn't agree with that right now, being from Montana. So we are very, very proud of that.
May is also Renewable Fuels Month. Again, Nebraska is a leader in renewable fuels with 2.2 billion gallons. Not only is this important for creating jobs in our small towns and rural communities, but this is one of the ways that consumers can save money at the pump. The last time I filled up on E10--a 10-percent blend of ethanol--I saved 55 cents a gallon at my local Hy-Vee. It is also a great way to be able to help clean up the environment.
Of course, it is great for our farmers and ranchers. It is also great for our country. There are estimates that our renewable fuels industry that is so great for our corn farmers and soybean farmers also displaces about 640 million barrels of foreign oil. That means we are less dependent on foreign sources of energy. This is, again, a great way for consumers to save money but also for us to strengthen our energy independence--``America First'' energy independence. So our homegrown solution is biofuels.
At the summit last week, when President Trump was in Beijing, we heard good news with regard to potential initial purchases of American agricultural products. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said there will be ``double-digit billions'' of U.S. agricultural products in 2026, 2027, and 2028--maybe $17 billion in each of those years. That is on top of the 25 million metric tons of soybeans that communist China had agreed to buy already, last year in October. That certainly is good news for our farmers.
What we need is to make sure that we hold communist China accountable for those purchases. We recall that in the first Trump administration, they signed the phase 1 trade deal with communist China, but as soon as President Trump was out of office, China reneged on that deal. We have seen them capriciously turn away the cargo ships of our corn. They have delisted our beef processors.
Communist China, at the end of the day, is a bad trading partner. We need to make sure we hold them accountable for the commitments they make, and I expect this administration will do just that. They have a track record of doing it.
In addition, we need to look at diversifying our export markets. That is why I am introducing the MARKET Act. The MARKET Act would instruct the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Trade Representative to look at ways we can mitigate our dependence on communist China and to look for new markets. Last year, in the Working Families Tax Cut, we put in an additional $285 million--doubling the amount of money for trade promotion--to be able to find new markets for our farmers and ranchers.
My MARKET Act would require the USDA and the USTR to work together to look for new markets and to come back with a report to Congress on how we can further expand those and mitigate the risks of being dependent upon our adversaries like communist China. Do we need to do something with regard to legislative action or regulatory action? This will help make sure that we continue to be able to expand the trade that is so important for our agricultural States, like Nebraska.
About a third of everything we grow in Nebraska gets exported overseas. We are the fifth largest ag exporter in the country. These markets overseas are important to our strong economy in Nebraska. My MARKET Act will help make sure we continue to look for opportunities to be able to grow that.
I am proud of our farmers and ranchers. They do a great job of feeding our great Nation. And I am proud to be able to continue to support them here in Washington, DC.
S. 4561. A bill to modernize and streamline the permitting process for broadband infrastructure on Federal land, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
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. 4566. A bill to amend title XIX of the Social Security Act to require coverage under State plans under the Medicaid program for annual lung cancer screening with no cost sharing for individuals for whom screening is recommended by U.S. Preventive Services Task Force guidelines, to expand coverage under Medicaid of counseling and pharmacotherapy for cessation of tobacco use, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Finance.
Mr. President, I am proud to represent the great State of Nebraska. Agriculture is our No. 1 industry in Nebraska. I am also proud to represent our farmers and ranchers, who are the best in the world. Agriculture is the heart and soul of what we do in the State of Nebraska. We produce the finest products and the safest food. We feed and fuel our great Nation.
Now, it is no secret that our farmers and ranchers have had some challenges. We have seen low commodity prices and high input costs. We have also seen a drought in my State as well as wildfires that are the worst in our State's history--burning over 1 million acres. But our farmers and ranchers, they are tough and resilient. They find ways to come together and get through the tough times, and they contribute to their communities. Despite all of this, they continue to invest to make sure that we have a strong agricultural sector in Nebraska. This is also important for our country, as food security is national security.
Last week, the Senate passed my resolution to proclaim May as Beef Month throughout the entire country. Again, this is our leading industry in Nebraska: the beef industry. We are the leading State for exporting beef--$1.7 billion worth. We are a leader in every category of beef production. In fact, we have over 6 million head of cattle, and the 3 highest beef-producing counties in the country are in Nebraska. We are very proud of our beef industry, and, of course, it is the best tasting beef in the entire world--even if the Presiding Officer doesn't agree with that right now, being from Montana. So we are very, very proud of that.
May is also Renewable Fuels Month. Again, Nebraska is a leader in renewable fuels with 2.2 billion gallons. Not only is this important for creating jobs in our small towns and rural communities, but this is one of the ways that consumers can save money at the pump. The last time I filled up on E10--a 10-percent blend of ethanol--I saved 55 cents a gallon at my local Hy-Vee. It is also a great way to be able to help clean up the environment.
Of course, it is great for our farmers and ranchers. It is also great for our country. There are estimates that our renewable fuels industry that is so great for our corn farmers and soybean farmers also displaces about 640 million barrels of foreign oil. That means we are less dependent on foreign sources of energy. This is, again, a great way for consumers to save money but also for us to strengthen our energy independence--``America First'' energy independence. So our homegrown solution is biofuels.
At the summit last week, when President Trump was in Beijing, we heard good news with regard to potential initial purchases of American agricultural products. U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said there will be ``double-digit billions'' of U.S. agricultural products in 2026, 2027, and 2028--maybe $17 billion in each of those years. That is on top of the 25 million metric tons of soybeans that communist China had agreed to buy already, last year in October. That certainly is good news for our farmers.
What we need is to make sure that we hold communist China accountable for those purchases. We recall that in the first Trump administration, they signed the phase 1 trade deal with communist China, but as soon as President Trump was out of office, China reneged on that deal. We have seen them capriciously turn away the cargo ships of our corn. They have delisted our beef processors.
Communist China, at the end of the day, is a bad trading partner. We need to make sure we hold them accountable for the commitments they make, and I expect this administration will do just that. They have a track record of doing it.
In addition, we need to look at diversifying our export markets. That is why I am introducing the MARKET Act. The MARKET Act would instruct the U.S. Department of Agriculture and the U.S. Trade Representative to look at ways we can mitigate our dependence on communist China and to look for new markets. Last year, in the Working Families Tax Cut, we put in an additional $285 million--doubling the amount of money for trade promotion--to be able to find new markets for our farmers and ranchers.
My MARKET Act would require the USDA and the USTR to work together to look for new markets and to come back with a report to Congress on how we can further expand those and mitigate the risks of being dependent upon our adversaries like communist China. Do we need to do something with regard to legislative action or regulatory action? This will help make sure that we continue to be able to expand the trade that is so important for our agricultural States, like Nebraska.
About a third of everything we grow in Nebraska gets exported overseas. We are the fifth largest ag exporter in the country. These markets overseas are important to our strong economy in Nebraska. My MARKET Act will help make sure we continue to look for opportunities to be able to grow that.
I am proud of our farmers and ranchers. They do a great job of feeding our great Nation. And I am proud to be able to continue to support them here in Washington, DC.
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 Armed Services is authorized to meet in closed and open session during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, May 19, 2026, at 9:30 a.m.
The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, May 19, 2026, at 2 p.m., to conduct a subcommittee hearing.
The Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, May 19, 2026, at 8 a.m., to conduct a business meeting.
The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, May 19, 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 19, 2026, at 3 p.m., to conduct a closed briefing.
The Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities of the Committee on Armed Services is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Tuesday, May 19, 2026, at 3 p.m., to conduct a hearing.
Mr. President, I first ask unanimous consent that my legislative fellow Patrick McCormick be granted floor privileges for duration of his legislative fellowship with my office.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The resolution (S. Res. 739) was agreed to.
The preamble was agreed to.
(The resolution, with its preamble, is printed in today's Record under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')
I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The resolution (S. Res. 740) was agreed to.
The preamble was agreed to.
(The resolution, with its preamble, is printed in today's Record under ``Submitted Resolutions.'')
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Wednesday, May 20; 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 at 11:15 a.m. the Senate proceed to executive session and execute the order in relation to the Rikhye nomination.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the provisions of S. Res. 739.
There being no objection, as a further mark of respect to the late Senator John Seymour, former Senator from California, the Senate, at 7:03 p.m., adjourned until Wednesday, May 20, 2026, at 10 a.m.
