Congressional Record, Volume 171 Issue 71 (Tuesday, April 29, 2025)

[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 71 (Tuesday, April 29, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S2624-S2630]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

Trump Administration First 100 Days

Mr. KING. Mr. President, almost 75 years ago, the junior Senator from
Maine rose in this Chamber to deliver a speech from her heart about a
crisis then facing our country, a crisis not arising from a foreign
adversary but from within, a crisis that threatened the values and
ideals at the base of the American experiment.
Senator Margaret Chase Smith's ``Declaration of Conscience'' turned
out to be one of the most important speeches of the 20th century and
defined her for the ages as a person of extraordinary courage and
principle. And here she is with her famous red rose that she always
wore on her lapel.
Now, I should admit upfront that I worked for Candidate Bill
Hathaway, who defeated her in the election of 1972. But she and I made
it up years later when I was producing a documentary on her life for
Maine PBS. In fact, as we began the project, I was so worried that she
might resent my having worked for her opponent, so I sent her a letter
confessing my role in her last campaign.
Her response was pure Margaret Smith:

Dear Angus King, it is perfectly alright with me that you
once worked for Mr. Hathaway. Yours sincerely, Margaret Chase
Smith.

Simple as that.
In working together on the documentary, she shared some fascinating
background on this famous speech, including that she drafted it by hand
at her kitchen table in her hometown of Skowhegan, ME, on Memorial Day
weekend of 1950.
After returning to Washington a couple of days later, she steeled her
resolve and headed to the Senate floor. As luck would have it, when she
got to the trolley from the Russell Building, there next to her sat
Senator Joe McCarthy, who was the subject of the speech.
``Why are you looking so serious, Margaret,'' he asked her.
``Because I'm on the way to make a speech, Joe, and you're not going
to like it.''
She told me that she was so nervous about the speech and the breach
that it would make in her relationship to the then-powerful Senator
McCarthy--this was the height of the Red Scare in the 1950s, remember--
she told her chief aide, Bill Lewis, who was up in the Press Gallery,
not to hand out the copies of the speech until she started speaking on
the floor because she was afraid she might lose her nerve. But she went
through with it, and the rest is quite literally history.

Here is how Margaret Chase Smith began that speech:

Mr. President, I would like to speak briefly and simply
about a serious national condition. It is a national feeling
of fear and frustration that could result in national suicide
and the end of everything that we Americans hold dear. It is
a condition that comes from the lack of effective leadership
either in the legislative branch or the executive branch of
our government.

Remember, this is Margaret Chase Smith. These are her words, 75 years
ago.
She continued:

[[Page S2625]]

I think that it is high time for the United States Senate
and its members to do some real soul searching and to weigh
our consciences as to the manner in which we are performing
our duty to the people of America and the manner in which we
are using or abusing our individual powers and privileges.

Later in the speech, here is one of her conclusions:

It is high time that we stopped thinking politically as
Republicans and Democrats about elections and started
thinking patriotically as Americans about national security
based on individual freedom.

I think that is very important, Mr. President.
She said:

It is high time that we stopped thinking politically as
Republicans and Democrats and started thinking patriotically
as Americans about national security based on individual
freedom. It is high time that we all stopped being tools and
victims of totalitarian techniques--techniques that, if
continued here unchecked, will surely end what we have come
to cherish as the American way of life.

Senator Smith's speech had plenty of criticism for the Democratic
administration at the time, but the real focus of her urgent plea to
her colleagues was the actions of Senator Joseph McCarthy, whom she
never mentioned by name in the speech, by the way. But Joseph McCarthy
had embarked upon an anticommunist crusade in a manner that threatened
the principles of free speech and the rule of law embedded in our
values as a nation and in our Constitution. In other words, it wasn't
McCarthy's anticommunism she objected to; it was the manner in which he
carried it out.
I fear that we are at a similar moment in history. While today's
serious national condition is not involving the actions of one of our
colleagues, it does involve those of the President of the United
States.
Echoing Senator Smith, today's crisis should not be viewed as a
partisan issue. This is not about Democrats or Republicans or
immigration or tax policy or even the next set of elections. Today's
crisis threatens the idea of America and the system of government that
has sustained us for more than two centuries.
Again, this is not about the President's agenda, although, yes, I do
disagree with most of it; it is about the manner in which he is
pursuing it, which includes ignoring the Constitution and the rule of
law. And it is this roughshod nonprocess that endangers all of us--all
of us--his detractors and his supporters alike.
What is at stake is simple and, in fact, was the driving force behind
the basic design of our Constitution: the grave danger to any society
of a concentration of power in one set of hands--the concentration of
power in one set of hands.
The paradox at the heart of the structure of any democratic
government is that power is given to the government to protect and
serve the people, but at the same time, the people must be protected
from that same power being used against them.
Madison put it clearly in the 51st Federalist:

But what is government itself--

Madison said--

but the greatest of all reflections on human nature? If men
were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were
to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on
government would be necessary. In framing a government which
is to be administered by men over men--

And, of course, it would now be men and women over men and women--

the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the
government to control the governed; and in the next place
oblige it to control itself.
A dependence on the people--

He was talking about elections--

is, no doubt, the primary control on the government; but
experience has taught mankind the necessity of auxiliary
precautions.

Precautions that go beyond regular elections. The most important of
these ``auxiliary precautions'' is the explicit separation of powers
between the Executive and the legislature, which is at the heart--at
the heart, at the very heart--of our Constitution, better known as
checks and balances.
My fear is this phrase ``checks and balances'' has become such a
cliche that we don't recognize it as the fundamental premise of our
constitutional system.
There is nothing new, by the way, about the recognition of the danger
of concentrated power. The ancient Romans summed it up with a simple
question: ``Quis custodiet, ipsos custodes?'' or ``Who will guard the
guardians?'' How do we control the government that we have created to
keep it from abusing the people?
Another way to define this danger is a universal principle of human
nature: All power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely.
It is important to emphasize that the danger I am describing here
isn't based upon institutional jealousy of Senators worrying about the
President taking some of their power or a loss of the prerogatives of
the Senate or the politics of Democrats and Republicans. It is about
the violation of the very deliberate division of power between the
legislature and the Executive, which is, as I said, at the heart of our
Constitution. It is there for a reason: to see that the power is not
concentrated in one set of hands. And this is the most important
bulwark between our citizens and--let's call it what it is--tyranny.
Again, Madison warned us in no uncertain terms, this time in the 47th
Federalist:

The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive, and
judiciary, in the same hands . . . may justly be pronounced
the very definition of tyranny.

Madison's word, ``tyranny.''
Later in the same essay:

There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive
powers are united in the same person.

``There can be no liberty where the legislative and executive powers
are united in the same person,'' and yet this ``accumulation of all
powers''--the term that Madison used--is exactly what is happening
today before our very eyes. Although many in this body, unfortunately,
seem determined to ignore it, deliberately ignore it, the evidence is
everywhere: from the elimination of congressionally established
Agencies to the withholding of appropriated funds--an appropriations
bill, Mr. President, by the way, is a law; it is not a suggestion to
the Executive about where he or she should spend money, it is a law to
be observed--to issuing Executive orders purporting to be law in place
of legislation, to sidestepping, if not ignoring, court orders.

This President is engaged in the most direct assault on the
Constitution in our history, and we in this body, at least thus far,
are inert and therefore complicit.
It is worth pausing for a moment to look at the terms of article II,
which outlines the powers and responsibilities of the President--
article II of the Constitution. At the outset, we have to remember that
the Declaration of Independence was directed specifically at the
depredations of the British King, and later, the Framers had recently
come through a brutal 8-year war against that same King. It is clear
that a monarchy was exactly what the Framers were trying to avoid in
the structure of the new government, and it explains the limited powers
granted to the President in article II.
So let's look at article II. In light of this antimonarchical intent,
article II only gives the President 1\1/2\ unilateral powers. The
unilateral power is the power to issue pardons. That is something the
President can do without any check or balance. The half unilateral
power is the role as Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces in wartime,
but even that is constrained by the reservation to the Congress of the
power to declare war.
With these two exceptions, all the other powers in article II granted
to the President--appointment of judges, Federal officials; making
treaties with other countries; vetoing legislation--are all bounded in
some respect by the requirement of congressional assent.
I want to repeat, article II is not a broad grant of authority to the
President. It is anything but. It is a restriction on the powers of the
President.
And here, I think, is the most important phrase in article II. The
principal responsibility of the President is spelled out in the last
paragraph of article II: The Chief Executive ``shall take Care that the
Laws be faithfully executed''--``shall take Care that the Laws be
faithfully executed.'' It doesn't say only the laws he agrees with or
that he has any power whatsoever to make laws. His job is to execute
the laws passed by Congress without exception--a responsibility this
President is spectacularly failing to meet,

[[Page S2626]]

to ``take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed.''
While this is the most serious breach of our constitutional order,
the administration has also taken a series of apparently unconnected
actions which, taken together, spell out our rapid path toward one-man
rule--or tyranny, as Madison would say.
In the style of the Declaration of Independence, here is a partial
list--only, where the Declaration says ``he,'' it is referring to the
King of England. ``He'' as used in my list refers to the President.
Here is the list:
He has enabled the random firing of personnel throughout the
government without regard to the importance of the job or the
qualifications of the individual, which has severely compromised the
ability of the affected Agencies to carry out the purposes Congress
intended--the very antithesis of faithfully executing the laws.
He has enabled the dismemberment of Agencies providing essential
services to the American people, most particularly in the Social
Security and Veterans' Administrations, by people who literally don't
know what they are doing--again, in violation of his responsibility to
faithfully execute the laws creating those Agencies and programs.
He has systematically--early in the administration--fired independent
inspectors general throughout the government whose job it is to find
fraud, corruption, and malfeasance in Agency programs, in clear
violation of Federal law and apparent intent to govern without
constraints.
He has used the power of the government to threaten, intimidate, and
extort private law firms for the supposed offense of representing
clients he doesn't like--an exercise of governmental power nowhere
found in the Constitution and a clear violation of the very structure
of our legal system.
He has used the power of the government to threaten and intimidate
former government officials based upon actions and statements with
which he disagrees, thereby sending the message throughout the
government that pleasing the President is more important than telling
the truth.
Again, he has no such power over the Constitution, and the result of
this abuse of his office is the opposite--the opposite--of faithfully
executing the laws.
He has openly threatened media platforms, particularly television
networks, with license revocation or other punishment for airing
content he doesn't like, in clear violation of the First Amendment,
which is one of the fundamental bulwarks of our freedoms. For a
President of the United States to threaten a media firm with revocation
of their license or other kinds of punishment because they publish
content he doesn't like--that is the antithesis of the First Amendment.
By the way, the compromise of the free press has been a sign of
incipient despotism throughout history and right up to today.
He has used the power of the government, including the impoundment of
congressionally appropriated funds and threatening tax-exempt status,
to threaten and intimidate private universities in order to force them
to adopt policies to his liking--again, a power found nowhere in the
Constitution, nowhere in article II.
He has enabled a national program of arrest and deportation of
individuals in this country with no due process whatsoever. And even
when it is admitted that at least one such individual was sent to a
foreign prison by mistake, he has refused to make any effort to return
that person to his home, despite court orders--including a unanimous
order of the United States Supreme Court--of him to do so.
This entire process is a violation of the 5th, 6th, 8th, and 14th
Amendments. It certainly is not consistent with his obligation to
faithfully execute the laws.
He has openly suggested the possibility of sending U.S. citizens to a
foreign prison for undefined crimes, thereby placing them outside the
reach of our criminal justice system, including the constitutionally
guaranteed right to counsel.
He has abused the limited powers delegated to him by Congress in
connection with tariffs and trade by declaring emergencies where none
exist and singlehandedly plunging our economy into chaos and risk of
inflation, unemployment, and possible recession--a perfect example of
the dangers of one-man rule.
The Constitution specifically delegates to the Congress, in article
I, section 8 clause 3, the power over trade and commerce among nations.
Congress delegated that power to the President under certain limited
circumstances, that of an emergency, not that the President can define
an emergency however he wants.
I live in Maine. We are on the border of Canada. There is no
emergency that justifies the imposition of tariffs with Canada. If he
wants to propose a tariff against Canada or Britain or any other
country, he should come here, because that is our responsibility. We
should debate it; and chances are, we can come up with a more rational
solution than the one that was presented to the country several weeks
ago.
He has also attempted to cut off funds to a single State, my own,
because he took personal umbrage at our Governor's refusal to bend to
his policy preference, which was inconsistent with the law of our
State.
Our Governor's position was not on the issue of trans athletes. It
was on the issue of State and local control, which is the basic bedrock
of our representative form of government.
Tellingly, during that exchange, he said something really amazing and
revealing. The President of the United States said:

We are the law.

That is more fitting to a king than to a President. ``We are the
law.''
By the way, an Executive order is not law, despite what this
President seems to think. An Executive order is not law. The
Constitution does not give the power to the President to unilaterally
decide what the law is. Again, his job is to faithfully execute the
laws that are made here in this building.
This ``we are the law'' comment is a clear statement of an intent to
govern as a sovereign without regard to the Constitution or the rule of
law.
In a field that I have some specific knowledge of, he has compromised
national security by dismantling those Agencies charged with defending
our Nation against the clear and present danger of cyber attacks and
firing many of the individuals--with no stated cause--who are best
suited to mount that defense.
He has further compromised national security by alienating our allies
with his unlawful and indiscriminate imposition of tariffs, which has
severely undermined confidence in our country, again, acting far in
excess of the limited power over trade delegated by Congress.
I have served for the past 12 years on the Intelligence and Armed
Services Committees, and I have come to realize that our asymmetric
advantage in the world is allies. China has customers. We have allies.
To alienate our allies without good reason, with no emergency, with no
consultation with Congress, with no consultation with the Foreign
Affairs Committee, with no consultation with much of anybody, that I
can tell, is a serious compromise of our national security, both in
terms of our intelligence capability but also who will come to our aid
in a time of trouble.
This is not a complete list. It does, though, present a disturbing
and dangerous pattern. This President is attempting to govern as a
monarch, unbound by constitutional restraint or by law, not as a
President subject to the constraints of the Constitution or the rule of
law.
Again, this isn't about his policies, whether they be mass
deportation or trans athletes, trade and tariffs, or the appropriate
levels of staffing of the Federal Government. Reasonable people can
discuss those, work out policies, and find what the law should be. It
is not unilaterally in the hands of the President to make those
decisions.
No. The issue before us we can no longer avoid is the manner in which
he is pursuing those policies, which violates both the spirit and
expressed terms of our founding document.
Again, this isn't about observing the boundaries prescribed by the
Constitution just to check the appropriate boxes. This is about
preserving boundaries to protect ourselves and our people from the
abuse that inevitably--inevitably--flows from the unbridled
concentration of power.

[[Page S2627]]

To those who like the policies of the President and are, therefore,
willing to ignore the constitutional means of effectuating them, I and
history can only say: Watch out. Today, the target may be the
undocumented or Federal workers, but tomorrow, perhaps, under a
different king President, could be you.
Once this power is concentrated into one set of hands, it is going to
be very difficult to get it back, and it could turn that power against
anybody who displeases the monarch.
So what can we do? What are the guardrails? How can we buttress? It
is important. The first guardrail is the Congress itself, the part of
our government actually empowered to define policy, appropriate funds,
oversee the actions of the Executive. But, unfortunately, the majority
in Congress has thus far wholly abdicated these fundamental
responsibilities and thus far shown little inclination to even
recognize the danger, let alone take action to confront it.

We could reclaim our power, however, by pulling back the trade
authority--there is a bill to do that--instituting vigorous oversight
of the activities of DOGE to determine to what extent their actions
compromise the congressional intent, or holding the President's
nominees and his prized tax bill until he seizes his attempts to make
policy unilaterally, including compounding Congressionally authorized
and appropriated funds.
You know, do our job. That is the simple solution. Do our job.
The second guardrail is the courts, which are generally holding up
their end of the constitutional bargain. But they read the press just
as we do, and they need to know we are ready to reassume our powers and
responsibilities. As easy as it may be for us to rely entirely on the
courts to save us, that is a copout. Reclaiming power must be a joint
project.
The final guardrail is the people, who more and more are speaking up
in rallies, in correspondence with us, in town meetings, and in
conversations at the grocery store. But their only real power, the
midterm elections, don't happen for 19 months. And in the meantime, the
burden falls back on us.
I don't think we have 19 months, given what has happened in the first
100 days. We need to act now before the awesome power of the United
States Government is consolidated into one set of hands. When that
happens, there may be no going back.
No. We here in this body can't escape the responsibility of our oath.
Each of us swore, mind you, to ``support and defend the Constitution of
the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic'' and that
we would ``bear true faith and allegiance to the same.'' The ``same''
being the Constitution.
Clearly, the Framers knew that someday, there might be domestic
enemies of the Constitution and made it our literally sacred obligation
to defend the Constitution from those domestic enemies.
I should mention that Joe McCarthy primaried Senator Margaret Chase
Smith a few years after her speech as punishment to standing up to him,
but to no avail. She crushed her opposition and won going away.
With thanks to Margaret Chase Smith for her example and inspiration,
this is my ``Declaration of Conscience.''
I don't relish this moment, but I feel I have no choice but to call
out the clear implications and dangers of what is happening--what is
happening day by day--before our eyes.
To do otherwise, to keep silent, would be to compromise what I
believed about our country since my first civics class in high school
and at about the same time when I watched my dad risk his career to
fight for justice and the rule of law.
So here I stand.
Abraham Lincoln came to the Congress in the midst of the Civil War at
a time when our forebearers--like us--were reluctant to face the
responsibilities that had been thrust upon them. At that critical
moment, this is what Abraham Lincoln said:

Fellow-citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this
Congress and this Administration, will be remembered in spite
of ourselves. No personal significance, or insignificance,
can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which
we pass, will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the
latest generation.

``The fiery trial through which we pass, will light us down, in honor
or dishonor, to the latest generation.''
Mr. President, I deeply hope that in the midst of our fiery trial, we
will choose honor and the Constitution.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, my colleagues, you are going to hear a lot
of stories about the first 100 days of President Trump's second
Presidency, and, indeed, there are a lot of stories.
There is a story of incompetence. We are dealing with multiple
measles outbreaks all across the country.
There is a story about abdicating our responsibility to lead around
the world. Vladimir Putin is laughing at us as Trump goes about the
business of handing Ukraine to a brutal Kremlin dictator.
There is a story of transferring wealth from the poor and the middle
class, through massive cuts to Medicaid, to the very, very wealthy, who
are asking for another massive tax cut.
But I would argue that the most important story to tell is a story of
corruption--a story of mind-blowing, massive, scalable corruption. That
story is important because we are watching the theft of taxpayer money
by the decision of the Republican Party to look the other way as Donald
Trump essentially monetizes, at scale, the White House and the powers
given to him by the Constitution and the American people in order to
enrich himself and his friends.
And if we don't tell this story and if we don't mount a national,
bipartisan, apolitical resistance to this thievery, to this corruption,
and it becomes normalized as just a part of doing business in America,
a normal facet of residence in the White House, then shame on us
because our democracy will not survive this level of corruption, grift,
and graft.
So I am going to try to tell the story really quickly. I have got two
charts, and this is hard to read. These words are really small because,
you know, over the course of 100 days, there are 40, 50, 60 different
individual acts of precedent-breaking corruption.
And that is intentional, because what President Trump is trying to do
is engage in so much public corruption that you just become normalized
to it, that you stop paying attention to the corruption because is it--
can it be--corruption if it is just playing out in public? He is trying
to make you think that this stuff happens all the time behind the
scenes, and, now, all that is different is that you are seeing it
publicly.
But that is not true. This is not, actually, how government works,
and I refuse to accept that, just because the corruption is happening
in public, in front of the cameras for everybody to see, we should
accept it.
OK, I am going to try to do this: I am going to try to do this as
quickly as possible. I am just going to highlight for you maybe the 40
most egregious examples of corruption in the first 100 days, but this
is just the tip of the iceberg.
So, on January 6--this is before Trump is even sworn in--Amazon,
which has a ton of business before the incoming Trump White House, pays
$40 million to the Trump family to license a documentary, a series,
about Melania Trump--just a cash payment from a company that has huge
interests before the incoming White House to the Trump family.
On January 17, a few days before Trump is sworn in, maybe the most
corrupt act in the history of the White House: This is the creation of
the Trump meme coin. This is just a backdoor way for anybody with
business before the Trump administration to send him millions of
dollars in total secret.
Trump doesn't disclose who buys the coin. He launders his income from
the coin through an unregulated Chinese exchange. He promotes the coin
on his social media feeds.
In the first minute of trading, one buyer--and what we know is, this
was likely a Chinese individual--purchases 6 million coins, sending the
price through the roof and immediately making a ton of money for Trump,
who makes money off of every transaction. Trump knows who this person
is, no doubt, but American citizens do not.
All right, on January 20, he is now sworn in, and he fulfills a
campaign promise to the oil and gas industry. There is a report from
the campaign

[[Page S2628]]

that said they came down to Mar-a-Lago, I think, and said: We will give
you a billion dollars in campaign contributions.
This is not me alleging this. This is an open report.
The oil and gas industry says: We will give you a billion dollars in
campaign contributions if you do what we want when you are sworn in.
And the day he is sworn in, Trump issues an Executive order gutting
environmental rules so that the oil and gas industry can start making
bigger amounts of money.
On January 25, Trump eliminates the inspectors general, the ethics
officials in government, and whistleblower offices. It is a late-night
purge; so you know it is fishy. On January 25, 17 inspectors general
get fired, clearing the way for the President to engage in even more
corruption--because that is what the inspectors general do: They sit in
these Agencies, and they look for corruption.
Now, the inspectors general are gone. They are just gone. But that is
not good enough because, on the same day, Trump fires the head of the
Office of Special Counsel. Why would you do that? Well, that Office is
an investigative and prosecutorial Office that works to end government
and political corruption and protects government employees who become
whistleblowers. That office is gone now, along with all of the
whistleblowers.

Two days later, Trump illegally fires NLRB member Gwynne Wilcox. This
effectively shuts down--illegally--the NLRB for a period of time. Why
is that important? Because the guys who are standing behind Donald
Trump on Inauguration Day, people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, are
being investigated at the moment by the NLRB for massive workplace
violations. Now the NLRB is shut down--a big gift to the people who
financed Donald Trump's inauguration and stood behind him to give him
political endorsement and cover on his Inauguration Day.
On January 31, a trend begins. Enforcement actions are paused against
Trump loyalists.
This is Representative Andy Ogles from Tennessee. He was being
investigated for illegal or potentially illegal loans made to his 2022
campaign. But right after Representative Ogles introduces a bill to
amend the Constitution to allow Trump to serve for a third term, what
happens? Trump makes the investigation go away. As you will see,
Trump's justice system will often look the other way if you cheat or
steal but you are a friend of Donald Trump's.
At the same time, another of Trump's friends, his IRS nominee, Billy
Long, gets his donors--almost all of them have direct interest before
the IRS--to pay off his six-figure campaign debt. It is a fabulously
corrupt thing to do, but it is just all normal now. So when Trump is
showing you the way, then the folks who work for him follow suit.
All right. We will jump to February now, February 4. We are into,
what, week 2 of the Trump White House. Trump hauls the PGA and the
Saudi Government into the White House to broker an agreement between
the two rival golf leagues so that Trump can make more money hosting
golf tournaments. He is in business with one of these entities, the
Saudi-owned LIV league.
In a normal world, the President of the United States wouldn't be in
business with any foreign government, but the President is. And not
only is that OK, but it is also apparently OK for him to bring the golf
league that he is in business with into the White House and pressure
the other golf league, the rival golf league, to cut a deal. And guess
what happens? The PGA, which had long said they were not going to host
events at Trump's courses, after being hauled into the White House,
looking the President of the United States in the eye--somebody they
clearly have to do business with--they announce that they are going to
start allowing their tournaments to be held at Trump courses--big
benefit to Donald Trump's personal bottom line.
On February 6, 2 days later, Trump ends the criminal enforcement of
the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Do you know what this is? You
should. It requires people who are being paid by foreign governments to
register. It is no longer going to be enforced. So now members of the
Trump administration can get backdoor payments from foreign
governments, and nobody is going to enforce the law.
This isn't theoretical. There were people who got arrested for doing
this exact same thing--getting paid by foreign governments while
working for the Trump administration in term one. He wants to make sure
it is not a problem in term two, so he pauses enforcement of the actual
act.
Four days later, Trump eliminates the Consumer Financial Protection
Bureau. This is just a magnificent present to all of his billionaire
enablers because this is the Agency that stops big businesses--banks,
other financial firms--from ripping off consumers, and now it is just
shut down.
The same day, DOJ drops charges against Eric Adams in a mind-
blowingly public and brazen quid pro quo. Adams says he will pledge
loyalty to Trump. He is going to support Trump's political priorities
in New York City. Trump drops the corruption charges against Adams.
Just like the Ogles case, the door is now wide open to engage in
corruption or criminality as long as you support Donald Trump.
The thing that makes this one so egregious is that Adams and the
White House go on TV to announce the corrupt deal, and they don't hide
it. They just say that Adams is now supporting Donald Trump, and we are
now going to drop the charges against him. And everybody gets the
message: There is a lot of stuff I can get away with as a corrupt
official as long as I am in bed politically with Donald Trump.
On the same day, February 10, DOJ pauses enforcement of the Foreign
Corrupt Practices Act. This is the law that stops American companies
from bribing foreign governments in order to get business. On February
10, Trump suspends enforcement of an antibribery statute, paving the
way for his friends in corporate America to start bribing foreign
governments again.
Two days later, the State Department forecasts that they are going to
dramatically upscale the amount of money that they are going to send to
Tesla. This is the first time that Elon Musk shows up in this story. By
February 12, Elon Musk is pretty well embedded in the White House, and,
guess what, the State Department is now going to spend $400 million for
armored Teslas--its largest expected contract in the upcoming year.
On February 12, the same day, Musk infiltrates the Department of
Labor and OSHA, giving him exclusive, secret access to labor law
violation data against him and his competitors. It is unethical and
corrupt, but this stuff is happening every single day.
A few days later, on February 15 and 16, Musk now starts really
testing the limits of what his boss will let him get away with. He
fires a specific set of regulators at the FDA that are reviewing one of
his medical products, Neuralink. The message is clear: You got to do
right by my applications or you risk getting the ax too.
Three days later, on February 19, Trump's new U.S. attorney for
Washington, DC, Ed Martin, starts to use his government power to harass
Trump's critics. He launches something called Operation Whirlwind, and
he is pretty unapologetic about the fact that this is going to be an
enforcement operation against anybody who just seeks to get in the way
of DOGE. He doesn't say it is going after people who are acting
illegally; he says anybody who tries to stop or protest or harass
DOGE's work is now going to be the subject of Operation Whirlwind. He
starts trolling critics of DOGE online. The U.S. attorney for DC is now
just trolling DOGE critics online, obviously threatening criminal
enforcement.
See what is happening here? We are 30 days into the administration,
and everybody in Trump's world, including the supposedly independent
U.S. attorneys, are getting the message that it is now part of your job
if you work for Trump to use your government powers to either enrich
yourself or Trump or to help Trump politically.
On February 21, 2 days later, the FCC drops a major investigation
into a company called Robinhood. Why does this matter? You guessed it--
this firm donated $2 million to Trump's inauguration fund. Thirty days
later, the SEC drops an investigation into that firm. Put a pin in that
because you are going to hear stories like it over and over again.

[[Page S2629]]

Throughout February, we watched the rich guys that are surrounding
Trump come up with new ways to monetize their positions.
Kash Patel is a perfect example. He is the nominee to head the FBI--
maybe the most important independent Bureau of the Federal Government--
and while he is going through that process, he is selling merchandise
online, ranging from T-shirts to playing cards, with the proceeds
supposedly going to whistleblowers' education and defamation cases.
On February 26, news breaks that the FAA is considering giving a $2.4
billion contract to Elon Musk's Starlink. But it is not like a regular
contract that is up for bid; it is a contract that was already awarded
to one of Musk's competitors, Verizon, and word leaks that the White
House is thinking of just ripping the contract away from Verizon
because Verizon is not a political supporter of Donald Trump in the way
that Elon Musk is, and just giving it to Elon Musk.

Now, that doesn't happen as reported. The contract has not been
canceled yet. But there are regular reports of the administration still
relentlessly attacking Verizon in a clear attempt to try to undermine
their contract.
On February 27, the next day, Trump drops a lawsuit against Capital
One. Why does this matter? Capitol One donated $1 million to Trump's
inauguration fund.
It is now just kind of automatic--you donate a big amount of money to
Trump's inauguration, and you can ask him for something.
We are not done. That same day, the FCC drops a lawsuit against
Coinbase. You have the story now. Coinbase donated $1 million to
Trump's inauguration fund. They are now told that it is OK to keep
cheating consumers.
We are not done. On February 28, a day later, the DOJ announces that
it would drop a complaint against SpaceX, Elon Musk's SpaceX, for labor
discrimination.
Elon is like: Wait a second. All of these other big donors to your
inauguration are getting out of jail free. I want my get-out-of-jail-
free card as well.
He gets it from DOJ.
We are now into March. On March 1, a report breaks--this is maybe
second to Coinbase, the most stunning act of corruption--on March 1,
word breaks that Trump is selling meetings at Mar-a-Lago. On at least
one occasion, Trump has charged guests $1 million to dine with him at
Mar-a-Lago.
According to the same report, business leaders can secure a one-on-
one meeting with the President of the United States for a $5 million
payment to Donald Trump. If you were mayor of a medium-sized town and
it was reported that you were selling meetings for like $200, you would
be arrested. You would be run out of town. But not Donald Trump. He is
selling meetings for $5 million, according to this report, and because
the corruption in this White House is daily and normal, he gets away
with it.
On March 2, Trump launches the crypto reserve fund. This is going to
involve government-taxpayer dollars purchasing and holding a variety of
digital assets in a strategic reserve fund--a move that definitely
inflates and protects Trump's investment portfolio, by now, you
understand, very heavily dependent on crypto assets.
Now, this normally wouldn't be a problem because normally when
somebody takes a high position like President or Governor or mayor,
they divest from their own personal assets or they put it all in a
blind fund. Trump does none of that. He is controlling his own assets
and his family is controlling their own assets while he makes policy
that benefits himself and his family financially.
On March 3, a really curious thing: DOJ intervenes in an obscure but
open-and-shut 2020 Colorado elections case. This is the case of Tina
Peters, who tampered with voting machines on Trump's behalf in Mesa
County, CO. She was convicted by a jury of her peers, open and shut,
but because Peters is a MAGA loyalist, now DOJ, on March 3, says it is
going to step in and review the case because there are concerns about
how it was prosecuted. This is just President Trump again clearly
shielding those that violated the law to help him from consequences.
Same thing, different day--no, not even a different day. This is
actually still March 3. Yuga Labs, a blockchain company, donated
$100,000 to Trump's inauguration fund. They now get in line. They get
what everybody else is getting. The SEC closes an ongoing investigation
into the company.
On March 4, DOGE lays off thousands of IRS employees. This is bad for
a lot of reasons, but it certainly helps Trump's Mar-a-Lago friends
because the IRS now cannot enforce the law against the big giant tax
cheats in the ways that it could have when it had those personnel on
the books. Mar-a-Lago is celebrating.
On March 4, the same day, word breaks that the Commerce Department is
considering changes to a very specific rural broadband program and who
is eligible. Why? Because Elon Musk wants to dominate that program.
Under the program's original rules, Starlink was kind of capped at $4.1
billion. This curious change now will allow Elon Musk's company
Starlink to receive between $10 billion and $20 billion from the rural
broadband program.
This is like a broken record, but 6 days later, the CFPB, which is
basically shut down but exists in name only, drops a lawsuit against
Bank of America and J.P. Morgan. Bank of America donated $500,000 to
the inauguration, and J.P. Morgan donated $1 million to the
inauguration.
On March 11, a day later, Trump and Musk hold this now very well-
known advertisement for Tesla on the White House lawn. This is just
taxpayer dollars used to support the personnel at the White House and
the White House being used to sell cars for Elon Musk. And the message,
again, is pretty simple here: If you are loyal to me and you pay any
kind of price for your loyalty to me, I will use government resources
to help get you out of trouble, even including free advertising.
On March 19--we are 8 days later--the GEO Group donated $500,000 to
Trump's inauguration fund. This is a private prison company. The NLRB
drops its investigation into this company.
I mean, it is really getting disgusting at this point. I mean, I
don't know that there is anybody left that made a major donation to the
inauguration fund that has not gotten their favor from Donald Trump.
On March 24, the Treasury Department guts something called the
Corporate Transparency Act. This is the regulation that requires
businesses to reveal their true owners to the government. These new
rules now make it easier for billionaires to hide money, to avoid
taxes, to engage in corruption--less accountability for corporations.
On March 25, a day later, the SEC reduces from $125 million to $50
million an existing fine. So this has already been litigated. This
company, Ripple, a blockchain-based digital payment company, has been
fined. Trump comes in and reduces the fine from $125 million to $50
million.

You know the story by now. These guys made a big investment in the
inauguration. Most of these companies that got a ``get out of jail
free'' or had their investigations terminated were giving $500,000 or
$1 million. Ripple made sure they got it right. They made a $5 million
donation to Trump's inaugural fund, and they got their fine reduced by
$75 million.
On March 28, Trump pardons the founder of Nikola autos, one of his
campaign megadonors. Again, this is a pardon for one of his major
campaign contributors. When asked about the pardon, Trump said: They
say the thing they did was wrong, but he was one of the first people
who supported me for President.
He just tells you what he did. He said: Yes, they said what he did
was wrong. He did something that was probably pretty wrong, but he
supported me for President. So I am giving him a pardon.
I am not saying there hasn't been a lot of really bad stuff that has
happened in the pardon program under Democratic and Republican
Presidents, but let's just name it what Donald Trump named it.
April 8--we are into April. Trump issues an Executive order to expand
coal mining, part of his downpayment on the promise he made to those
oil executives. Shares of the company owned by Joseph Craft, the
billionaire coal

[[Page S2630]]

magnate who helped lead those Trump fundraising efforts during the
Presidential campaign, immediately shoot up.
On April 9, this really curious timeline of events plays out, which
Trump posts on his social media:

THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY!!!

A lot of his followers comply. They make investments in the market.
There are reports and speculation that many of his inner circle might
have done the same thing. A couple of hours later, he announces he is
pausing most of his tariffs. The market shoots up. People who followed
his directions online make a lot of money, and, potentially, other
people who had access to that insider information might have made a lot
of money as well.
On April 17, Musk steers billions of taxpayer dollars to something
called the Golden Dome. Reuters, on April 17, reports that Elon Musk's
rocket and satellite company, SpaceX, has emerged as the frontrunner to
develop Trump's proposed Golden Dome. This is an ill-defined,
technologically unproven defense system. It supposedly has a pricetag
of hundreds of billions of dollars--money that now looks as if it will
be funneled directly to Elon Musk. At this point, it is head-shaking.
On April 23--now he can do anything he wants. It is like he has just
blown the lid off of any expectations about what a President can and
cannot do to enrich himself. On April 23, a message appears on the
homepage of the website for Trump's meme coin, declaring the top 220
meme coin holders would be invited for an exclusive dinner with Trump,
and the top 25 coin holders--these are private investors in Donald
Trump's financial empire--would get a ``Special VIP Tour'' of the White
House.
After the message went up, the price of Trump's coin jumped by more
than 50 percent. In the 2 days following the announcement of the
``Special VIP Tour'' in the ``People's House''--the White House--Trump
and his allies made nearly $1 million in trading fees alone. They are
just selling access to the White House out in the open.
On April 26, Trump's family--this is just last weekend--announces the
launch of a private club called the Executive Branch, a new private
club in Washington. The initiation fee is around a half-million
dollars. It is advertised as a place where you can hold secret
audiences with the Trump administration, as long as you pay Donald
Trump's family and their financial backers over $500,000 in membership
fees. It has apparently already sold out.
This is not normal. None of this is normal. This is outlandish. This
is illegal. This is unconstitutional, brazen corruption, and this is
only the first 100 days.
I just detailed 40 instances of mind-blowing corruption in just 40
days, capped off by an attempt to just sell access to the White House
to people who put money in the pockets of Donald Trump's personal
businesses.
Donald Trump wants to numb this country into believing that this is
just how government works, that he is owed this, that every President
is owed this--that the government has always been corrupt, and he is
just doing it out in the open.
This is not how government works. This has been the story of his
first 100 days, but it is our choice as a nation to allow it to be the
story of the rest of his term. We need to expose what he is doing. We
need to rally everybody, from the left to the right. Nobody in this
country--whether you are a hardened conservative or a hardened
progressive--should root for the President of the United States to be
enriching himself off of this position. We need to rally this Nation
against this corruption and bring it to an end because if Donald Trump
gets what he wants and we just start allowing our government's leaders
to openly steal from us during the first 100 days or for the rest of
his term, then, I am telling you, American democracy is not going to
survive.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Curtis). The Senator from Idaho.