[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 174 (Tuesday, October 21, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7587-S7667]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                   TRUMP ADMINISTRATION--(Continued)

  Mr. MERKLEY. It is about Paul Revere's ride in April 1775, as he 
sounded the alarm about military troops marching on American cities; 
one lantern if the British were attacking by land and two lanterns if 
they were attacking by sea. He rang the alarm bells so that the 
American colonists could respond and save their Colonies, just as I am 
attempting to ring alarm bells to say that we here in the Senate and in 
the House have to respond and save our Republic.
  So I am going to start with the book ``How Democracies Die.'' It is a 
pretty hefty one. The two authors, Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, 
are political scientists; they are professors of government. They have 
spent their careers studying how once-stable democracies in Europe, in 
Latin America, and around the world have collapsed into being strongman 
states, sometimes gradually and sometimes suddenly.
  Political parties prioritize their own power over obeying the law. An 
aggressive President tries to seize more power. Congress becomes a 
rubberstamp. The courts hand more power to the President, and the 
President heightens his control. The press softens its criticisms, and 
other institutions start to tread carefully. These are the six warning 
signs of a democracy in trouble.
  As the authors of the book warn, most modern democracies don't die 
suddenly by being overthrown. We all certainly know of cases of that 
happening, but today, modern democracies generally don't die by being 
overthrown. Instead, they die as authoritarians erode the institutions 
and the norms until the checks and balances are gone, and you have a 
strongman state.
  ``How Democracies Die'' was published in 2018 after the first year of 
Trump's first term. Already, these professors were seeing signs of 
these six factors that are the warning symbols of authoritarianism 
being down the road or on the way. But America did not respond to the 
warning then, and we are living with the consequences now because now 
we are deep in the authoritarian takeover crisis.
  Between each chapter, I am going to pause to discuss different ways 
the Trump administration is trying to tighten its authoritarian grip to 
turn our government by and for the people into government by and for 
the powerful.
  I am here tonight to ring the alarm bells. The crisis calls on every 
American, every patriot, every one of us who cherishes our Republic to 
use our heart and nerve and sinew to resist this authoritarian takeover 
and save our democracy.
  So let's begin with the introduction. I am now reading from the book 
and reading the introduction, and then I will talk about some other 
things.
  It starts out:

       Is our democracy in trouble? Is it in danger? It is a 
     question we--

  These are the authors speaking--

     never thought we'd be asking. We have been colleagues for 
     fifteen years, thinking, writing, and teaching students about 
     failures of democracies in other places and times--Europe's 
     dark 1930s, Latin America's repressive 1970s. We spent years 
     researching new forms of authoritarianism emerging around the 
     globe. For us, how and why democracies die has been an 
     occupational obsession.
       But now we find ourselves turning in our own country. Over 
     the past two years, we have watched politicians say and do 
     things that are unprecedented in the United States--but that 
     we recognize as having been the precursors of democratic 
     crisis in other places. We feel dread, as do so many other 
     Americans, even as we try to reassure ourselves that things 
     can't really be that bad here. After all, even though we know 
     democracies are always fragile, the one in which we live has 
     somehow managed to defy gravity. Our Constitution, our 
     national creed of freedom and equality, our historically 
     robust middle class, our high levels of wealth and education, 
     and our large, diversified private sector--all these should 
     inoculate us from the kind of democratic breakdown that has 
     occurred elsewhere.
       Yet, we worry. American politicians now treat their rivals 
     as enemies, intimidate the free press, and threaten to reject 
     the results of elections. They try to weaken the 
     institutional buffers of our democracy, including the courts, 
     the intelligence services, and the ethics offices.

  America may not be alone. Scholars are increasingly concerned that 
democracy may be under threat worldwide, even in places where its 
existence has been taken for granted.
  Populist governments have assaulted democratic institutions in 
Hungary, in Turkey, and in Poland. Extremist forces have made dramatic 
material gains in Australia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, and 
elsewhere in Europe. And in the United States, for the first time in 
history, ``a man with no experience in public office, little observable 
commitment to constitutional rights, and clear authoritarian tendencies 
was elected president.''

       What does all this mean? Are we living through the decline 
     and fall of one of the world's oldest and most successful 
     democracies?

  May I remind you, these are the words of the authors, written in 
2018, some 7 years ago.
  They continue:

       At midday on September 11, 1973, after months of mounting 
     tensions in the streets of Santiago, Chile, British-made 
     Hawker Hunter jets swooped overhead, dropping bombs on La 
     Moneda, the neoclassical presidential palace in the center of 
     the city. As the bombs continued to fall, La Moneda burned. 
     President Salvador Allende, elected three years earlier at 
     the head of a leftist coalition, was barricaded inside. 
     During his term, Chile had been wracked by social unrest, 
     economic crisis, and political paralysis. Allende had said he 
     would not leave his post until he had finished his job--but 
     now the

[[Page S7588]]

     moment of truth had arrived. Under the command of General 
     Augusto Pinochet, Chile's armed forces were seizing control 
     of the country. Early in the morning on that fateful day, 
     Allende offered defiant words on a national radio broadcast, 
     hoping that his many supporters would take to the streets in 
     defense of democracy. But the resistance never materialized. 
     The military police who guarded the palace had abandoned him; 
     his broadcast was met with silence. Within hours, President 
     Allende was dead. So, too, was Chilean democracy.
       This is how we tend to think of democracies dying: at the 
     hands of men with guns. During the Cold War, coups d'etat 
     counted for nearly three out of every four democratic 
     breakdowns. Democracies in Argentina, Brazil, the Dominican 
     Republic, Ghana, Greece, Guatemala, Nigeria, Pakistan, Peru, 
     Thailand, Turkey, and Uruguay all died this way.

  At the hands of men with guns.

       More recently, military coups toppled Egyptian President 
     Mohamed Morsi in 2013 and Thai Prime Minister Yingluck 
     Shinawatra in 2014. In all these cases, democracy dissolved 
     in spectacular fashion, through military power and coercion.
       But there is another way to break a democracy. It is less 
     dramatic but equally destructive. Democracies may die at the 
     hands not of generals but of elected leaders--presidents or 
     prime ministers who subvert the very process that brought 
     them to power. Some of these leaders dismantle democracy 
     quickly, as Hitler did in the wake of the 1933 Reichstag fire 
     in Germany. More often, though, democracies die slowly in 
     barely visible steps.
       In Venezuela, for example, Hugo Chavez was a political 
     outsider who railed against what he cast as a corrupt 
     government elite, promising to build a more ``authentic'' 
     democracy that used the country's vast oil wealth to improve 
     the lives of the poor. Skillfully tapping into the anger of 
     ordinary Venezuelans, many of whom felt ignored or mistreated 
     by the established political parties, Chavez was elected 
     president in 1998. As a woman in Chavez's home state of 
     Barinas put it on election night, ``Democracy is infected. 
     And Chavez is the only antibiotic we have.''

  I am continuing to read from the introduction to ``How Democracies 
Die.''

       When Chavez launched his promised revolution, he did so 
     democratically. In 1999, he held free elections for a new 
     constituent assembly, in which his allies won an overwhelming 
     majority. This allowed the chavistas to singlehandedly write 
     a new constitution. It was a democratic constitution, though, 
     and to reinforce its legitimacy, new presidential and 
     legislative elections were held in 2000. Chavez and his 
     allies won those, too. Chavez's populism triggered intense 
     opposition, and in April 2002, he was briefly toppled by the 
     military. But the coup failed, allowing a triumphant Chavez 
     to claim for himself even more democratic legitimacy.
       It wasn't until 2003 that Chavez took his first clear steps 
     toward authoritarianism. With public support fading, he 
     stalled an opposition-led referendum that would have recalled 
     him from office--until a year later, when soaring oil prices 
     had boosted his standing enough for him to win. In 2004, the 
     government blacklisted those who had signed the recall 
     petition and packed the supreme court.

  I will just pause for a comment here. You start to see how this is 
evolving here in this description of someone who was elected in fair 
elections to begin with but, over time, starts to bend the different 
parts of the government and in this case, proceeding to go after his 
political enemies, blacklisting those who signed the recall petition, 
and packing the supreme court.

       [B]ut Chavez's landslide reelection in 2006 allowed him to 
     maintain a democratic veneer. The chavista regime grew more 
     repressive after 2006, closing a major television station, 
     arresting or exiling opposition politicians, judges, and 
     media figures on dubious charges, eliminating presidential 
     term limits so that Chavez could remain in power 
     indefinitely. When Chavez, now dying of cancer, was reelected 
     in 2012, the contest was free but not fair: Chavismo 
     controlled much of the media and deployed the vast machinery 
     of the government in its favor. After Chavez's death a year 
     later, his successor, Nicolas Maduro, won another 
     questionable reelection, and in 2014, his government 
     imprisoned a major opposition leader. Still, the opposition's 
     landslide victory in 2015 . . . seemed to belie critics' 
     claims that Venezuela was no longer democratic. It was only 
     when a new single-party constituent assembly usurped the 
     power of Congress in 2017, nearly two decades after Chavez 
     first won the presidency, that Venezuela was widely 
     recognized as an autocracy.
       This is how democracies now die. Blatant dictatorship--in 
     the form of fascism, communism, or military rule--has 
     disappeared across much of the world. Military coups and 
     other violent seizures of power are now rare. Most countries 
     hold regular elections. Democracies still die, but by other 
     means. Since the end of the Cold War, most democratic 
     breakdowns have been caused not by generals and soldiers but 
     by elected governments themselves. Like Chavez in Venezuela, 
     elected leaders have subverted democratic institutions in 
     Georgia, [in] Hungary, [in] Nicaragua, [in] Peru, [in] the 
     Philippines, [in] Poland, [in] Russia, Sri Lanka, Turkey, and 
     Ukraine. Democratic backsliding today begins at the ballot 
     box.
       The electoral road to breakdown is dangerously deceptive. 
     With a classic coup d'etat, as in Pinochet's Chile, the death 
     of a democracy is immediate and evident to all. The 
     Presidential palace burns. The President is killed, 
     imprisoned, or shipped . . . into exile. The Constitution is 
     suspended or scrapped. On the electoral road, [however,] none 
     of [those] things happen. There are no tanks in the streets. 
     Constitutions and other nominally democratic institutions 
     remain in place. People still vote. Elected autocrats 
     maintain a veneer of democracy while eviscerating its 
     substance.
       Many government efforts to subvert democracy are ``legal,'' 
     in the sense that they are approved by the legislature or 
     accepted by the courts. They may even be portrayed as efforts 
     to improve democracy--making the judiciary more efficient, 
     combating corruption, [or] cleaning up the electoral process. 
     Newspapers still publish but are bought off or bullied into 
     self-censorship. Citizens continue to criticize the 
     government but often find themselves facing tax or other 
     legal troubles. This sows public confusion. People do not 
     immediately realize what is happening. Many continue to 
     believe they are living [in] a democracy. In 2011, when a 
     Latinobaro metro survey asked Venezuelans to rate their own 
     country from 1, (``not at all democratic'') to 10 (``[really] 
     democratic''), 51 percent of respondents gave their country a 
     score of 8 or higher.

  Meaning they weighed in saying the country looks pretty democratic.

       Because there is no single moment--no coup, [no] 
     declaration of martial law, [no] suspension of the 
     constitution--in which the regime obviously ``crosses the 
     line'' into dictatorship, nothing . . . [sets] off society's 
     alarm bells. Those who denounce government abuse may be 
     dismissed as exaggerating or crying wolf. Democracy's erosion 
     is, for many, almost imperceptible.

  The authors continue in this introduction:

       How vulnerable is American democracy to this form of 
     backsliding? The foundations of our democracy are certainly 
     stronger than those in Venezuela, [or] Turkey, or Hungary. 
     But are they strong enough?
       Answering such a question requires stepping back from daily 
     headlines and breaking news alerts to widen our view, drawing 
     lessons from experiences of other democracies around the 
     world and throughout history. Studying other democracies in 
     crisis allows us to better understand the challenges facing 
     our own democracy. For example, based on the historical 
     experience of other nations, we have developed--

  ``We'' the authors--

     have developed a litmus test to help identify would-be 
     autocrats before they come to power. We can learn from the 
     mistakes that past democratic leaders have made in opening 
     the door to would-be authoritarians--and, conversely, from 
     the ways that other democracies have kept extremists out of 
     power. A comparative approach also reveals how elected 
     autocrats in different parts of the world employ remarkably 
     similar strategies to subvert democratic institutions. As 
     these patterns become visible, the steps toward breakdown 
     grow less ambiguous--and easier to combat. Knowing how 
     citizens in other democracies have successfully resisted 
     elected autocrats, or why they tragically failed to do so, is 
     essential to those seeking to defend American democracy 
     today.
       We know that extremist demagogues emerge from time to time 
     in all societies, even in healthy democracies. The United 
     States has had its share of them, including Henry Ford, [and] 
     Huey Long, [and Joe] McCarthy, and George Wallace. An 
     essential test for democracies is not whether such figures 
     emerge but whether political leaders, and especially 
     political parties, work to prevent them from gaining power in 
     the first place--by keeping them off mainstream party 
     tickets, refusing to endorse or align with them, and when 
     necessary, making common cause with rivals in support of 
     [our] democratic candidates. Isolating popular extremists 
     requires political courage. But when fear, opportunism, or 
     miscalculation leads established parties to bring extremists 
     into the mainstream, democracy is imperiled.
       Once a would-be authoritarian makes it to power, 
     democracies face a second critical test: Will the autocratic 
     leader subvert democratic institutions or be constrained by 
     [those institutions]? Institutions alone are not enough to 
     rein in elected autocrats. Constitutions must be defended--by 
     political parties and organized citizens, but also by 
     democratic norms. Without robust norms, constitutional checks 
     and balances do not serve as the bulwarks of democracy we 
     imagine them to be. Institutions become political weapons, 
     wielded forcefully by those who control them against those 
     who do not. This is how elected autocrats subvert democracy--
     packing and ``weaponizing'' the courts and other neutral 
     agencies, buying off the media and the private sector (or 
     bullying them into silence), and rewriting the rules of 
     politics to tilt the playing field against opponents. The 
     tragic paradox of the elected route to authoritarianism is 
     that democracy's assassins use the very institutions of 
     democracy--gradually, subtly, and even legally--to kill it.

[[Page S7589]]

       America failed the first test in November 2016, when we 
     elected a president with dubious allegiance to democratic 
     norms.

  Again, I am reading from a book by these two scholars.

       Donald Trump's surprise victory was made possible not only 
     by public disaffection but also by the Republican Party's 
     failure to keep an extremist demagogue within its own ranks 
     from gaining the nomination.
       How serious is the threat now?

  Written in 2018.

       Many observers take comfort in our Constitution, which was 
     designed precisely to thwart and contain demagogues. . . . 
     Our Madisonian system of checks and balances has endured for 
     more than two centuries. It survived the Civil War, the Great 
     Depression, the Cold War, Watergate. Surely, then, it will 
     survive Trump.
       We are less certain. Historically, our system of checks and 
     balances has worked pretty well--but not, or not entirely, 
     because of the constitutional system designed by the 
     founders. Democracies work best--and survive longer--when 
     constitutions are reinforced by unwritten democratic 
     norms. Two basic norms have preserved America's checks and 
     balances in ways that we have [often taken] for granted: 
     mutual toleration, or the understanding that competing 
     parties accept one another as legitimate . . . and 
     forbearance, or the idea that politicians should exercise 
     restraint in deploying their institutional prerogatives. 
     These two norms undergirded American democracy for most of 
     the twentieth century. Leaders of the two parties accepted 
     one another as legitimate and resisted the temptation to 
     use their temporary control of institutions to maximize 
     partisan advantage. Norms of toleration and restraint 
     served as the soft guardrails of American democracy, 
     helping it avoid the kind of partisan fight to the death 
     that has destroyed democracies elsewhere in the world, 
     including Europe in the 1930s and South America in the 
     1960s and 1970s.
       Today, however, the guardrails of American democracy are 
     weakening. The erosion of our democratic norms began in the 
     1980s and 1990s and accelerated in the 2000s. By the time 
     Barack Obama became president, many Republicans . . . 
     questioned the legitimacy of their Democratic rivals and had 
     abandoned forbearance for a strategy of winning by any means 
     necessary. Donald Trump may have accelerated this process, 
     but he didn't cause it. The challenges facing American 
     democracy run deeper. The weakening of our democratic norms 
     is rooted in extreme partisan polarization--one that extends 
     beyond policy differences into an existential conflict over 
     race and culture. America's efforts to achieve racial 
     equality as our society grows increasingly diverse have 
     fueled an insidious reaction and intensifying polarization. 
     And if one thing is clear from studying breakdowns throughout 
     history, it's that extreme polarization can kill democracies.
       There are, therefore, reasons for alarm.

  Say the authors.

       Not only did Americans elect a demagogue in 2016, but we 
     did so at a time when the norms that once protected our 
     democracy were already coming unmoored. But if other 
     countries' experiences teach us that that polarization can 
     kill democracies, they also teach us that breakdown is [not] 
     . . . inevitable--

  It is not ``irreversible.''

       Drawing lessons from other democracies, our book suggests 
     strategies that citizens should and should not follow to 
     defend our democracy.
       Many Americans are justifiably frightened by what is 
     happening to our country. But protecting our democracy 
     requires more than . . . fright . . . [more than] outrage. 
     [It] must be humble and bold. We must learn from other 
     countries to see the warning signs--and recognize the false 
     alarms. We must be aware of the fateful missteps that have 
     wrecked other democracies. And we must see how citizens have 
     risen to meet the great democratic crises of the past, 
     overcoming their own deep-seated divisions to avert 
     breakdown. History doesn't repeat itself. But it rhymes. The 
     promise of history, and the hope--

  The authors say of their book--

     is that we find the rhymes before it is too late.

  There are two key points in that introduction: that we have been 
accustomed to thinking of democracies failing through a military coup. 
So as long as there is not a military coup, as long as the Presidential 
palace is not burned, as long as troops don't march in the streets and 
the Constitution is not thrown out and replaced by martial law, we are 
fine.
  But the second key point is that that is not the way democracies die 
today. It is not by martial law, not by military coups, not, as the 
authors put it, by men with guns. Democracies die today by elected 
leaders augmenting their power in an authoritarian quest, developing 
additional momentum from a rubberstamp congress, gaining further power 
from decisions handed down by a court, and then using the institutions 
of the government.
  Since returning to office in January, President Trump has willfully 
and continually broken the law. The path for this lawbreaking was clear 
before Trump returned to office. On July 1, 2024, the Supreme Court's 
conservative majority found invisible ink in our Constitution. It says: 
Presidents have absolute immunity for committing crimes if they are 
done as official acts.
  The Brennan Center for Justice said of this ruling:

       Unfounded in both history and legal precedent, the decision 
     poses a risk to our system of governance.

  I am going to share with you their analysis of that ruling. This is 
the ruling in Trump v. United States that I commented on earlier, in 
which I said the Supreme Court has decided that the President is a 
King, immune from prosecution for committing crimes as long as they do 
it as an act of government.
  Once again, I will emphasize that when this was going to the Court, I 
said there is no way that our Supreme Court says the President is above 
the law; no way that he is immune from prosecution for crimes committed 
because our Founders were terrified of the President being immune from 
the law. They were terrified of the President being a King.
  They like to say they are originalists. If you look at the original 
context, it is so emphasized in every possible way that the checks and 
balances were designed to make sure that the President was not a King; 
that the vision for the country was hammered out in legislation crafted 
by people elected to serve in the House and serve in the Senate, and 
the President was to execute those laws, was to implement those laws, 
not to act as the sole power, crafting a vision, deciding what programs 
to fund, deciding how much money to give them, and over here Congress 
is just a rubberstamp. They certainly--the Founders--never envisioned 
that the President was above the law.
  How the Supreme Court found invisible ink in the Constitution, I do 
not know. But here is an analysis by the Brennan Center of this 
decision. Written October 1, 2024, titled ``The Supreme Court's 
Presidential Immunity Ruling Undermines Our Democracy.'' This is before 
Trump was reelected in November, before he came back here in January 
2025:

       The ruling in Trump v. United States is an affront to 
     democracy and the rule of law, forfeiting critical checks on 
     executive power. It undermines criminal accountability for 
     presidents if their law-breaking occurs in the course of 
     ``official'' conduct, and it endangers democratic 
     accountability by potentially shielding presidents from 
     prosecution for trying to overthrow elections. By inserting 
     this opinion into a world where impeachment is no longer a 
     viable option, the Supreme Court is licensing future 
     presidents to subvert our democracy at will--and protecting a 
     past president, Donald Trump, who attempted just that.
       The majority of the justices [in this opinion] claim the 
     court's ruling restores the Founders' designs for an 
     ``energetic executive.'' But this distorts the Founders' 
     understanding of executive power in our constitutional 
     democracy. They concentrated power in the hands of a single 
     executive to make it easier to hold presidents accountable--
     and to ensure that there would be no buckpassing for 
     executive decisions. Presidents would have to be responsive 
     to the voters or risk losing office. And the Founders 
     determined that presidents would have no criminal immunity, 
     so they could be prosecuted if they violated the law. These 
     foundational decisions ensured that--whether by Congress, the 
     courts or the people--presidents could be held to account, as 
     they should be in any country that values the rule of law.
       Ignoring this history, the high court went to great lengths 
     to shield presidents from accountability. It gave them a 
     combination of ``absolute'' and ``presumptive'' immunities 
     that apply to all so-called ``official'' acts. This 
     practically invites future presidents to use the levers of 
     the federal government to commit crimes. That's absurd and 
     intolerable.
       But let's not disregard the potential retroactive effect: 
     This decision may also let a former president off the hook 
     for his flagrantly anti-democratic behavior. Trump is accused 
     of attempting to overturn the 2020 election, essentially 
     anointing himself by invalidating the choices of millions of 
     voters. The court's ruling complicates the case against him 
     considerably. It directed federal prosecutors to drop 
     allegations to Trump's commandeering of the Department of 
     Justice. And it requires the prosecutors to overcome a 
     daunting presumption that Trump has immunity for much of the 
     rest of his scheme. In doing so, it increases the risk that 
     Trump may walk free. But that cannot be the outcome. Any 
     opinion from the court that allows that is a war with our 
     system of self-government. It is a direct threat to democracy 
     itself.


[[Page S7590]]


  So the Supreme Court found something in our Constitution that no one 
else has been able to find over almost 250 years--of course, our 
Constitution came 11 years after our Declaration of Independence, so 
let's say 240 years. For 240 years, the President is accountable to the 
law, prosecuted for crimes, and then, suddenly, in 2024, the Supreme 
Court said: We want to give immunity. We think it is good policy to 
give the President immunity.
  They said things like they didn't want the President to have to worry 
about whether they were breaking the law, so we will just decide the 
President is immune to the law.
  The Supreme Court is not supposed to make law. They are supposed to 
enforce the Constitution. But they designated themselves, based on 
their judgment, that it would be a good thing for the President to be 
immune from potential prosecution to just give him that power. They 
could have said in their opinion: We think it might be good practice, 
so even though the Constitution doesn't say it, we encourage Congress 
to take a look at this possible policy improvement. And I think we 
would have sat here, Democrats and Republicans together, and said: Who 
are you kidding? We have read the Constitution. We have taken an oath 
to the Constitution. There is no clause in article II of the 
Constitution that says the President is immune from prosecution or that 
the President is above the law.
  And if you combine that power of the President to commit a crime with 
the power to also give pardons for anyone in the executive branch who 
is executing decisions of the President, you now have an 
entire executive branch that feels empowered to operate outside the 
law.

  Well, that is where we are now--combined immunity with the 
President's pardon power, and the entire executive branch believes it 
can operate outside the law.
  And operating outside the law is exactly what we have seen. On 
January 20, I sat in the Rotunda of the Capitol just down the hall from 
these double doors to my right, situated halfway between the House of 
Representatives and the U.S. Senate, for Donald Trump's inaugural 
address. It was not a traditional address in which a President lays out 
a vision. In a traditional address, the President says: Here is the 
vision I laid out for the country when I was campaigning, and now I am 
going to work with Congress to implement this vision.
  The reason the President says that is because the Constitution places 
the power to decide the direction of the country with Congress--what 
programs to fund and at what level to fund them at. The power is placed 
with Congress. To execute the vision from the campaign, Presidents say: 
I am going to work with Congress. I am going to work with both sides of 
the Congress to build that future that I promised in my campaign.
  Instead, in his speech, Trump talked about ruling by Executive order, 
governing by Executive order, governing by fiat; nothing about working 
with Congress to achieve a vision. He issued 26 Executive orders on his 
first day. He has issued more than 200 from that inauguration in 
January until now. Many of these orders have directly violated our 
country's legal statutes. It is a vision of government where power 
flows not from the law but from President Trump.
  He fired 17 inspectors general, violating the law that allows the 
President to fire an inspector general only ``for cause'' and with 30 
days' notice to Congress.
  Let me read you an article when these firings happened in January. 
The title is ``Fired Inspectors General Raise Alarms as Trump's 
Administration Moves to Finalize the Purge,'' written by Charlie Savage 
on January 27 of this year:

       The Trump administration on Monday ordered former staff 
     members for as many as 17 fired inspectors general to 
     immediately arrange for the return of work laptops, phones, 
     parking decals and ID cards--even as questions remained over 
     whether President Trump broke the law in dismissing [these] 
     independent watchdogs.
       Some of the fired officials were seeking to raise alarms 
     about what had happened. Among them was Mark Greenblatt, whom 
     Trump had appointed as the inspector general of the Interior 
     Department five years ago and who had led an interagency 
     council of the watchdog officials until the new year.
       ``This raises an existential threat with respect to the 
     primary independent oversight function in the federal 
     government,'' Mr. Greenblatt said in an interview. ``We have 
     preserved the independence of inspectors general by making 
     them not swing with every change in political party.''
       He warned that the credibility of the inspectors general 
     would be at issue if Mr. Trump put in ``lackeys who are 
     rubber-stamping his programs and exonerating allegations of 
     his own people willy-nilly.'' Doing so would give the next 
     Democratic president incentive to fire them all, too, setting 
     off ``a never-ending cycle of politicalization.''
       Aboard Air Force One on Saturday--

  The article continues:

     --Mr. Trump defended the purge. ``Some people thought that 
     some were unfair or some were not doing the job,'' he said, 
     falsely claiming a mass removal of inspectors general was ``a 
     very standard thing to do.''
       That is not true. While it is the case that after Congress 
     enacted the Inspector General Act in 1978 and President 
     Ronald Reagan removed all those he inherited from Jimmy 
     Carter in 1981, he later rehired some of them. And since 
     then, the norm has been that they remain in place when new 
     presidents take office, underscoring their role as 
     nonpartisan officials.
       Even as word seeped out late Friday and into the weekend 
     that the White House tersely dismissed officials, citing its 
     ``changing priorities,'' it had not released a comprehensive 
     list of who had been fired, leading to confusion about the 
     extent of the purge.
       In an interview on Monday, Hannibal Ware, who goes by Mike 
     and took over as chairman of the interagency council in 
     January and was among those fired, said the dismissals he 
     knew of extended to 17 officials covering 18 agencies. He had 
     held a watchdog role for two agencies, one of which was in an 
     acting capacity.
       The agencies were, he said, the Departments of Agriculture, 
     Commerce, Defense, Education, Energy, Health and Human 
     Services, Housing and Urban Development, Interior, Labor, 
     State, Transportation, Treasury and Veterans Affairs.
       They also included, he said, a special inspector general 
     for Afghanistan reconstruction and internal watchdogs at the 
     Environmental Protection Agency, the White House's Office of 
     Personnel Management and Mr. Ware's own two agencies, the 
     Small Business Administration and the Social Security 
     Administration.
       But, underscoring the confusion, at least one of those 
     inspectors, Krista A. Boyd of the Office of Personnel 
     Management, found herself locked out of the system even 
     though she had not received an email informing her that she 
     was fired, according to people familiar with the matter. The 
     inspector general community is assuming that she is 
     terminated, too.
       In response to the purge, Mr. Ware, in a letter to the 
     White House late Friday, suggested that the firings were 
     illegal because they violated a law that requires giving 
     Congress 30 days' advance notice with the reason for any 
     removal of an inspector general.
       Congress passed the Inspector General Act as part of the 
     wave of post-Watergate reforms to government. The idea was to 
     have officials embedded in major parts of the executive 
     branch who did not report to that department or agency's 
     head, and so were able to perform independent internal 
     oversight.
       In 2020, Mr. Trump summarily ousted or sidelined a series 
     of inspectors general who were seen as investigating his 
     administration aggressively. Partly in response to that, 
     Congress strengthened the 30-day notice law by requiring 
     presidents to provide a ``substantive rationale, including 
     detailed and case-specific reasons'' for the firing.
       In an interview, Mr. Ware warned that if the administration 
     could flout that part of the Inspector General Act, then it 
     would establish that it need not abide by the rest of that 
     law--including provisions requiring giving the watchdogs 
     unfettered access to agency files.
       ``What strength is there in the Inspector General Act if 
     they say they don't have to abide by parts of it?'' he asked. 
     ``This is a threat to our democracy.''
       Michael J. Missal, who was removed as the [IG] for the 
     Department of Veterans Affairs, pointed to Congress as a 
     potential defense of the institution.

  He said:

       ``For inspectors general to continue to improve government 
     services and ensure taxpayer funds are spent effectively, 
     they must continue to be truly independent and have the 
     support of Congress.''
       In a letter over the weekend, the ranking Democrats on the 
     House oversight committees [said the following]:
       His ``attempt to unlawfully and arbitrarily remove more 
     than a dozen independent, nonpartisan inspectors general 
     without notice to Congress . . . and in the dead of night'' 
     was a blatant violation of the law.

  This should disturb all of us that one of the first acts of this 
administration on this path to authoritarian control of our Nation was 
to throw out those independent watchdogs. That, in fact, is a common 
symptom of an authoritarian takeover--to get rid of the inspectors.
  In this case, Congress--all of us--had strengthened the law to 
require not

[[Page S7591]]

just notice but a specific act, an egregious act, to be fired so that 
they really could feel independent and not accountable to the head and 
could report things honestly.
  I know, in my work here over the last 17 years, I have repeatedly 
read inspectors general reports, and they have often been some of the 
most insightful examinations of what is going right and what is going 
wrong and given us as legislators ideas for things that need to be 
fixed, but you can't have that type of valuable input if the inspectors 
general are not independent, if they are worried that, with the first 
critical thing they say or point out, they will be fired.
  It was also reported that the Trump administration blocked funding 
for the Council of the Inspectors General on integrity and efficiency. 
He blocked the funding for those who are dedicated to integrity and 
efficiency.
  Now let me share with you some reporting from just a week ago and the 
title: ``Trump Administration Defunds the Federal Watchdog Office.''

       The White House last week informed a federal office charged 
     with conducting oversight of the Trump administration that it 
     was blocking congressionally approved money for its 
     operations for the coming fiscal year, effectively shuttering 
     it after midnight on Tuesday.
       The blocked funds are not linked to the funding showdown 
     between congressional Democrats and Republicans that could 
     prompt a government shutdown.
       The decision to defund the Council of the Inspectors 
     General on Integrity and Efficiency, which drew quick 
     condemnation from top Republicans in the Senate who are now 
     pressing to reverse it, was the latest effort by the White 
     House to undermine independent investigators in the federal 
     government.
       It was also an end run around Congress by a White House 
     that has repeatedly sought to usurp the legislative branch's 
     power over federal spending.
       The move would shut down an umbrella office that supports 
     the government's 72 inspectors general and could wipe out a 
     public website where they post their reports, which includes 
     a repository of decades of recommendations on how the 
     government can save money.
       In a letter on Monday, Senators Susan Collins, Republican 
     of Maine and the chairwoman of the Appropriations Committee, 
     and Chuck Grassley, Republican of Iowa and [chair] of the 
     Judiciary Committee, called on the White House to release the 
     funding.
       ``Absent immediate action,'' they wrote, the watchdog 
     office will ``furlough staff and terminate important 
     functions that help prevent and detect waste, fraud and abuse 
     throughout the government.''

  So I appreciate that my two colleagues weighed in in that fashion 
because this entire operation of attacking the inspectors general is 
the exact opposite of what Trump said he wanted to achieve through 
DOGE, the Department of Government Efficiency.
  The inspectors general report when things are going wrong, and they 
report when things are going right. They provide suggestions on how 
things can be fixed. So, if you really want to have a Department of 
Government Efficiency, one of the first things you do is strengthen the 
inspectors general, not undermine them.
  If, on the other hand, you want to run the government in an 
authoritarian fashion, you don't want people keeping an eye on what you 
are doing and reporting it to Congress or reporting it to the American 
people, so you fire the inspectors.
  In addition to the firings of the inspectors general, Trump and 
Vought--our current head of OMB--and Elon Musk fired Federal workers 
who provide critical services.
  POLITICO did a report on how the cuts to the Forest Service increase 
wildfire risk. The article is titled: `` `Crazy': Forest Service cuts 
ignite fear, fury over wildfire risks.''
  Now, I come from the west part of the country. The West is besieged 
every year by wildfires. We used to think of them as summer wildfires, 
but now, in Oregon, they can be in the spring or the summer or the 
fall. Further south, in California, they can be any month of the year. 
The wildfire seasons are getting longer because, with climate change, 
our forests are dryer. We also have more lightning strikes and often 
more wind that fuels the fires from an initial small fire into a large 
complication. So, whenever the infrastructure for fighting fires or 
treating the forests to reduce the risk of fire in the first place is 
assaulted, we get a little worried out West, but here is what the 
POLITICO article said:

       Officials from Nevada to New Jersey to Utah and beyond are 
     scrambling to take stock of [President Trump's] cuts to the 
     U.S. Forest Service--and deciding how to respond as the 
     summer wildfire season looms.
       ``Forest fires aren't going to take four years off just 
     because of who's in the White House,'' Colorado [Governor 
     Polis] said in an interview following the announcement of $7 
     million in state wildfire mitigation grants. ``So it's really 
     important that states up the bar on preparation.''
       Trump has cut 10 percent of the workers at the Forest 
     Service, an agency that manages 193 million acres of national 
     forests and grasslands, with more firings and a steep 
     reorganization likely coming. About 75 percent of agency 
     staff are trained in wildland firefighting. That means there 
     are fewer workers [across] the country clearing brush and 
     thinning trees--

  We call this forest management--

     to reduce the risk and intensity of wildfires. And when fires 
     do break out, there will be fewer workers . . . to stop the 
     spread [of the fire].
       The cuts have prompted alarm bells in state capitals as 
     attention on wildfires and forestry policy has arguably never 
     been higher in the wake of devastating fires that ripped 
     through Los Angeles earlier this year. Record drought, heat 
     waves and sluggish prevention work have exacerbated fires in 
     recent decades: An average of 3 million acres burned 
     nationwide each year in the 1990s, but [now] the average is . 
     . . nearly 7 million [acres per year], according to . . . the 
     National Interagency Fire Center.
       Now, with that critical prevention work at risk of slowing, 
     states and cities are weighing drastic actions to safeguard 
     against the threat of potentially more fire-prone national 
     lands--since fire doesn't respect federal, state [or] private 
     land boundaries.
       Nevada State forester and firewarden Kacey . . . told 
     POLITICO:
       ``We're going to be headed into what could be a big fire 
     season in the state of Nevada,'' adding that she can exercise 
     emergency hiring authority if needed. The federal government 
     owns 86 percent of Nevada's land. ``I'm nervous about our 
     ability to maintain those public lands with the people who 
     work on the ground, doing the important, critical work that 
     actually helps lessen the risk of catastrophic loss from 
     fire.''
       The shrinking of the Forest Service is hitting the agency 
     both on the ground and at the leadership level, with Biden-
     era Chief Randy Moore retiring in the wake of the mass 
     layoffs and more than half of regional heads also departing.

  The article goes on at some length. I will spare you from the rest of 
it because the point is quite clear: Massive cuts to the Forest Service 
were creating an enormous danger of increased fires in the West. These 
firings were often in complete violation of the law.
  There is a law called the RIF law--the reduction in force law--and it 
lays out a very, very careful analysis that has to go on to make sure 
that when you do reduce the size of an Agency, that you do it in a 
manner that produces the best possible results. If do you the firings 
without that process, that is illegal. So firing inspectors general 
without notice broke the law. Firing them without cause broke the law. 
Firing forest workers without a proper RIF analysis broke the law.
  Trump also proceeded to fire the Board members of independent 
Agencies, violating laws that established the terms of office and 
violating the laws that allowed them to be fired only for cause.
  He violated the Antideficiency Act when Elon Musk and DOGE sent the 
``Fork in the Road'' email to 2 million Federal employees, offering a 
buyout of pay through September 30.
  He violated the Privacy Act when Trump, Musk, and DOGE accessed 
personal information from computers of the Social Security 
Administration.
  He violated a 2018 law banning reductions in indirect costs covered 
by NIH research grants when he capped those rates at 15 percent.
  Trump issued an Executive order ending birthright citizenship--
birthright citizenship--which is in our Constitution. It was quickly 
blocked by a Federal judge.
  Trump is routinely bypassing the Senate's confirmation process by 
making interim appointments of U.S. attorneys around the country, which 
is in clear violation of the intent and the requirements of the law.
  Now, in this government shutdown, he is breaking several laws by 
using nonpartisan government Agencies to amplify his political 
messaging, and I will read to you a letter that Senators sent, 
including myself, to the administration and to Russ Vought, who is the 
Director of the Office of Management and Budget.
  My point in all of these pieces, in all of these different actions--
from the inspectors general being fired, to Board

[[Page S7592]]

members being tossed, all in violation of the laws concerning the 
executive branch--is that we have an authoritarian President, who acts 
and believes that he is beyond the law, not accountable to the law, and 
as a strongman, can do whatever the hell he wants.
  It is our responsibility to say: Hell no. We have a Constitution. We 
took an oath to that Constitution. It is our responsibility to pass 
legislation that patches in any gray areas, to make things clear. If 
the courts say it is not quite clear, we need to make it clear, but we 
are not doing that.
  So this letter, in regard to the use of nonpartisan government 
Agencies for political messaging, is an important accounting of trying 
to hold the administration to the rule of law.

       Director Vought, As Congress continues to work on funding 
     the federal government for Fiscal Year 2026, the White House 
     and political appointees assigned to agencies within the 
     executive branch have been engaged in a widespread campaign 
     of partisan political activities. These activities are in 
     blatant violation of Section 715 of P.L. 118-47, which 
     prohibits federal funds from being used for propaganda 
     purposes ``designed to support or defeat legislation pending 
     before Congress.'' These activities appear to violate the 
     Anti-Lobbying Act and the Hatch Act. We urge you to 
     immediately remove these illegal, partisan messages to comply 
     with the law and hold accountable those who have directed 
     this behavior.
       As early as September 30, 2025, federal agencies began 
     publicly posting various notices and other media from 
     official accounts, on official websites, and in official 
     email correspondence that violates Sec. 715's prohibition on 
     propaganda.
       For example . . . the official website for the Department 
     of Housing and Urban Development displayed a blatantly 
     partisan political banner on their website claiming that the 
     ``Radical Left are going to . . . inflict massive pain on the 
     American people . . . ''

  This is partisan political messaging done on government websites, in 
violation of the Anti-Lobbying Act, in violation of the Hatch Act, in 
violation of 715, Public Law 118-47.

       On October 1 . . . similar partisan political messages 
     appeared on the websites for the Small Business 
     Administration, the Department of Justice, and the Department 
     of Agriculture, among others.
       In addition to website updates, federal employees--
     including of the Small Business Administration, Department of 
     Labor, Department of Education, and Department of Veterans 
     Affairs--were reportedly directed to send automatic reply 
     email messages [with] partisan political propaganda which 
     asserts that ``Democrat Senators are blocking passage of H.R. 
     5371 in the Senate which has led to a lapse in 
     appropriations.'' As you well know, these messages are 
     misleading, given that Democrats have voted four times over 
     the past week to fully fund the government only to be 
     rebuffed by our Republican colleagues. But more important, 
     they are clear violations of Section 715, which prohibits the 
     use of federal funds by an agency to publicly support or 
     oppose legislation before Congress.
       Spirited public debate has its place, but agency resources, 
     including websites or emails, should not be used to send 
     overtly political, and in this case, misleading messages, to 
     the American people.
       Congress has [long] enacted . . . laws to ensure that 
     partisan political activities and propaganda do not impede 
     the government's ability to serve all Americans . . . given 
     the blatant, systematic, and repeated violations of Sec. 715 
     of P.L. 118-47, and likely [violations of] the Anti-Lobbying 
     and Hatch Acts, over the last week, you must immediately 
     remove these partisan messages from all executive branch 
     agency communications and websites.

  I never thought I would see the day that a President of the United 
States would use the instruments of the government to run a blatant 
political campaign saying we are blaming this party or that group for 
this outcome. That so undermines the vision of an executive branch 
elected to serve all the people of the United States.
  It so undermines the vision that we do not politicize the functions 
of the executive branch, the way that they operate, the programs they 
support, the levels of which they are funded. All of those things will, 
of course, change according to laws that we pass here. But political 
messages, blatant political attacks, campaign slogans on official 
websites are against the law and another law that the President is 
breaking.
  In March, The Atlantic published a piece titled: ``America is 
Watching the Rise of the Dual State,'' and it describes how another 
authoritarian regime ``maintain[ed] a day-to-day normalcy for many of 
its citizens--while at the same time establishing a domain of 
lawlessness.''
  It is a sizable article, so for now, I am not going to read all of it 
to you, but I will read the first part because what this is about is 
Germany in the 1930s--again, this article published by The Atlantic--
and how we in America are following a path that has chilling parallels. 
Chilling parallels.

       On September 20, 1938, a man who had witnessed the rise of 
     fascism packed his suitcases and fled his home in Berlin. He 
     arranged to have smuggled separately a manuscript that he had 
     drafted in secret over the previous two years. This book was 
     . . . remarkable . . . clarified what was unfolding in Berlin 
     at the time, the catalyst for [the] author's flight.
       The man fleeing . . . was a Jewish labor lawyer named Ernst 
     Fraenkel. He completed his manuscript two years later at the 
     University of Chicago . . . publishing it as [the book] The 
     Dual State, with the modest subtitle A Contribution to the 
     Theory of Dictatorship. The book explains how the Nazi regime 
     managed to keep on track a capitalist economy governed by 
     stable laws--and maintain a day-to-day normalcy for many of 
     its citizens--while at the same time establishing a domain of 
     lawlessness and state violence in order to realize its 
     terrible vision of ethno-nationalism.
       Fraenkel offered [in this book] a simple, yet powerful, 
     picture of how the constitutional and legal foundations of 
     the Weimar Republic eroded, and were replaced by strongman-
     style rule in which the commands of the Nazi Party and its 
     leader became paramount. His perspective was not grounded in 
     abstract political theory; it grew instead from his 
     experience as a Jewish lawyer in Nazi Berlin 
     representing dissidents and other disfavored clients. 
     Academic in tone, The Dual State [book] sketches a 
     template of emerging tyranny distilled from bloody and 
     horrifying experience.
       As Fraenkel explained it, a lawless dictatorship does not 
     arise simply by snuffing out the ordinary legal system of 
     rules, procedures, and precedents. To the contrary, that 
     system--which he called the ``normative state''--remains in 
     place while dictatorial power spreads across society. What 
     happens, [he] explained, is insidious. Rather than completely 
     eliminating the normative state, [the state of what normal 
     citizens experience day to day] the Nazi . . . regime . . . 
     created a parallel zone in which ``unlimited arbitrariness 
     and violence unchecked by any legal guarantees'' reigned 
     freely . . . [this is what] Fraenkel called the ``prerogative 
     state,'' [where] ordinary law didn't apply.
       In this prerogative state, judges and other legal actors 
     deferred to the racist hierarchies and ruthless expediencies 
     of the Nazi regime.
       The key here is that this prerogative state does not 
     immediately and completely overrun the normative state.

  I will just summarize my impression about this article because I 
think it is a little too fancy in its political science depictions, 
almost loses comprehensibleness, and that is witnessed where, around 
the Executive in the Weimar Republic, there started to become a zone of 
lawlessness in which the laws were not followed because it became an 
authoritarian regime that says: ``We decide. We are the Executive, we 
decide what we do. We don't care what those laws say that tell us how 
we are supposed to act. We ignore them,'' meanwhile, maintaining the 
relatively normal economy and the day-to-day lives of people.
  What I have gone through in law violation after law violation after 
violation after violation in just January through October of this year 
is the Executive of the United States creating that zone around the 
Executive where the laws don't apply. They don't apply because Trump 
chooses to ignore them.
  And in choosing to ignore them, he is effectively creating that zone 
around the Executive that doesn't operate on this foundation that we 
have honored for 2\1/2\ centuries: a foundation in which the President 
is accountable to the law and the people who work for the President are 
accountable to the law.
  That is the chilling parallel between 1930s Germany and now of an 
authoritarian Executive creating a zone of lawlessness around the 
Executive functioning. In addition to the lawlessness, we have also 
been so affected--so affected--by the legislation that has passed here 
in this Chamber.
  These are two different components of an administration that has 
decided that it is a ``families lose, billionaires win'' perspective. 
The laws that apply to the Executive are routinely ignored--I have gone 
through about a dozen of them in this presentation--and then champion 
legislation that harms Americans. Those two things, one undermining our 
Constitution and establishing a strongman state, using that kind of 
authoritarian Executive power to persuade the majority in the House and 
Senate to pass a law by the narrowest of margins--I think the vote here 
in the Senate was broken by the

[[Page S7593]]

Vice President in passing that bill--convincing them to pass a law that 
hurts Americans. And now, Republicans have shut down the government in 
order to preserve that attack on healthcare.
  Why did they want to shut down healthcare or savage or shred 
healthcare? To give more tax breaks to billionaires. Slash nutrition 
programs to give tax breaks to billionaires. Slash the tax credits to 
give more tax breaks to billionaires. Slash Medicaid healthcare 
programs to give more tax breaks to billionaires. And on top of all 
that, add $30 trillion to the projected debt of the United States of 
America to give tax breaks to the richest Americans--$30 trillion in 
additional debt.
  You know, I have often been confounded by the rhetoric on the right, 
which says they are fiscally responsible because our debt has been 
driven up time and time again by the decisions they championed. We have 
the Bush tax cuts, created massive Federal debt. We have a second Bush 
tax cut, created massive Federal debt. We have the war on Afghanistan 
and Iraq creating massive debt. And we certainly, certainly have this 
most recent decision to savage programs for Americans and run up $30 
trillion more in debt, according to the estimates of the Congressional 
Budget Office, in order to fund those tax breaks for the richest 
Americans.
  Well, we are now at 100 percent of debt to GDP, gross domestic 
product. So if you put on one side of the scale the size of our economy 
and you put on the other side of the scale our debt, they are the 
same. We are at 100 percent. And that starts to become a perilous 
economic position for the United States--perilous because the further 
you go in that direction, you run up more and more and more debt.

  What the budget is doing right now, in order to provide these tax 
breaks--and I speak roughly--I think we are at about 17 percent of GDP 
in revenue and about 23 percent of gross domestic product in spending--
a 6-percent gap. And the Republicans just passed a bill that makes it 
far worse and runs up far more debt. There is certainly nothing 
fiscally responsible in that.
  They didn't run up debt to make our healthcare system better; they 
savaged--savaged--the healthcare for Americans in the United States of 
America in order to fund tax breaks for billionaires. But the tax 
breaks were so generous, cutting the healthcare programs didn't start 
to pay for it, so they run up another $30 trillion in debt, according 
to the Congressional Budget Office.
  The impact of this healthcare bill on Oregonians is significant. It 
is projected to increase the average payment on the exchange--the 
average net premium paid--by about 68 percent. Now, that is actually--
if that comes out to be true, that is a hell of a lot better than the 
average across the country because the predicted average across the 
country is 114 percent--more than double. So I guess Oregonians might 
say: Hey, we did a little better.
  But, I will tell you, any family that finds they didn't get a 5-
percent increase in their healthcare costs or 10 percent but they got 
68 percent--$1,300 a person--they are going to struggle--struggle--and 
they are going to go without insurance in many cases, and they are 
going to end up with worse healthcare as a result because they won't go 
to the doctor because they don't have insurance to pay for it.
  If they do go to the doctor when a condition becomes bad enough, a 
small condition may become a really serious condition; a treatable 
condition may become an untreatable condition; an early tumor may 
become a death-sentence tumor. It will be more expensive to treat that 
healthcare because the disease is worse and it is being treated in the 
emergency room--the most expensive place to treat a health condition.
  Then we have the fact that, without insurance, they won't be able to 
pay the bills that they receive, so the clinic and the hospital will 
receive less funds, and if receiving less funds, they would have to 
reduce the amount of services they provide the community, affecting 
everybody's healthcare.
  The Sheps Center estimates that 300-plus rural hospitals are at risk 
to close because of the ``Big Ugly Betrayal Bill'' passed by the 
majority party.
  You could sum it up this way: The bill is all about the red carpet 
for billionaires and redtape for America's families; cut the programs 
fundamental to families thriving, and deliver massive tax gifts to the 
richest Americans.
  You know, 77 percent of the enrollees in the exchange, the ACA 
exchange--Affordable Care Act exchange--are in States Trump won. So 
when a Democrat stands up on this floor and says ``We need to fix these 
tax credits so people can afford insurance,'' the vast majority of 
people they are trying to help live in red States.
  We are not advocating based on something that is partisan; we are 
advocating on what is good for America. We are simply saying: Quit 
shutting down the government, fix this egregious condition, and America 
will be better off.
  I will say that almost everyone believes, politically, Republicans 
would be better off as well if they fix this egregious attack on 
healthcare.
  The ``red carpet for the rich; redtape for families'' is a terrible 
philosophy to go forward in America.
  One piece of the authoritarian puzzle: You have the rubberstamp 
Congress. You have the Supreme Court that delivers more power to the 
Executive. You have the aggressive authoritarian personality as the 
President. You have government by and for the powerful, not government 
by and for the people. If, therefore, you have government by and for 
the powerful, you pass bills like the ``Big Ugly Betrayal Bill'' that 
slashes healthcare to deliver tax breaks for billionaires. That is how 
these two pieces are connected. The authoritarian takeover by the 
President and the horrific attack on ordinary people to fund tax breaks 
for the powerful--that is how these two things are connected. It is 
government by and for the powerful rather than by and for the people.
  But in the world according to our Constitution, the President is not 
a King, the laws are not just suggestions, and the Constitution is not 
optional. And that is why I will keep raising the alarm bells here on 
the floor of the Senate, because our country is in deep trouble. It is 
in the middle of a massive authoritarian corruption of our 
Constitution. That is why 7 million people took to the streets on 
Saturday.
  This brings us to the first chapter of ``How Democracies Die.'' The 
reason I have come to the floor to read it tonight and to do 
commentary--as well as the book ``On Tyranny''--is to amplify the alarm 
bells.
  The citizens, 7 million strong, took to the streets in the largest 
demonstration in American history. But 7 million is only a small 
fraction of the population of this country. So just as they rang the 
alarm bells and hoped that their neighbors would pay attention, their 
newspapers would pay attention, that we, their electeds, would pay 
attention, it is important that those of us here in this Senate Chamber 
also ring the alarm bells.
  I have chosen these two books because there is no volume I know that 
better describes how democracies have died through an authoritarian 
takeover--not through a military coup but through the obliteration of 
the checks and balances of the Constitution.
  So ``Fateful Alliances'' is the name of this chapter. Again, I am 
reading from this book, and I will leave this up to remind folks.

       A quarrel had arisen between the Horse and the Stag, so the 
     Horse came to a Hunter to ask his help to take revenge on the 
     Stag. The Hunter agreed but said: ``If you desire to conquer 
     the Stag, you must permit me to place this piece of iron 
     between your jaws, so that I may guide you with these reins, 
     and allow this saddle to be placed upon your back so that I 
     may keep steady upon you as we follow the enemy.'' The Horse 
     agreed to the conditions, and the Hunter soon saddled and 
     bridled him. Then, with the aid of the Hunter, the Horse soon 
     overcame the Stag and said to the Hunter: ``Now get off, and 
     remove those things from my mouth and back.'' ``Not so fast, 
     friend,'' said the Hunter. ``I have now got you under bit and 
     spur and prefer to keep you as you are at present.''

  That is a passage from ``Aesop's Fables.''

       On October 30, 1922, Benito Mussolini arrived in Rome at 
     10:55 A.M. in an overnight sleeping car from Milan. He had 
     been invited to the capital city by the king to accept 
     Italy's premiership and form a new cabinet. Accompanied by a 
     small group of guards, Mussolini first stopped at the Hotel 
     Savoia and then, wearing a black suit jacket, black shirt, 
     and matching black bowler hat, walked triumphantly to the 
     king's Quirinal

[[Page S7594]]

     Palace. Rome was filled with rumors of unrest. Bands of 
     Fascists--many in mismatched uniforms--roamed the city's 
     streets. Mussolini, aware of the power of the spectacle, 
     strode into the king's marble-floored residential palace and 
     greeted him, ``Sire, forgive my attire. I come from the 
     battlefield.''
       This was the beginning of Mussolini's legendary ``March on 
     Rome.'' The image of masses of Blackshirts crossing the 
     Rubicon to seize power from Italy's Liberal state became 
     fascist canon, repeated on national holidays and in 
     children's schoolbooks throughout the 1920s and 1930s. 
     Mussolini did his part to enshrine the myth. At the last 
     train stop before entering Rome that day, he had considered 
     disembarking to ride into the city on horseback surrounded by 
     his guards. Though the plan was ultimately abandoned, 
     afterward he did all he could to bolster the legend of his 
     rise to power as, in his own words, a ``revolution'' and 
     ``insurrectional act'' that launched a new fascist epoch.
       The truth was more mundane. The bulk of Mussolini's 
     Blackshirts, often poorly fed and unarmed, arrived only after 
     he had been invited to become prime minister. The squads of 
     Fascists around the country were a menace, but Mussolini's 
     machinations to take the reins of state were no revolution. 
     He used his party's 35 parliamentary votes . . . divisions 
     among establishment politicians, fear of socialism, and the 
     threat of violence by 30,000 Blackshirts to capture the 
     attention of the timid King Victor Emmanuel III, who saw in 
     Mussolini a rising political star and a means of neutralizing 
     unrest.
       With political order restored by Mussolini's appointment 
     and socialism in Retreat, the Italian stock market soared. 
     Elder statesmen of the Liberal establishment, such as 
     Giovanni Giolitti and Antonio Salandra, found themselves 
     applauding the turn of events. They regarded Mussolini as a 
     useful ally. But not unlike the horse in Aesop's fable, Italy 
     soon found itself under ``bit and spur.''
       Some version of this story has repeated itself throughout 
     the world over the last century. A cast of political 
     outsiders, including Adolf Hitler, Getulio Vargas in Brazil, 
     Alberto Fujimori in Peru, and Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, came 
     to power on the same path: From the inside, via elections or 
     alliances with powerful political figures. In each instance, 
     elites believed the invitation to power would contain the 
     outsider, leading to a restoration of control by mainstream 
     politicians. But their plans backfired. A lethal mix of 
     ambition, fear, and miscalculation conspired to lead them to 
     the same fateful mistake: Willingly handing over the keys of 
     power to an autocrat-in-the-making.
       Why do seasoned elder statesmen make this mistake? There 
     are few more gripping illustrations than the rise of Adolf 
     Hitler in January 1933. His capacity for violent insurrection 
     was on display as early as Munich's Beer Hall Putsch of 
     1923--a surprise evening strike in which his group of pistol-
     bearing loyalists took control of several government 
     buildings and a Munich beer hall where Bavarian officials 
     were meeting. The ill-conceived attack was halted by the 
     authorities, and Hitler spent nine months in jail, where he 
     wrote his Infamous personal testament, Mein Kampf. 
     Thereafter, Hitler publicly committed to gaining power via 
     elections. Initially, his National Socialist movement found 
     few votes. The Weimar political system had been founded in 
     1919 by a prodemocratic coalition of Catholics, Liberals, and 
     Social Democrats. But beginning in 1930, with the German 
     economy reeling, the center-right fell prey to infighting, 
     and the Communists and Nazis grew in popularity.
       The elected government collapsed in March 1930 amid the 
     pain of the Great Depression. With political gridlock 
     blocking government action, the figurehead president, World 
     War I hero Paul von Hindenburg, took advantage of a 
     constitutional article giving the head of state the authority 
     to name chancellors in the exceptional circumstance that 
     parliament failed to deliver governing majorities. The aim of 
     these unelected chancellors--and the president--was not only 
     to govern but to sideline the radicals on the left and right. 
     First, Center Party economist Heinrich Bruning (who would 
     later flee Germany to become a professor [in the United 
     States]) attempted, but failed, to restore economic growth; 
     his time as chancellor was short-lived. President von 
     Hindenburg turned next to nobleman Franz von Papen, and then, 
     in growing despondency, to von Papen's close friend and 
     rival, former defense minister General Kurt von Schleicher. 
     But without parliamentary majorities in the Reichstag, 
     stalemate persisted. Leaders, for good reason, feared the 
     next election.
       Convinced that ``something must [finally] give,'' a cabal 
     of rivalrous conservatives convened in late January 1933 and 
     settled on a solution: A popular outsider should be placed at 
     the head of the government. They despised him but at least he 
     had a mass following. And, most of all, they thought they 
     could control him.
       On January 30, 1933, von Papen, one of the chief architects 
     of the plan, dismissed worries over the gamble that would 
     make Adolf Hitler chancellor of a crisis-ridden Germany with 
     the reassuring words: ``We've engaged him for ourselves. . . 
     . Within two months, we will have pushed [him] so far into a 
     corner that he'll squeal.'' A more profound miscalculation is 
     hard to imagine.
       The Italian and German experiences highlight the type of 
     ``fateful alliance'' that often elevates authoritarians to 
     power. In any democracy, politicians will at times face 
     severe challenges. [An] economic crisis, [rising] public 
     discontent, [and the] electoral decline of mainstream 
     political parties can test the judgment of even the most 
     experienced insiders. If a charismatic outsider emerges on 
     the scene, gaining popularity as he challenges the old order, 
     it is tempting for establishment politicians who feel their 
     control is unraveling to try to co-opt him. If an insider 
     breaks ranks to embrace the insurgent before his rivals do, 
     he can use the outsider's energy and base to outmaneuver his 
     peers. And then, establishment politicians hope, the 
     insurgent can be redirected to support their own program.
       This sort of devil's bargain often mutates to the benefit 
     of the insurgent, as alliances provide outsiders with enough 
     respectability to become legitimate contenders for power. In 
     [the] early 1920s Italy, the old Liberal order was crumbling 
     amid growing strikes and social unrest. The failure of 
     traditional parties to forge solid parliamentary majorities 
     left the elderly fifth-term prime minister Giovanni Giolitti 
     desperate, and against the wishes of advisors he called early 
     elections in May 1921. With the aim of tapping into the 
     Fascists' mass appeal, Giolitti decided to offer Mussolini's 
     upstart movement a place on his electoral group's ``bourgeois 
     bloc'' of Nationalists, Fascists, and Liberals. This strategy 
     failed--the bourgeois bloc won less than 20 percent of the 
     vote, leading to Giolitti's resignation. But Mussolini's 
     place on the ticket gave his ragtag group the legitimacy it 
     would need to enable its rise.
       Such fateful alliances are hardly confined to interwar 
     Europe. They also help to explain the rise of Hugo Chavez. 
     Venezuela had prided itself on being South America's oldest 
     democracy, in place since 1958. Chavez, a junior military 
     officer and failed coup leader who had never held public 
     office, was a political outsider. But his rise to power was 
     given a critical boost from a consummate insider: ex-
     president Rafael Caldera, one of the founders of Venezuelan 
     democracy.
       Venezuelan politics was long dominated by two parties, the 
     center-left Democratic Action and Caldera's center-right 
     Social Christian Party (known as COPEI). The two alternated 
     in power peacefully for more than thirty years, and by the 
     1970s, Venezuela was viewed as a model democracy in a region 
     plagued by coups and dictatorships. During the 1980s, 
     however, the country's oil-dependent economy sank into a 
     prolonged slump, [however,] a crisis that persisted for more 
     than a decade, nearly doubling the poverty rate. Not 
     surprisingly, Venezuelans grew disaffected. Massive riots in 
     February 1989 suggested that the established parties were in 
     trouble. Three years later, in February 1992, a group of 
     junior military officers rose up against President Carlos 
     Andres Perez. Led by Hugo Chavez, the rebels called 
     themselves ``Bolivarians,'' after revered independence hero 
     Simon Bolivar. The coup failed. But when the now-
     detained Chavez appeared on live television to tell his 
     supporters to lay down their arms (declaring, in words 
     that would become legendary, that their mission had failed 
     ``for now''), he became a hero in the eyes of many 
     Venezuelans, particularly poorer ones. Following a second 
     failed coup in November 1992, the imprisoned Chavez 
     changed course, opting to pursue power via elections. He 
     would need help.

  In these stories, what these two authors are laying out, in various 
countries, is how individuals with authoritarian tendencies rose and 
then eventually took power actually using the path of electoral 
politics. And that is a recognition we should all have--that 
democracies don't simply die because men and guns storm the home of the 
President or set it on fire. They die because the electoral process 
itself gives rise to the individual who manipulated it, and soon, 
checks and balances that were so treasured and thought so strong 
disappeared. And that by looking to these other countries, you can see 
and understand better what is happening in our own country.

       Although ex-president Caldera was a well-regarded elder 
     statesman, his political career was waning in 1992. Four 
     years earlier, he had failed to secure his party's 
     presidential nomination, and he was now considered a 
     political relic. But the seventy-six-year-old senator still 
     dreamed of returning to the presidency, and Chavez's 
     emergence provided him with a lifeline. On the night of 
     Chavez's initial coup, the former president stood up during 
     an emergency joint session of congress and embraced the 
     rebels' cause, declaring:
       ``It is difficult to ask the people to sacrifice themselves 
     for freedom and democracy when they think that freedom and 
     democracy are incapable of giving them food to eat, of 
     preventing the astronomical rise in the cost of subsistence, 
     or of placing a definitive end to the terrible scourge of 
     corruption that, in the eyes of the entire world, is eating 
     away at the institutions of Venezuela with each passing 
     day.''
       The stunning speech resurrected Caldera's political career. 
     Having tapped into Chavez's antisystem constituency, the ex-
     president's public support swelled, which allowed him to make 
     a successful presidential bid in 1993.
       Caldera's public flirtation with Chavez did more than boost 
     his own standing in the

[[Page S7595]]

     polls; it also gave Chavez new credibility. Chavez and his 
     comrades had sought to destroy their country's thirty-four-
     year-old democracy. But rather than denouncing the coup 
     leaders as an extremist threat, the former president offered 
     them public sympathy--and, with it, an opening to mainstream 
     politics.
       Caldera also helped open the gates to the presidential 
     palace for Chavez by dealing a mortal blow to Venezuela's 
     established parties. In a stunning aboutface, he abandoned 
     COPEI, the party he had founded nearly half a century 
     earlier, and launched an independent presidential bid. To be 
     sure, the parties were already in crisis. But Caldera's 
     departure and subsequent antiestablishment campaign helped 
     bury them. The party system collapsed after Caldera's 1993 
     election as an antiparty independent, paving the way for 
     future outsiders. Five years later, it would be Chavez's 
     turn.
       But back in 1993, Chavez still had a major problem. He was 
     in jail, awaiting trial for treason. However, in 1994, now-
     President Caldera dropped all charges against him. Caldera's 
     final act in enabling Chavez was literally opening the 
     gates--of prison--for him. Immediately after Chavez's 
     release, a reporter asked him where he was going. ``To 
     power,'' he replied. Freeing Chavez was popular, and Caldera 
     had promised such a move during the campaign. Like most 
     Venezuelan elites, he viewed Chavez as a passing fad--someone 
     who would likely fall out of public favor by the time of the 
     next election. But in dropping all charges, rather than 
     allowing Chavez to stand trial and then pardoning him, 
     Caldera elevated him, transforming the former coup leader 
     overnight into a viable presidential candidate. On December 
     6, 1998, Chavez won the presidency, easily defeating an 
     establishment-backed candidate. On inauguration day, Caldera, 
     the outgoing president, could not bring himself to deliver 
     the oath of office to Chavez, as tradition dictated. Instead, 
     he stood glumly off to one side.
       Despite their vast differences, Hitler, Mussolini, and 
     Chavez followed routes to power that share striking 
     similarities. Not only were they all outsiders with a flair 
     for capturing public attention, but each of them rose to 
     power because establishment politicians overlooked the 
     warning signs and either handed over power to them (Hitler 
     and Mussolini) or opened the door for them (Chavez).
       The abdication of political responsibility by existing 
     leaders often marks a nation's first step toward 
     authoritarianism. Years after Chavez's presidential victory, 
     Rafael Caldera explained his mistakes simply: ``Nobody 
     thought that Mr. Chavez had even the remotest chance of 
     becoming president.'' And merely a day after Hitler became 
     chancellor, a prominent conservative who aided him admitted, 
     ``I have just committed the greatest stupidity of my life; I 
     have allied myself with the greatest demagogue in world 
     history.''
       Not all democracies have fallen into this trap. Some--
     including Belgium, Britain, Costa Rica, and Finland--have 
     faced challenges from demagogues but also have managed to 
     keep them out of power. How have they done it? It is tempting 
     to think this survival is rooted in the collective wisdom of 
     voters. Maybe Belgians and Costa Ricans were simply more 
     democratic than their counterparts in Germany or Italy. After 
     all, we like to believe that the fate of a government lies in 
     the hands of its citizens. If the people hold democratic 
     values, democracy will be safe. If citizens are open to 
     authoritarian appeals, then, sooner or later, democracy will 
     be in trouble.
       [But] this view is wrong. It assumes too much of 
     democracy--that ``the people'' can shape at will the kind of 
     government they possess. It's hard to find any evidence of 
     majority support for authoritarianism in 1920s Germany and 
     Italy. Before the Nazis and Fascists seized power, less than 
     2 percent of the population were party members, and neither 
     party achieved anything close to a majority of the vote in 
     free and fair elections. Rather, solid electoral majorities 
     opposed Hitler and Mussolini--before both men achieved power 
     with the support of political insiders blind to the danger of 
     their own ambitions.
       Hugo Chavez was elected by a majority of voters, but there 
     is little evidence that Venezuelans were looking for a 
     strongman. At the time, public support for democracy was 
     higher there than in Chile--a country that was, and remains, 
     stably democratic. According to the 1998 Latinobarometro 
     survey, 60 percent of Venezuelans agreed with the statement 
     ``Democracy is always the best form of government,'' while 
     only 25 percent agreed that ``under some circumstances, an 
     authoritarian government can be preferable to a democratic 
     one.'' By contrast, only 53 percent of respondents in Chile 
     agreed that ``democracy is always the best form of 
     government.''
       Potential demagogues exist in all democracies, and 
     occasionally, one or more of them strike a public chord. But 
     in some democracies, political leaders heed the warning signs 
     and take steps to ensure that authoritarians remain on the 
     fringes, far from the centers of power. When faced with the 
     rise of extremists or demagogues, they make a concerted 
     effort to isolate and defeat them. Although mass responses to 
     extremist appeals matter, what matters more is whether 
     political elites, and especially parties, serve as filters. 
     Put simply, political parties are democracy's gatekeepers.
       If authoritarians are to be kept out, they first have to be 
     identified. There is, alas, no foolproof advance warning 
     system. Many authoritarians can be easily recognized before 
     they come to power. They have a clear track record: Hitler 
     led a failed putsch; Chavez led a failed military uprising; 
     Mussolini's Blackshirts engaged in paramilitary violence; and 
     in Argentina in the mid-Twentieth century, Juan Peron helped 
     lead a successful coup two and a half years before running 
     for president.
       But politicians do not always reveal the full scale of 
     their authoritarianism before reaching power. Some adhere to 
     democratic norms early in their careers, only to abandon them 
     later. Consider Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban. Orban 
     and his Fidesz party began as liberal democrats in the late 
     1980s, and in his first stint as prime minister between 1998 
     and 2002, Orban governed democratically. His autocratic 
     about-face after returning to power was a genuine surprise in 
     2010.
       So how do we identify authoritarianism and politicians who 
     don't have an obvious antidemocratic record? Here we turn to 
     the eminent political scientist Juan Linz. Born in Weimar 
     Germany and raised amid Spain's civil war, Linz knew all too 
     well the perils of losing a democracy. As a professor at 
     Yale, he devoted much of his career to trying to understand 
     how and why democracies die. Many of Linz's conclusions can 
     be found in a small but seminal book called ``The Breakdown 
     of Democratic Regimes.'' Published in 1978, the book 
     highlights the role of politicians, showing how their 
     behavior can either reinforce democracy or put it at risk. He 
     also proposed, but never fully developed, a ``litmus test'' 
     for identifying antidemocratic politicians.
       Building on Linz's work, we have developed a set of four 
     behavioral warning signs that can help us know an 
     authoritarian when we see one. We should worry when a 
     politician: 1) rejects, in words or action, the democratic 
     rules of the game, 2) denies the legitimacy of opponents, 3) 
     tolerates or encourages violence, or 4) indicates a 
     willingness to curtail the civil liberties of opponents, 
     including the media.

  They then put a table in the book to assess politicians in terms of 
these four factors.

       A politician who meets even one of these criteria is cause 
     for concern. What kinds of candidates tend to test positive 
     on a litmus test for authoritarianism? Very often, populist 
     outsiders do. Populists are antiestablishment politicians--
     figures who, claiming to represent the voice of ``the 
     people,'' wage war on what they depict as a corrupt and 
     conspiratorial elite. Populists tend to deny the legitimacy 
     of established parties, attacking them as undemocratic and 
     even unpatriotic. They tell voters that the existing system 
     is not really a democracy but instead has been hijacked, 
     corrupted, or rigged by the elite. And they promise to bury 
     that elite and return power to ``the people.'' This discourse 
     should be taken seriously. When populists win elections, they 
     often assault democratic institutions. In Latin America, for 
     example, of all fifteen presidents elected in Bolivia, 
     Ecuador, Peru, and Venezuela between 1990 and 2012, five were 
     populist outsiders: Alberto Fujimori, Hugo Chavez, Evo 
     Morales, Lucio Gutierrez, and Rafael Correa. All five ended 
     up weakening democratic institutions.

  So these four factors really are something for us to pay significant 
attention to. Does an individual reject democratic rules of the game? 
Do they express a willingness to violate the Constitution? Do they 
suggest a need for antidemocratic measures such as canceling elections 
or banning certain organizations or restricting civil rights? Do they 
seek to use extraconstitutional means to change the government? Do they 
attempt to undermine the legitimacy of elections, for example, by 
refusing to accept credible electoral results?
  I think it goes without needing to point it out that our President 
rejected credible electoral results. And I was sitting in this Chamber 
when the mob he directed to attack and disrupt the counting of 
electoral ballots filled these hallways, when multiple police officers 
were attacked and injured.
  It was stunning to sit here in our democracy and see our Capitol 
Police running to lock these doors to protect us; stunning to have them 
first tell us, quickly leave the Chamber, and then quickly say ``Don't 
leave the Chamber'' while they organized an escape route.
  I remember that sitting down here in front were the boxes, these 
beautiful wooden boxes containing the electoral ballots from all across 
the Nation; these boxes which were the absolute symbol of democratic 
governments, the heart, the pulsating heart of our democracy.
  Eventually, the officers said: Ready. We want you to leave. Leave 
quickly by this door in front of me and to the left. As they guided us 
out, one of the members of the Parliamentarian team said: We need to 
grab the ballot boxes. And thank goodness they did because I

[[Page S7596]]

have no doubt that mob would have burned or destroyed those boxes of 
ballots that contained the decision of our States across this country.
  The folks who rampaged through the hallways here were calling for the 
death of the Vice President. They certainly were determined to block 
the counting of ballots to interrupt the peaceful transfer of power.
  What is extraordinary is that since our election of George 
Washington, each President in turn has facilitated the smooth 
transition to the next President. It may not have been somebody they 
agreed with. It may not have been somebody they liked. It may have been 
somebody from the far side of the political spectrum. Yet they 
facilitated that peaceful transfer--until Donald Trump sent a mob to 
Capitol Hill to stop the counting of the ballots.
  So when the authors of this book laid out how various folks had 
undermined democracy in elected office and had previously been engaged 
in some sort of action to try to disrupt the function of the democracy, 
there is a parallel here that should not be ignored.
  The second warning feature is denying the legitimacy of political 
opponents.

       Do they describe their rivals as subversive, or opposed to 
     the existing constitutional order?
       Do they claim that their rivals constitute a . . . threat 
     to national security?
       Do they baselessly describe their partisan rivals as 
     criminals, whose supposed violation of the law (or potential 
     to do so) disqualifies them from full participation in the 
     political arena?
       Do they baselessly suggest that their rivals are foreign 
     agents, in that they are secretly working in alliance with . 
     . . a foreign government?

  We have right now a President who has an enemies list. Well, Nixon 
had an enemies list, but he didn't operationalize the powers of the 
executive branch to go after them the way President Trump is doing 
right now.

  The third warning sign is related to toleration or encouragement of 
violence.

       Do they have any ties to . . . militias, guerrillas, or 
     other organizations that engage in illicit violence?
       Have they or their partisan allies sponsored or encouraged 
     mob attacks on opponents?
       Have they tacitly endorsed violence by their supporters by 
     refusing to unambiguously condemn it and punish it?
       Have they praised (or refused to condemn) other significant 
     acts of political violence, either in the past or elsewhere 
     in the world?

  Well, certainly we see in President Trump that he did encourage a 
gang to come--or a mob--to attack Capitol Hill. There was no 
condemnation of it, and as punishment, he issued pardons for the people 
who attacked Capitol Hill to stop the peaceful transfer of power.
  The fourth is readiness to curtail civil liberties, including the 
liberties of opponents and the media.

       Have they supported laws or policies that restrict civil 
     liberties, such as expanded libel or defamation laws, or laws 
     restricting protest, criticism of the government, or certain 
     civic or political organizations?
       Have they threatened to take legal or other punitive action 
     against critics in rival parties, civil society, or the 
     media?
       Have they praised repressive measures taken by other 
     governments, either in the past or elsewhere in the world?

  (Mr. HUSTED assumed the Chair.)
  Certainly, there again we hear the resonance of President Trump--a 
man who has constantly praised dictators around the world and has seen 
them as the individuals that he respects and admires, and we have 
certainly seen him taking legal action against those he disagrees with, 
against our networks, against our universities, against our law firms.
  So these are four tests that in 2018 these scholars laid out. These 
are the early warning signs of authoritarian power, and we see that 
each and every one of them reverberates at this moment.
  So that is why tonight I have come to ring the alarm bells--to ring 
the alarm bells that our democracy is in deep trouble. We have an 
authoritarian President, we have a rubberstamp Congress, and we have a 
Supreme Court handing the Executive more power--the three major 
elements that wipe out the separation of powers and the checks and 
balances of the Constitution.
  We have in President Trump an individual that has conducted himself 
in a manner that rings each one of the alarm bells that these scholars 
indicate are signs of an authoritarian personality.
  Their book goes on:

       Keeping authoritarian politicians out of power is more 
     easily said than done. Democracies, after all, are not 
     supposed to ban parties or prohibit candidates from standing 
     for election--and we do not advocate such measures. The 
     responsibility for filtering out authoritarians lies, rather, 
     with political parties and party leaders: democracy's 
     gatekeepers.
       Successful gatekeeping requires that mainstream parties 
     isolate and defeat extremist forces, a behavior political 
     scientist Nancy Bermeo calls ``distancing.'' Prodemocratic 
     parties may engage in distancing in several ways. First, they 
     can keep would-be authoritarians off party ballots at 
     election time. This requires that they resist the temptation 
     to nominate these extremists for higher office even when they 
     can potentially deliver votes.
       Second, parties can root out extremists in the grass roots 
     of their own ranks.
       Third, prodemocratic parties can avoid all alliances with 
     antidemocratic parties.
       Fourth, prodemocratic parties can act to systematically 
     isolate, rather than legitimize, extremists.
       Finally, whenever extremists emerge as serious electoral 
     contenders, mainstream parties must forge a united front to 
     defeat them. To quote Linz, they must be willing to ``join 
     with opponents ideologically distant but committed to the 
     survival of the democratic political order.'' In normal 
     circumstances, this is almost unimaginable.
       Each party's followers would be infuriated at this seeming 
     betrayal of principles. But in extraordinary times, 
     courageous party leadership means putting democracy and 
     country before party and articulating to voters what is at 
     stake. When a party or politician that tests positive on our 
     litmus test emerges . . . there is little alternative. United 
     Democratic fronts can prevent extremists from winning power, 
     which can mean saving a democracy.

  So the book goes on to lay out a number of cases around the world in 
which parties teamed up with each other when they saw the threat of an 
extremist who exhibited authoritarian tendencies. They worked together 
to save their democratic republic.
  That has not happened here, and that should concern us all because 
when that fails--parties don't come together to stop an authoritarian 
extremist--that authoritarian starts to expand the power around the 
Presidency, starts to attack the liberties of the country--the freedom 
of the press, the freedom of assembly--starts to militarize and 
weaponize the Department of Justice against enemies, plots to justify 
sending the military out during peacetime to attack peaceful 
protesters--this is what happens when one fails to proceed to work 
together to stop a political extremist, and that extremist ends up in 
power.
  The mastermind behind Trump's 100 days of chaos and lawbreaking is 
Russ Vought. He is Director of the Office of Management and Budget. He 
directed that office at the end of Trump's first term. In the 
intervening 4 years, he was the architect of Project 2025, and now he 
leads OMB again.
  I interviewed him in my office before his nomination hearing, and he 
was very clear with me about his viewpoint in which he says the 
President has complete power over every element of the executive 
branch--unitary executive theory. The President, he believes, can 
ignore all the laws passed by Congress and, perhaps, orders of the 
court that constrain how the President manages the executive branch.
  Vought anticipates that when Trump's lawbreaking reaches the Supreme 
Court, a deferential court will legitimize the unitary executive theory 
and hand Trump more power--and, so far, this year he has been right.
  I called Mr. Vought, as the chief engineer of Trump's authoritarian 
campaign, the most dangerous man in America. I led a 30-hour Senate 
debate on his nomination to put a spotlight on him and his dangerous 
ideas, but he was confirmed to the position of OMB where he has become 
the conductor of the Trumpian authoritarian train, lining up policy 
after policy after policy to be signed by the President in Executive 
order after Executive order after Executive order. He has proven 
extremely effective in this undertaking: several hundred Executive 
orders prepared and signed; multiple attacks on our fundamental 
freedoms, carefully coordinated; attacks on the freedom of the press; 
trying to tell networks what errors they can have, even what comedians 
can perform; attacks, certainly, on our newspapers, on our 
universities, on our law firms.

[[Page S7597]]

  Nowhere has his efforts been more effective, however, than in 
stealing the congressional power of the purse. Article 1 of our beloved 
``we the people'' Constitution says: Congress will decide what programs 
should be funded and how much.
  Now, that law has to be signed by the President, but once signed, it 
is the law. Drafted by Congress, passed by the House, passed by the 
Senate, signed by the President--it is the law.
  But Mr. Vought thinks not. He felt these laws regarding what programs 
should be funded are simply suggestions. Every time you hear the 
President say or a member of his Cabinet say or Mr. Vought say: We shut 
down a program because it is not in line with the President's 
priorities, what you are hearing is the articulation of the President 
making the decisions about what programs are funded and at what level--
a direct violation of the Constitution, the power of the purse.
  This strategy is illegal. It is unconstitutional, and the Supreme 
Court has said so twice. In 1975, the Supreme Court ruled that the 
Nixon administration could not ignore Congress's power of the purse 
through impoundments.
  Now, the ruling was in 1975. Nixon was already out of power because 
of Watergate, but it stemmed from the Nixon administration's actions to 
say: Oh, Congress approved these funds for programs I don't like, so I 
am just not going to forward the funds to the Departments and kill the 
programs.
  And the Supreme Court robustly said: Hell no. You can't do that. That 
is unconstitutional. That violates the separation of power. That 
violates our Constitution.
  In 1998, the Supreme Court ruled that Congress could not give away or 
delegate its power of the purse to the President through a line-item 
veto. This was a very popular idea at the time. When the Gingrich 
election occurred--and I say ``Gingrich'' election. He really put 
forward a whole new strategy for the Republican Members of the House. 
He said: For too long, we have simply worked to make laws better and 
include more of our elements. But that simply results in laws passing 
and the majority, Democrats, taking credit for them. We would do far 
better to oppose them in every way we can and then argue to the 
American people they have failed to govern well so elect us.

  In addition, he laid out a series of reforms, Contract With America, 
and in so doing, he really touched a strong vein of enthusiasm across 
the land. And so the House, for the first time in, I think, four 
decades, became a Republican majority, and certainly it was a 
Republican majority here in the Senate. And so in that time period 
between January 1995 and January 1997, stemming from the November 1994 
election, there were a number of strategies that they wanted to 
implement, some of them straight off of their Contract with America.
  And one of those was to do a constitutional amendment that would 
create a balanced budget, and they needed no extra votes in the House. 
They passed it easily. Again, they had the supermajority, the two-
thirds supermajority needed.
  A constitutional amendment has to pass both Chambers, and then it has 
to be ratified by three quarters of the States.
  And then it ran into trouble over here in the Senate. They had 66 
votes but not 67 votes, and they needed 67. And the one Republican who 
held out was Senator Mark Hatfield. And Senator Mark Hatfield said: You 
know, here is the story. Every single year we decide what the deficit 
is by the combination of the laws we pass for revenue and the laws we 
pass for programs to fund programs.
  And Hatfield was chair of the Appropriations Committee, the spending 
committee. And so, with this in mind, that every year Congress decided 
how much deficit or debt there would be, well, Hatfield said: That is 
the right answer because sometimes we need to spend more because we 
have a national security challenge or war and sometimes we need to 
spend more because we are in a recession and other times we need to 
save more, but we decide this on a year-by-year basis.
  Anyway, that was one of the themes of the Gingrich revolution. And it 
did not make it through the Senate because it was one vote short, and 
so it never went out to the voters in their collective States.
  But a second idea on this agenda was a way we could control the 
budget is to let the President decide. We will simply take the 
Constitution, which says it falls on us, all of us, to proceed to 
decide, and we will simply delegate that to the President.
  Well, that is like creating a strongman state. Now you have the 
President not just executing the law but deciding what programs will be 
funded and at what level.
  And the Supreme Court said: Hell no. We have a Constitution. We have 
a democracy. And we do not vest both the creation of the laws and the 
execution of the laws in the same branch of government. Congress must 
decide and write the laws on how much is to go to what programs, and 
they cannot give away that power to the President. You would be 
creating an authoritarian state. You cannot do that. You took an oath 
to the office, an oath to the Constitution. The Constitution lays out a 
separation of powers, and you cannot delegate that away.
  That is why I called Vought the most dangerous man in America because 
he was in my office saying that is exactly what he intended to do was 
to take that power away from Congress and hand it to the President, and 
I must say I complimented him on his honesty that that was his 
intention. He wasn't disguising it one bit. It was his life philosophy 
or his philosophy of his life about our government. It was what he had 
written into the architecture of Project 2025, a vastly stronger 
authoritarian Presidency, and he was telling me, in my office, before 
his hearing on the Budget Committee, that that was exactly what he 
intended to execute and that he would be backed up by the Supreme 
Court.
  So Trump, once in office, did impound funds. He did shut down 
programs that were funded by law without authority to do so. Some of 
them were ones that--electric charging stations across America, 
programs for sanctuary cities, immigration lawyers who represent 
unaccompanied children. But the most notorious impoundment was the 
weekend attack on the U.S. Agency For International Development.
  On February 3, Elon Musk posted on X that he and DOGE had spent the 
weekend feeding USAID into the woodchipper.
  That is a pretty stunning moment. The program authorized by law, 
funded by Congress, in a law signed by a President, shut down over a 
weekend--no consultation with Congress, no hearings, no consultation 
with the countries where these programs operated, no consultation with 
other governments that provide help to see if they would step in. No. 
Just shut it down over a weekend.
  Our Secretary of State was in a hearing before the Senate, and I 
asked him how much Elon Musk--who bragged about feeding the program to 
the woodchipper--how much he had consulted the Secretary of State. And 
I expected what he was going to say was there wasn't much consultation. 
Elon Musk was head of DOGE. Elon Musk acted. The President had 
confidence in him and, in a weekend, the programs were shut down.
  Instead he said: No, no, no. I, the Secretary of State, was very 
involved. He was in a hotel room over a weekend. I believe he said he 
was in Guatemala. And he proceeded to cancel hundreds of contracts. So, 
apparently, there was pretty close coordination between Elon Musk and 
DOGE and the Secretary of State in feeding these programs into the 
woodchipper--programs authorized and funded under the law.

  How does that differ from a line-item veto? The President says, ``I 
don't like this program; shut it down,'' or delegates that power to 
Elon Musk and the Secretary of State: I don't like this program; shut 
it down.
  How does that possibly fit with the Supreme Court decisions that say 
the power of the purse rests with Congress?
  And when it is in law, a President cannot impound the funds. You have 
to execute the law the way it is written.
  But impound, they did, and in this case, it was horrifically 
destructive. Innocent people around the world died because those 
programs were shut down overnight. These programs were programs for 
tuberculosis, for malaria, for HIV/AIDS. Those are the three worst 
pandemics in the world and do the most destruction.

[[Page S7598]]

  And they were programs for nutrition. Without nutrition, people are 
in trouble.
  There is a tracker that has been set up by experts in international 
economic development to try to understand how many programs were shut 
down and how they affected the folks who benefited from those programs. 
Their estimate, as of June 26--so going back several months--was that 
in shutting down that program in the woodchipper overnight, 30,000 
children died of malaria; 72,000 children died of diarrhea--diarrhea is 
often the consequence in poor countries of not having access to clean 
water--88,000 children died from malnutrition; 94,000 children died 
from pneumonia. One study published on July 19 in the Lancet, a 
prestigious peer review medical journal, estimates that, as a result of 
USAID being fed to the woodchipper, 14 million people could die by 
2030, including 4.5 million children under the age of 5.
  I was also struck, in reading this analysis, that it noted that it 
isn't just children who die. It is adults. When the adults die, there 
are orphans. And it had a massive estimate of the number of orphans 
that had been created by this weekend shutdown of feeding USAID into 
the woodchipper.
  Maybe these analyses are overstated. Maybe local folks found ways to 
sub in for the sudden shutdown more effectively than the academics who 
study this believe--maybe. Maybe other nations geared up faster to 
replace the shutdown than was anticipated. But even if you take these 
results put together by experts of international programs and cut them 
in half, massive numbers of people were killed across the country 
because the Secretary of State and an appointed head of DOGE, Elon 
Musk, decided to shut this program down, contrary to law.
  That is not supposed to happen in a democracy. In a democracy, the 
President would say: I don't love how much money we are spending on 
international programs for public health, for malaria, for 
tuberculosis, for HIV/AIDS, for nutrition, for maternity care. And so 
here is my budget, and I want the majorities in both Chambers to 
proceed to eliminate some of those programs and decrease them.
  Then you would have thoughtful hearings here on how to go about that 
effort and do so in a manner that was responsible. Some folks would 
have come and testified and said: Here are the consequences of cutting 
down programs X, Y, and Z. Do you really want to do that or do you want 
to work out a plan to transfer those responsibilities to our European 
partners who might pick up those responsibilities, or to empower some 
of the local governments where those programs operate to be able to 
pick up some of those programs? But don't shut them down. We wouldn't 
shut them down overnight because, one, that would break the law, and, 
two, massive number of people die.
  But they did shut them down overnight, and a massive number of people 
have died.
  One of the things that Trump and Vought shut down was the Consumer 
Financial Protection Bureau, whose mission, of course, is to save our 
Americans from all kinds of financial scams.
  Nobody likes to be scammed. Nobody likes to be ripped off.
  Since it was created back in 2011, the Consumer Financial Protection 
Bureau, or CFPB for short, has returned $21 billion in checks back to 
American citizens--$21 billion. That is a significant sum, even in a 
world where maybe millions don't seem as large as they used to. But 
billions still seems pretty substantial.
  I mean, $21 billion?
  Trump just said he wants to send a massive $20 billion to $40 billion 
check to Argentina of our taxpayer money to help rescue a financially 
rightwing government--bail them out.
  I think $20 billion is a lot that got returned.
  Here is the thing. Because those scams were shut down, that $20 
billion probably only represents a small fraction of the money saved by 
American consumers--a small fraction. So, hallelujah, we have an anti-
scam agency helping Americans not get ripped off by clever or illegal 
tactics. And they have even recovered money from those companies that 
exercise those and sent checks--$21 billion of checks--to the American 
consumer.
  Elizabeth Warren was not in the Senate when this was passed, but it 
was her idea. She came here to Capitol Hill, and she went from office 
to office saying: Hey, we have a consumer protection group for 
appliances. We don't want toasters burning down the house. But 
shouldn't we have a way to stop scams that burn down people's finances?
  I said to her: I am on the Banking Committee--I was put on the 
Banking Committee to lead the charge to shut down predatory mortgages--
and I think it is a great idea you are suggesting, and I will do 
everything I can to help get it passed.
  I did, and so did others.
  So that was a citizen, not elected, coming here and saying: Here is a 
great idea. Let's get an anti-scam agency.
  Who likes to be scammed? Almost everybody I know can tell a story of 
a family member being scammed or almost scammed.
  I was very struck by a story my mother told me. She is no longer with 
us. She was very embarrassed about this story, as many people are when 
they have been scammed or almost scammed.
  She got a phone call. On the phone was a person representing 
themselves as a border agent at the border between Canada and the 
United States. The border agent said: Your grandson has been arrested 
at the border for trying to bring cannabis into the United States, and 
that is a huge crime, and we caught him red-handed. We have two 
options, which is why we are giving you a call. One option is he can 
pay a fine and be released today, if someone wires the fine money to 
us. The second option is he can go to prison here, get a court hearing 
several months down the road, and then possibly go to prison with a 
conviction.
  So, of course, my mother inquired: Well, what is the amount of money 
required?
  And the answer was $5,000 to pay the penalty for this attempted 
smuggler.
  Then they put the grandson on the phone, except it was not the 
grandson, but it was someone pretending to be the grandson. Because of 
the internet, you can learn factors about how old people are and that 
sort of thing and where they have gone to school.
  So he is sobbing on the phone: Grandmother, do not tell my parents. 
Please do not tell my parents. I can't believe I did this terrible, 
stupid thing. If you can help me out, it just would mean so much.
  My mother, wanting to help her grandson, said yes. She went down to 
the bank, and she sent a $5,000 wire to the place that it was supposed 
to be sent to, and she came home, and she started to feel like: Is this 
really right? Was my grandson actually in Canada?
  As she started to feel that--she started to have this dreaded feeling 
of--``I have been scammed.'' She called up my brother-in-law and said: 
So why did the grandson decide to go traveling in Canada?
  He said: He is not in Canada. He is right here. He is right here.
  So my mother went back down to the bank and actually was able to 
cancel the wire just in the nick of time. I suppose they were not on 
their toes. Wherever the money went to, they didn't grab it in time. 
Maybe it was nighttime at the bank, wherever in the world the money 
went to. So she did not lose her $5,000, a significant sum for any 
ordinary American.
  Almost everyone has a story of someone in their family who has nearly 
succumbed to a scam. I will tell you about one I almost succumbed to.
  I got a message--I believe it was a text message; maybe it was an 
email--and it said: We have detected illegal downloads of songs off 
this website and done by a person in your family.
  I am like: Oh, my goodness, are you kidding me?
  The message said: If you pay for the songs, no charges will be 
filed--a $25 fee.
  I thought: I can't reach my children right now. I can't really 
believe one of them would do this, but I know it is not uncommon for 
kids to download songs off the internet. Maybe this happened. I 
certainly don't want charges to be filed.
  It said: Go to a website and you fill it in, and you pay your $25, 
and it is all over.
  I went to the website, and when I saw ``Fill in your credit card,'' 
the light

[[Page S7599]]

went off in my head. I went: Oh, this is a scam. They want my credit 
card number. They don't want the $25. They want my credit card number.
  Think of all the things, all the expenses, they can run up on my 
credit card once they have my credit card number. They will have the 
expiration date. They will have the three-digit code from the back of 
it. I go: Oh, my goodness, I can't believe I almost fell for that scam.
  I suspect most Members of the Senate have someone in their family who 
almost fell for a scam.
  Here, someone set up this Agency to stop illegal practices, unethical 
practices that rip people off. It returned $21 billion, and it has 
probably saved Americans because it shut down these practices--these 
scam practices. It probably saved them hundreds of billions of dollars. 
That is a significant deal. That is as important as having a toaster 
that doesn't burn down your house--maybe not quite burn down your 
house.
  And just as important as consumer appliance protection is financial 
protection.
  So what happened with CBO?
  I am going to just note that, essentially, the Trump administration 
shut it down. That is what happened to it.
  There is an article in Bloomberg about how this agenda has been 
shaped not by President Trump, not by Elon Musk, but by the architect--
or an architect--of Project 2025. Let's see what this article has to 
say.

       Cat Farman realized in January that her job might be at 
     serious risk. It was the night she learned that a small group 
     of engineers close to Elon Musk had forced their way into the 
     headquarters of the U.S. Agency for International 
     Development. In the days that followed, they would gain 
     access to sensitive employee records and bar staff from the 
     building. The legality of all this was questionable--USAID 
     exists because of an act of Congress, meaning it can only be 
     dissolved in the same way--but that didn't deter Musk from 
     declaring victory. ``We spent the weekend feeding USAID into 
     the woodchipper,'' he posted on X on February 3.
       Farman works for a different government agency, the 
     Consumer Financial Protection Bureau [CFPB], but she 
     understood that the USAID news suggested that [the CFPB] 
     might be next. The CFPB, like USAID, is [somewhat] obscure, 
     with a do-gooder mission that conservatives, including Musk, 
     have derided as wasteful and excessively woke. ``I could see 
     we were vulnerable in the same way USAID was,'' said Farman, 
     who's president of the CFPB's union.
       [I]t became clear to Farman that her adversary wasn't Musk, 
     or any engineers who might have doused themselves with Axe's 
     unique eau de middle school. She was really up against 
     Russell Vought, the Trump loyalist who'd just been named 
     director of the Office of Management and Budget . . . as well 
     as acting director of the CFPB. Farman hadn't heard of Vought 
     before he became CFPB director, which is pretty much how 
     Vought likes it. A self-described ``boring budget guy,'' he's 
     best known for coauthoring the 900-page policy playbook of 
     the Heritage Foundation's Project 2025, which has become 
     something of a bible for Trump's second term. Vought's think 
     tank, the Center for Renewing America, has produced numerous 
     policy papers that advocate for such Trump fixations as the 
     annexation of Greenland (``a prudent aim,'' according to a 
     CRA paper)--

  The CRA is the Center for Renewing America--

     and enacting broad tariffs (``just as sometimes a nation must 
     go to war with guns and bombs, so sometimes are trade wars 
     necessary'') among others. At the center of Vought's ideology 
     is the unitary executive theory, which critics say amounts to 
     an argument that Trump should have wide latitude to do 
     whatever he wants--

  In other words, the strongman state, the authoritarian.

       ``Vought's unique combination of loyalty and knowledge of 
     how the government actually works makes him, perhaps, the 
     most powerful person in Washington not named Donald Trump. If 
     you see a Republican politician or a member of the Trump 
     administration talking about the deep state or the regime, 
     there is an almost 100-percent chance they know his work. 
     Nobody in DC has a better grip on the numbers and the 
     management process of the federal government than Russ 
     Vought,'' says Steve Bannon, Trump's former chief strategist.
       ``Vought's one of the critical architects of the Trump 
     restructuring of the U.S. Government.''

  This includes Musk, who has been in regular contact with Vought from 
the start of the Federal transition and is seen by Vought allies as the 
public-facing arm of his agenda. The example of the CFPB showed how 
this tag team has been working. Musk took the credit for the shutdown, 
and his DOGE team attracted attention from union members. It was Vought 
in the shutdown--we are talking about the shutdown of the CFPB. It is 
Vought who quietly did the actual work.
  On February 8--his first full day as the CFPB's interim Director, 
because then Vought was also assigned to be the Director of the CFPB--
Vought sent an email ordering employees to stop whatever they were 
doing and informed the Federal Reserve that the CFPB wouldn't take any 
further funding for the year.
  In the days that followed, he closed the office, canceled the 
Agency's contracts, axed more than 200 employees, and began 
preparations for far wider layoffs. ``He wasn't trying to make it more 
efficient,'' Farman says. ``They were trying to illegally fire 
everybody.''
  The article notes that the Trump administration disputes that.
  Like many committed civil servants, Farman is an idealist who regards 
her Agency's work--protecting consumers against financial scams, big 
and small--as both apolitical and righteous. Vought seems to believe 
the opposite. He says, ``We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically 
affected''--he said in a speech last year. ``When they wake up in the 
morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are 
increasingly seen as villains.''
  This was Farman's introduction to her new boss, Russ Vought, at the 
CFPB. She watched a video recording of that speech--first published by 
ProPublica--the weekend Vought took charge. ``Having that sentiment out 
in the open, I almost felt better,'' she says. ``If he wants to''--and 
I will substitute the word with ``mess.'' ``He wants to [mess] with us 
to get us to quit.'' Instead, Farman's union sued, arguing Vought's 
actions amounted to a stealth attempt to illegally dismantle the CFPB 
without congressional approval.
  Vought approached his tenure at the OMB--first as Deputy Director and 
later as Director--with the zeal of an activist. ``The left has 
innovated over 100 years to create this fourth branch'' of government, 
he told rightwing talk show host Tucker Carlson, in a late 2024 
interview, in recalling his work during the first Trump administration.
  ``You and I might call it the regime--this administrative state that 
is unaccountable to the President.'' The notion of a secret regime 
controlled what Vought described as an unholy alliance of lobbyists, 
Members of Congress, media, and intelligence Agencies, and it became 
popular among members of the far right as a way to explain Trump's 
ineffectiveness during his first term. As Vought saw it, the main job 
of OMB was to tame the bureaucracy, to bring them to heel, and to do 
what the President was telling them to do.
  ``Perhaps by design, many of the Budget office's career staffers felt 
like they had stepped into `The Twilight Zone.' OMB is an unusual part 
of the White House in that the career people really believe themselves 
to be loyal to the civil service; that they are there to serve whoever 
is in the administration; but that their highest loyalty is to good 
process,'' said Sharon Block, who worked at the OMB under Biden and is 
a Harvard Law School professor. ``But they would never say we shouldn't 
do something because it is bad policy. They would say we shouldn't do 
it because it is not going to work.''

  Vought's approach in the face of this resistance was to ignore it. 
``They were willing to flagrantly misread the law,'' says Kogan, the 
other former Biden appointee. ``That's what Trump's OMB was.''
  So here we have the dismantling of USAID, causing the deaths of 
hundreds of thousands of individuals and at least 100,000 children.
  We have the shutdown of the anti-scam Agency--which does what? It 
gives a green light for us to be scammed. I think I get a scam about 
every 4 days on my phone of some type, and I say to my team: Is this 
real? You know, I just got this text message, saying that I need to pay 
up on driving my car through the automatic highway charge system, and I 
didn't have an automatic device on my car. I am, like, you know, I did 
drive a couple months ago.
  And they are, like: No, no, no. Senator, it is a scam. We get them 
all the time--every one of us--wherever we have driven. Look at it very 
closely. Be

[[Page S7600]]

very careful. Do not put your credit card down. You will get the charge 
in the mail if it is legitimate and so forth.
  Why, against the law, shut down an Agency overnight and directly 
cause the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people--USAID?
  Why shut down the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which has 
helped millions of Americans get funding restored to them? And millions 
more of us will never know that we were spared a scam because they 
stopped it from happening in the first place.
  I don't understand how this is possibly good governance in any shape 
or form.
  After January 6, many senior administration officials either resigned 
or tried to put distance between themselves and Trump. Vought stayed at 
the White House until the very end and then immediately launched his 
own think tank dedicated to vigorously pushing back with the Center for 
Renewing America. Vought wrote in an essay for ``The Federalist'' in 
January 2021 that it would sustain what he called the counter assault 
by linking Trumpism with Christian values.
  In Project 2025, Vought suggested that the OMB should give political 
appointees control over how funding is apportioned at Federal Agencies. 
The apportionment process was intended to make sure Agencies don't 
spend money too fast or have it come back to Congress. Vought argued 
that it should be used to cut wasteful spending and ensure consistency 
with the President's agenda. Again, you hear those magic words: 
Essentially, we shut down programs that do not reflect the President's 
priorities or are not consistent with the President's agenda.
  It isn't the job of the President to cut programs that have already 
been authorized by law and funded by law. It is his job under the 
Constitution to execute those programs. Yes, it is to influence the 
next budget. It is the President's budget that starts the whole, entire 
process. The President can always veto a spending bill he doesn't like, 
and a President who has majorities of the same party in both Chambers 
exercises a huge influence on the next year. But shutting down a 
program in mid-stride that has been funded by law is a constitutional 
theft of the power of the purse. That is not just a violation of the 
law; it is a violation of the Constitution. And, in this case, stupid 
things were done--shutting down the USAID overnight. I say ``stupid.'' 
``Stupid'' doesn't begin to capture the enormity of the trauma 
inflicted by shutting down programs for HIV/AIDS and tuberculosis and 
malaria and nutrition and maternal care, overnight around the world.
  Few people have done so much damage and created so many deaths so 
quickly as the Secretary of State and Elon Musk by putting USAID in the 
woodchipper overnight. Every time now, when there is a scam that 
someone falls prey to, well, it might be a good chance that they can 
thank Russell Vought and Donald Trump, because they shut down the 
Agency that tried to provide protection and had to return so much 
money.
  I see that my colleague Senator Kim is here, and I yield to the 
Senator from New Jersey for a question.
  Mr. KIM. Thank you, Senator Merkley, for taking time out tonight to 
shine a very bright light on a very dark problem: actions by the Trump 
administration that put your rights and your freedoms at risk.
  You know, you are talking about USAID and how the Trump 
administration was putting it through the woodchipper. That is 
something that resonated with me as that was the place where I started 
my government service and my career--working at USAID and standing 
alongside public servants who were proud to be able to serve our 
country.
  I wanted to ask you these questions because I am hearing it from a 
lot of people in New Jersey who are alarmed by the actions that they 
see, whether going after our government and our public servants or what 
we are seeing in the streets across our country.
  I thought it might be good to talk through some of these questions, 
to dig in deeper and give the people watching at home a sense of what 
we mean when we see and say that Donald Trump is a threat to our 
democracy.
  Let's start with the simple but important question of who is the 
enemy or, more importantly, who does Donald Trump see as an enemy?
  In multiple speeches, it is very clear that Donald Trump sees many of 
his fellow Americans--your friends, your neighbors, you--as the enemy. 
He calls them ``the enemy within.'' It is an absurd thing. It is an 
insane thing. It is something you might just write off as rhetoric, but 
it is not. You know it is not because of something called NSPM-7. 
``NSPM'' means ``national security Presidential memorandum.'' This one 
is entitled ``Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political 
Violence.'' In short, what this allows the President to do is basically 
declare that anyone or any group who opposes the President's agenda can 
be declared a domestic terrorist organization.
  It directs multiple government Agencies--from the Department of 
Justice, to Treasury, to Homeland Security--to take broad, sweeping 
actions to disband and uproot basically any entity it decides they can 
label as opposing the President. Some of these entities are think tanks 
and advocacy groups.
  But that is just politics. That is civil discourse, and that is how 
we are supposed to communicate our differences, these groups that are 
standing up and speaking out against the President's policies. That is 
what we in this country should be allowed to do in raising our free 
speech.
  So, again, who are the enemies? To Donald Trump and this 
administration, they say it is you. So if you are the enemy, what about 
the entity that exists to confront and deter our enemies--the military? 
Which brings me to a second question: What is the military's role in 
confronting enemies? Let's start with what the military's role should 
be in protecting Americans.
  I have had the opportunity to work alongside our military during my 
career in national security, whether that was out in Afghanistan or at 
the Pentagon or at the White House. These are some of the best of us as 
Americans. They have chosen not just to serve but to put themselves in 
harm's way to protect our country and our way of life.
  But that is not what Donald Trump sees as the military. Look at the 
current deployment of the National Guard troops. What we see here in DC 
or in Chicago or in the Senator's home State of Oregon is our National 
Guard, our servicemembers, used as political props to produce TV 
content for President Trump. In all of these cases, the servicemembers 
were deployed against perceived Democratic areas to clearly punish his 
political enemies.
  So if this is a President who is going to try to get away with 
everything, that leaves us to a pretty scary question: What lengths 
will this President go to take actions against his declared enemies? 
The answer seems to be, incredibly great lengths.
  We see that right now to our south in the Caribbean. Before I dig in 
here, let's pause for a moment and make one thing clear. Drug 
traffickers and gangs driven through the drug trade are enemies. These 
are entities and people who do harm to Americans. The American people 
are not the enemies.
  Even when looking at how we address these threats from traffickers 
and gang members, there are laws that ensure that those efforts can't 
be turned against you. But that is exactly what we saw last month when 
a Black Hawk helicopter was used to transport and deploy Federal agents 
to Chicago.
  According to a report by the New York Times, agents, led by the U.S 
Border Patrol, pulled dozens of American citizens from their apartments 
in the middle of the night, pointing guns at sleeping men and women 
before zip-tying them and taking them outside. I never thought that I 
would see these actions here at home, and it terrifies not just me but 
so many people within my home State and I know around this country.
  If that is what Donald Trump wants--total power to target the 
government's greatest resources against his enemies--then that begs yet 
another question: What is the President's end goal? I think that is 
pretty clear. His end goal is your silence, your fealty, your 
submission, making you so afraid to stand up or speak out.
  So, Senator Merkley, thank you again for holding the floor tonight as 
a reminder that our democracy is under attack. It is a good reminder 
because

[[Page S7601]]

democracy isn't just your voice and your vote; it is your right to 
stand up and not be silenced, your right to have your rights not 
threatened or intimidated by the same military that is supposed to 
protect you.

  So as I was thinking about the words that you were saying but also 
this incredible act that you are taking tonight to be able to focus the 
American people's attention upon the challenges and threats that we 
face, I wanted to ask you a question--one that sums up the totality of 
what I was going through about just this meditation on the word 
``enemy'' being used against our fellow Americans.
  So I ask you, Senator, what must we do to restore our democracy in 
this moment? What can we do to give power back to the people? How can I 
try to assure my constituents--the people in New Jersey--that our 
democracy is not slipping away?
  Mr. MERKLEY. I so appreciate the question from my colleague from New 
Jersey and thank you for coming down here at this late hour to share in 
this discussion to help ring the alarm bells about the authoritarian 
takeover of our government.
  You have alluded to a particular facet of this, which is the 
President's use of the military. I am very struck about how President 
Trump is striving to set up and open the gates that will allow the use 
of the military domestically in a way we never really anticipated.
  Certainly, I want to emphasize that our Founders were terrified of 
having a standing military because they knew that authoritarian 
individuals would be tempted to use that against the people, so they 
did not want to have a standing army. It ended up that the threats were 
such, we ended up with standing military forces. But, still, there was 
a lot of sense that this is dangerous ground.
  I am going to ask my team to grab the quote for me that I had from 
one of our Founders on this topic earlier.
  Then, following Reconstruction, where troops had been used to restore 
civil rights in the Southern States to ensure that people could be 
registered to vote, could vote, and that the votes would be counted, 
that was essentially a precursor of laws that were designed to say the 
military should only be used domestically under very, very limited 
circumstances.
  One of those circumstances in title 10 is used if there is a 
rebellion or if there is an invasion. Well, those terms had pretty 
clear meanings at the time they were written, pretty limited meanings.
  We can picture what a potential invasion looks like--as a hostile 
armed force coming across our border from another nation; and we can 
picture what a rebellion looks like--generally considered to be a 
substantial, well-organized, well-armed operation designed to overthrow 
the government. It is a rebellion.
  Now, I think of how Shays' Rebellion may have met that in the early 
years of our Republic, when you had angry farmers whose property was 
being foreclosed on because they couldn't pay their bills, and there 
was economic crisis, and they were marching in front of the courthouse, 
shutting it down, and had intentions of gaining access to arms in an 
armory. Well, they were trying to overthrow at least the local 
government. But here is a President at this very moment trying to take 
that framework and misapply it across America.
  Of course, this is near and dear to my heart right now, as a Senator 
from Oregon, because I have seen it firsthand. We have an ICE facility 
in the South Waterfront of Portland. It is a rented building utilized 
by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. It is often used as a weigh 
station when people are arrested, before they are sent to a prison up 
in Washington State. At that point, they sometimes--are supposed to 
have access to lawyers.
  But Trump decided that he would send agents to Portland and try to 
provoke a riot in order to say: Look, now there is violence, and 
because of that violence, I can exercise more authoritarian power.
  Well, had there actually been a significant disturbance, you could 
still wrestle with whether that constituted a rebellion because you 
have a lot of disturbances and protests against specific things that 
are not a sizable group, organized, weaponized, trying to overthrow the 
government.
  But, in fact, it was incredibly peaceful in front of the ICE 
building. A few months earlier, there had been some protests and some 
confrontations, and there had been a couple of dozen arrests but 
nothing out of what the local police could handle and certainly nothing 
that led to that definition of a sizable, organized, weaponized group 
trying to overthrow the government.
  But in recent times, it had been very, very peaceful--so peaceful, in 
fact, that a group of Federal Protective Service agents came out and 
asked the crowd to move back roughly three blocks, and they did, 
without confrontation with the agent. The agent said ``Move back,'' and 
they did.
  Behind the line of agents, across the road, were videographers. The 
videographers were there for what happened subsequently, which is that 
after they had been moved back three blocks--and there was no 
interaction, no hostile actions, no fights--on command, the agents 
threw down flash-bangs. Flash-bangs sound like gunfire, and you see 
light going off. They threw down tear gas canisters, and the tear gas 
canisters had smoke billowing all over. They fired pepper balls.
  All of this, and then everybody is kind of--the protesters are all 
running. Well, the videographers are filming it because they want to 
get on film something that looks like a riot, as if to claim that the 
Federal agents were controlling or disrupting a riot.
  I never imagined that the U.S. Government would fake a riot in order 
to try to create evidence to convince a judge to allow the 
federalization of the Oregon National Guard or allow other federalized 
National Guard from other States to come to Portland. I still am just 
stunned by this.
  (Mr. McCORMICK assumed the Chair.)
  But there were other provocative acts. For example, a woman was 
standing, talking to two officers. I assume they were from Federal 
Protective Service because they were the main element deployed. There 
is no physical contact. There is no failure to follow instructions. 
There is nothing of that nature. A third Federal agent walks up, holds 
up pepper spray, and then just sprays her straight in the face. 
Everyone who sees it goes ``Ah,'' in shock, because, oh my goodness, 
how can a Federal agent just do a provocative act?
  Or you may have heard about the frog demonstration. Well, why did 
these inflatable frogs become featured? Well, in part, it is because of 
a video online where a Federal agent walks up to a frog and sprays 
pepper spray into the intake. These costumes have a little intake. I 
assume it inflates them and gives them form. And he sprays it inside, 
and then, of course, the person trapped inside is trapped in there with 
the pepper spray.
  And people have been responding with protests that I can only 
describe as joy and whimsy. I mean, we are talking about a couple 
coming down, rolling down a red carpet, and getting married in front of 
the ICE facility. We are talking about the bagpiper on a unicycle--he 
is called the Unipiper--long a feature of Portland demonstrations, 
coming down and playing bagpipes for everyone. We are talking about 
people bringing down their puppy dogs and having signs that say ``Keep 
your paws off Portland'' or ``Puppy dogs for peace'' or so forth. We 
are talking about women coming down in the morning dressed in pajamas 
and doing a pajamas-and-pastries demonstration where they hand out 
pastries. I mean, joy and whimsy.
  And here are Trump's agents, confounded. So they occasionally attack 
the protesters to try to produce the riot, and the protesters have not 
been willing to engage in that because they understand what Trump is 
trying to do. He is trying to actually create violent interactions that 
he can then use to justify authoritarian control.
  So along comes this district court consideration because Trump 
proceeded to move to federalize the Oregon National Guard. And the 
State appealed and said: Wait. There is a standard in the law. There 
has to be either an invasion or there has to be a rebellion.
  And so they both presented their facts, and then the decision came 
out with the temporary--the judge came out, at the district court, with 
a temporary restraining order. And that temporary restraining order 
said that

[[Page S7602]]

the presentation from the government was ``untethered to the facts'' 
and went through kind of the history of the definition of a rebellion, 
the definition of an invasion. No such thing exists, and, no, you can't 
federalize a temporary restraining order, which was then appealed to 
the Ninth Circuit.
  The Ninth Circuit had a panel of three judges, and they did just come 
out, I think yesterday--I believe it was yesterday--with their 
decision. And those three judges ruled 2 to 1 that they were 
disagreeing with the district judge.
  And I thought that what they presented represents a very dangerous 
moment for America because one of the three judges said everything the 
district judge wrote was accurate, and the other two said: Well, the 
district judge considered the level of violence, but if the judge had 
looked back several months, there were a couple dozen arrests, and 
maybe that would have changed the calculation--looking back in time to 
a previous period. But even that was easily managed by the Portland 
police.
  They said: Second, normally, we would accept the definition that was 
based on what was the understanding of the word ``rebellion'' at the 
time the law was written, but we think a more flexible definition of 
``rebellion'' might be merited. And then, finally, really, the key part 
in this was these two of the three judges said: We just think more 
deference should be given to the administration's view of the 
situation. In other words, if the administration says that there is a 
rebellion, that is all that is needed because we should give high 
deference to the administration.
  Now, there is a related law called the Insurrection Act. It is not 
about federalizing a National Guard; it is about being able to send in 
military troops and, based on a different set of issues, using troops 
to protect civil rights, for example. And this law was invoked when, 
for example, protecting children's ability to go to school in the 
South--well and good--protecting civil rights.
  That law does have in the law a statement related to the deference to 
the President. But title 10, federalizing the National Guard--there is 
no such deference.
  If the judgment of our courts is that a President--no matter how 
detached from the facts, untethered to reality--says there is rebellion 
and can therefore send in troops against peaceful protesters, they have 
flung the door open to using the military not to protect the United 
States but to support an authoritarian President who wants to be able 
to bring forces to bear on Americans exercising their freedom of 
dissent.
  So that is an extraordinarily scary moment, and right now we are 
still in that moment because there are several developments that may 
yet occur. The first development is that there may be a larger panel in 
the Ninth Circuit. You have a small panel, but sometimes, when it is a 
very significant issue to the country--and this is a very significant 
issue in my mind, a huge issue--they put together what they call an en 
banc panel. In this case, the Ninth Circuit, it is the chief judge and 
11 other judges chosen at random. So 12 judges bring their collective 
experience and understanding to bear. That may happen; it may not. They 
have to decide. They have to hold a vote of the judges.
  And then you have, also, a related case in the Seventh Circuit 
involving Chicago. And in Chicago, IL, they went through the same 
process. Both the district and the circuit court found, like the 
district judge in Oregon, that there was not a case to be made under 
title 10, federalize troops, National Guard, or to allow other 
federalized National Guard in.
  That has now been appealed to the Supreme Court. And the Supreme 
Court has been doing these shadow docket decisions where, without a 
full hearing of the facts, they make a ruling based on where they think 
they might end up if they heard a full hearing of the facts. It has 
been used far more under the last couple of years than at any time 
before.
  And if the Supreme Court echoes the two judges from the Ninth Circuit 
and says: The law sets a standard, but you know what, the standard 
doesn't matter. It sets a standard. There has to be a rebellion. There 
has to be an invasion. The standard doesn't matter. As long as the 
President says there is a rebellion, there is a rebellion, and there is 
no longer then any control over the law against an authoritarian 
President.

  That is my fear of what is going to happen, and I am particularly 
fearful because we have seen this Court already hand enormous power to 
the President. One of those key decisions was Trump v. United States of 
America. And in that key decision, they were being asked the question: 
Is the President above the law?
  If the President commits a crime in the course of something that is 
documented as an act of the government, can the President be 
prosecuted?
  And the Court, I thought, would say, ``Well, of course he can be 
prosecuted,'' because our Founders were absolutely terrified of having 
a King who was above the law. And by the way, they were also terrified 
of having a Chief Executive who would use military forces against their 
own citizens, which brings me to James Madison's quote from the 
Constitutional Convention in 1787.
  He said:

       A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will 
     not long be safe companions to liberty.

  And what does he mean by that? He means that if you have an 
ambitious, authoritarian-style President--that is, the overgrown 
Executive--who has at his disposal a steady military force, liberty 
will soon be a victim--because that is what they had witnessed, the 
Founders had witnessed--in the kingships of England time and time 
again. A King can use the military against his own citizens at his 
whim.
  And that is what we are in danger of right here in the United States 
of America, right now, with the decisions that are unfolding in real 
time.
  Mr. KIM. I thank the Senator for his answer. I thank you for what you 
are doing in standing up right now and shining a light on this in this 
incredibly dark time, especially as your own constituents are fearful 
about what comes next.
  I think now, more than ever, it is important for us to be honest with 
the American people about the true state of the fragility that reminds 
us that we cannot take this for granted. And I think your work right 
now, being able to draw that attention, is all-important.
  So, again, I am grateful for your time and continue to urge you to 
use your voice right now to speak out and continue to do so with 
strength.
  Mr. MERKLEY. I so appreciate my colleague from New Jersey coming down 
to share this conversation.
  In your original question, you posed the question: What must we do to 
restore our democracy in the moment?
  And the alarm bells that I am ringing are that the situation demands 
intense action. And in the book that I am reading to the Nation 
tonight, ``How Democracies Die''--and later sometime I hope to read 
this book tonight, too, ``On Tyranny''--it basically says there has to 
be a fierce reaction in the year that the authoritarian starts to 
dismantle the Constitution.
  Well, this is the year; that is, Trump may have had certain 
aspirations in his first term, but he also had Cabinet members that 
stopped him a lot of the time, including regarding the more use of the 
military in domestic affairs. But now those Cabinet members have been 
replaced by Cabinet members who can best be described as amateurs and 
loyalists, and they are not pushing back when the President seeks to 
roll over the top. They know that this Presidential train, this 
authoritarian train, is being directed by Russell Vought. Russell 
Vought's clear philosophy is laid out in Project 2025. The President 
says: Yes, this is the direction I want to go. And so everybody has to 
be a part of that effort or get out of the way.
  I must say, I was stunned--stunned--when the Secretary of Labor put 
what I think was described as a 60-foot banner on the side of the 
Department of Labor, as if we are North Korea, honoring--I don't know--
the dictator, if you will.
  So in the absence of a Cabinet to exercise restraint, we are seeing 
the aggressive strategy to suppress information through the media that 
the President doesn't like. He has had several

[[Page S7603]]

suits against different newspapers. In one of those suits, he is asking 
his own Justice Department to settle the suit and pay him, the 
President, the proceeds.
  But he is also using the power of the FCC to issue licenses and to 
oversee mergers, to suppress potential negative information coming from 
networks. He doesn't even--he wants to control what comedians say on 
evening TV.
  This is not the United States of America. This is a different world 
of authoritarian control. He wants to tell the universities how they 
can teach and what philosophies they have to present. And how does he 
do that? He says: You will lose your research funding. Well, research 
grants going to universities have been an enormous kind of gold star 
for America. I mean, the ability of our research universities to 
discover new information--and certainly we see this in all tech fields 
but also in medical fields--has been extraordinary. They are one of the 
really beautiful features of our country, what the research 
universities do.
  And to shut down millions and even billions of dollars of research 
money in order to try to compel universities to now teach what the 
government wants--that is not the United States of America; that is 
freedom being crushed, right now, in front of us--right this moment. 
And that is why it is important, as these students of how democracies 
die note, to have outrage this year.
  What they observe is that if there is not outrage, than a lot of 
citizens are like, well, this is really unusual because they are 
raising kids, they are going to work, they are engaged in their 
communities, but they aren't students of politics and maybe aren't 
following the Federal so much and aren't really sure exactly when the 
Constitution applies and exactly what the President means. If there is 
not outrage, maybe this is not so bad.
  So they make the point that that outrage does two things. One is that 
it alerts the citizens, it rings the alarm bell this that is not 
ordinary or right, that this is a violation of law, that this is a 
violation of the Constitution, that we are losing things we have 
treasured since childhood that we have heard about directly or 
indirectly regarding the rights and freedoms of us as Americans under 
our Constitution.
  We have been proud of them because they have survived some very 
difficult moments in our country. They survived the Great Depression. 
They survived Watergate. They survived World War II and World War I. 
They survived and often have thrived because of these freedoms. And we 
are pleased to live free--``live free or die,'' as the phrase went from 
our Founders.
  So that outrage we saw on Saturday when 7 million Americans took to 
the streets--and they took to the streets--well, out where I was, it 
was a beautiful day. It was actually a temperature that hit nearly 70 
degrees in Eastern Oregon. They could have been fishing, they could 
have been on that last hike, but they were out protesting because this 
was that important.
  I went to this town of La Pine, OR. It is rural and, voting-wise, 
quite conservative. Two hundred people were out on the streets, and 
they were also engaged in that, if you will, joyful and whimsical 
protest.
  So that is the first.
  The second is, my colleague, the next election. The next election 
matters because an authoritarian President starts rigging the election 
process, and if you don't have a huge pushback to authoritarian rule in 
the next election, the elections become so rigged that you get trapped 
in a strongman state, often for decades. So the next election will 
matter enormously.
  Already we see the President doing certain things--trying to do a 
national voter registration database to better manipulate who is 
registered to vote and who can vote, trying to do massive 
gerrymandering to change the balance of power in the House of 
Representatives, and attacking vote-by-mail because vote-by-mail can't 
be manipulated on election day like voters at precincts.
  So those are the two things we can do. Outrage now, ring the alarm 
bells, and prepare for the next election, and send a hopefully 
bipartisan--hopefully Democrats and Republicans voting for folks who 
push back on this authoritarian takeover.
  So I much appreciate my colleague from New Jersey coming to ask that 
question because isn't that the key question--what can we do to save 
our Republic?
  When people have been asking me this question in the townhalls, my 
response has been: Get off the couch. You can't save our Republic with 
a pillow over your head, hoping something will be better when you get 
up, as tempting as it might be.
  The second is to fiercely hold your electeds accountable. Share your 
opinion in your phone calls. Share your opinion through your emails. 
Share your opinion at their townhalls. Demonstrate outside their 
offices.
  I told folks: Demonstrate outside my office. Remind me that I haven't 
done enough. Make me think about what else I can do to ring the alarm 
bells.
  In fact, that question posed to me in townhalls of, Senator--or, 
actually, more a comment--Senator, you are doing a number of things we 
know, trying to inform people, to keep people who are unqualified from 
serving in the executive, to block and stop the big, ugly betrayal of a 
bill that is savaging our healthcare, but you have to do more. You have 
to find more to do. You have to realize that we are in the middle of 
our fundamental freedoms being attacked, and you have to do more to 
raise your voice.
  In a way, that feedback I was given from my constituents in those 
townhalls is part of the reason I am standing here tonight.
  I do hope constituents will continue the example set by those who 
came to my townhall and the example set by those 7 million who took to 
the streets on Saturday--the largest single-day protest in American 
history.
  You know, we celebrate some of the protests we know of the past--the 
Tea Party, a protest against unfair taxes by the British. We celebrate 
the ride through the night, warning Americans that the British were 
about to attack. At midnight tonight, in about 40 minutes tonight, I 
intend to read parts of Longfellow's poem about that.
  But we should also celebrate what people did this Saturday. The very 
title of the protests, ``No Kings,'' summarizes why people took to the 
streets of the United States in some 2,700 different locations--people 
turning out to say: Freedom matters in our Nation. Our rights matter in 
this Nation. Never should a government seek to deploy the military 
against peaceful protestors to try to create a riot, to try to justify 
expansion of authoritarian power. Never should that happen. Never 
should our government try to dictate what is taught in our 
universities. Never should our government try to tell our newspapers 
what they can print or our networks what shows they can air or which 
comedians they can have on their shows. Never should the Department of 
Justice be weaponized to try to take down, arrest, convict, imprison 
people because they have been targeted as the top of the list of 
President Trump's enemies list. Never should that happen here in the 
United States of America.

  That is what people came out to say on Saturday. And I am certainly 
very much struck by the creativity that went into a lot of the signs, 
but the thing that really moved me the most was a couple of veterans 
who said: Senator, we fought for our country because we believe in our 
freedoms and we believe in our Constitution, and we are out here to say 
today that we cannot allow any President to take away what our country 
was founded on and what we fought for.
  Amen to that.
  When my colleague from New Jersey came down to ask a question, I was 
in the middle of going through the assault that Russell Vought had 
developed to go after the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and his 
general philosophy. There is so much going on in that but also the 
basic effort to impound funds for many programs. So it wasn't just 
USAID programs on nutrition and malaria and HIV and maternal care. It 
wasn't just that. And it wasn't just the Consumer Financial Protection 
Bureau. All kinds of things were being frozen.
  One of the things that were observed was that back in 2022, partly in 
response to Vought having frozen funding to Ukraine under the first 
President Trump, Congress passed a law requiring the Office of 
Management and Budget to disclose its apportionments on a public 
website.

[[Page S7604]]

  Now, ``apportionments'' basically means how much money is going in 
different payments out to the Agencies or the programs that have been 
funded. The reason you would want those posted is because then you know 
the administration isn't essentially stealing the power of the purse by 
slow-walking the distribution of funds or freezing the distribution of 
funds or impounding the funds. You have the ability--kind of an alert 
system to make you aware of what is going on. That was what that law 
was about.
  But this year, in March, 2 years into the Presidency, that website 
that had that disclosure of apportionments went offline. So the very 
instrument that Congress created by law to prevent the slow-walking, 
the freezing, the impoundment of funds was taken down. What they are 
doing is they are hiding the ball. What they are doing is illegally 
hiding the ball. And, of course, then it became the subject of another 
lawsuit.
  One of the strategies of the Trump administration is this: We will 
break the law, and then the courts may take a look at it because 
somebody will sue us. Then we will make that proceeding go on as long 
as we possibly can. Then, if we don't like the outcome, we will appeal 
it. Then we will keep appealing it and hopefully getting stays saying 
``Hey, this is in the province of security; there should be great 
deference to the President'' or ``This is in the province of 
international affairs; there should be deference to the President'' or 
``You would do immediate harm by interrupting our program, so there 
should be great deference to the President''--in other words, that we 
should have a strongman President rather than a democracy.
  When Vought was asked about this question of taking down the website, 
he declined to comment.
  A person familiar with the thinking said that Vought saw Elon Musk 
and DOGE as a force multiplier, and DOGE's actions, such as the 
cancellation of government contracts, mass layoffs, and seizures of 
buildings from Agencies, don't amount to illegal impoundment under the 
Nixon-era law.
  At his confirmation hearing in early April, Trump's nominee for OMB 
Director, Eric Ueland, told the Senate committee that Vought intends to 
formally ask Congress to approve of some of the budget cuts via what is 
known as a rescission.
  Now ``rescission'' is a fancy word for canceling a previously 
established law that says that you must fund a certain Agency at a 
certain level. That is a rescission. I don't like the word. I mean, 
how, in conversations with folks who haven't lived in the budget 
world--let's just call it a program cancellation.
  So Vought wants to cancel what is in the law without changing the 
law. But wait. It is in the law. The Executive is supposed to follow 
the law. So instead of canceling the funding outright, the President 
just slow-walks the distribution of funds or ``freezes'' the 
distribution of funds and then, in order to avoid a lawsuit, takes down 
the website that is the place where he is supposed to have put up how 
much is distributed and when so that people can know that he is 
actually following the law. So hide the fact you are breaking the law, 
slow-walk the funds, and then say: Well, this might really not be an 
impoundment because we may still spend these funds by the end of the 
year.
  While all the time you are doing exactly what the Supreme Court said 
should not be done, you are stealing the power of the purse.
  And then Mr. Vought came up with another idea, and that said he 
actually would submit a formal request for Congress to undo the 
spending. And that is where the actual word ``rescission'' comes in. It 
is a formal request for Congress to undo the spending. And what the law 
says is when that is submitted to Congress, Congress can, if it has, 
say, 10 elements, Congress can vote affirmatively to support the 
undoing, the spending, for all 10 of the elements or some portion of 
them.
  And if it passes the House and the Senate, that funding for that 
program, because it has been changed into law, is officially canceled. 
So rescission is a proposal to cancel the spending. But now it gets 
even more interesting because there were things the President wants to 
cancel that he knows he can't get the votes for here in the Senate or 
in the House--even though all that is required is a simple majority 
vote.
  So how can the President try to pull off a semi-legal-appearing dance 
to cancel programs under the formal proposal being sent to Congress if 
Congress won't vote to do so? And so he said: Here is what we will do. 
The law says there is a 45-day grace period once a proposal to undo 
funding--that is the rescission request--has been sent to Congress, a 
45-day grace period in which the President doesn't have to distribute 
the funds.
  And then--this is the brilliant idea that Mr. Vought advocated for--
we will send that request within 45 days of the end of the financial 
year, the fiscal year. It ends on September 30. So if we send this 
request by mid-August, that would be 45 days out from the end of the 
financial year or fiscal year, and there is a 45-day grace period 
saying that we don't have to actually take action. Then, poof, along 
comes the end of September, October 1, and the funding which was 
authorized to be spent in that fiscal year can now not be spent because 
the fiscal year has ended.
  Let me try to explain it a little differently. Imagine you are 
Cinderella and you are in the carriage and you are told that carriage 
will no longer be a carriage at midnight. It will turn into a pumpkin. 
And so you want to make sure that you utilize that carriage as much as 
you need it before midnight because, otherwise, you are in trouble.
  And think of it like this then: The carriage--the spending bill that 
authorizes a program, that is the carriage, but at midnight, the end of 
the fiscal year, it turns into a pumpkin. You are no longer in the year 
for which that funding was assigned, and that funding authority 
evaporates.
  That was Russell Vought's idea. Submit the provision to ask for 
Congress to vote to support canceling programs, knowing that they 
wouldn't cancel them, but the grace period would take you to midnight 
and, poof, the funding for that program would evaporate because it was 
intended to be used in that fiscal year.
  That is essentially a strategy to steal the power of the purse. It is 
the core of Trump and Vought's vision of an authoritarian state. Trump 
and Vought doubled down on illegal impoundments when they sent a 
massive rescissions package to Congress, and they have worked to undo 
it in the manner that I have been describing.
  And there is another little twist to this story, which is, here in 
the Senate, you need bipartisan support to pass the bill that funds 
diverse programs, and we have 12 spending bills. In Senate lingo, they 
are called appropriations bills because you take money from the 
Treasury to spend it. So you appropriate the money from the Treasury to 
spend it on a program. So 12 spending bills.
  Those bills, to close debate on those bills and, therefore, to pass 
them, you need 60 votes. That means it has to be bipartisan. That means 
that we have to pay attention to the needs of every corner of the 
country to get that bipartisan support. We can't just pass bills that 
work better in Democratic States than Republican, we have to help 
people in every corner of the country. That is a good thing.
  But if the President can then submit that rescission, that effort to 
turn the carriage into a pumpkin, to have the funding evaporate at the 
end of the fiscal year, and can do so without a vote, now you don't 
have the foundation for the two sides to work together. It would be 
like you and I working out a deal, and then, let's say, I don't know, I 
need to borrow a lawnmower, and you need to borrow a bicycle. And so we 
exchange, something to help out both of us. I return the lawnmower, and 
then you say: But I am not returning the bicycle.
  That is what a submission to this body involves under rescission 
because the bipartisan deal can be undone on a partisan basis.
  A supermajority of 60 needed to pass the bill and, therefore, 
requiring bipartisan cooperation, but a simple majority required to 
undo the deal. So if a rescission is submitted that primarily attacks 
the programs that are of more concern to one party than another, then 
how are the two parties to trust each other? This is why, even though 
rescissions have been in the law since 1974, Presidents haven't used 
them. They have said: Look, the law was written. It has been signed. We 
are

[[Page S7605]]

going to assign the money to the programs in the very fashion that the 
law was passed. That is what we are going to do.
  Now, the next year, the President may say, if you don't do X, Y, and 
Z, I am not going to sign the spending bill, and so there is more 
influence on the next year rather than undoing the previous year 
because next year the President has proactive authority to engage and 
try to steer how things come about.
  So you have this power to undo through a vote of Congress, a spending 
bill by simple majority that Presidents have not used--have not used 
because they focus on the next year. OK. That bill, that year is kind 
of set. It has been passed. It has been signed. Let's focus on the next 
year.
  But this President said: I want to undo what is already signed into 
law, but if I can't get a majority vote in the House and Senate to undo 
it, I will just do it in another fashion where the funds essentially 
are slow-walked until they expire. So that is what is going on with 
this.
  So now, here we are trying to pass new spending bills for fiscal year 
2026, which started on October 1. And Democrats said: OK. Great. Let's 
put a clause into this bill because we are making a deal, programs that 
you think are important for your States, programs we think are 
important to our States, programs important to all our States, but 
maybe a mix in philosophies about the best way to accomplish something. 
We work out this big compromise, but it is a deal. So you are not going 
to undo the deal, right?
  And so we will put into this law that the 1974 Rescission Act--it is 
not actually called a rescission act but rescissions were in the 1970 
Budget Impoundment and Control Act. We will put in a provision saying 
these particular bipartisan deals cannot be undone by a partisan vote.
  So one party cannot bail after a bipartisan deal is made. It seemed 
pretty reasonable to me because if you are really exercising a deal 
between two parties, the deals are saying, we will stand behind this 
deal.
  But here is the frustration: Because President Trump wants to undo 
the deals, kind of have that line-item veto through Russell Vought's 
clever strategy of slow-walking funds until they evaporate at the end 
of the fiscal year--because the President wants that, my Republican 
colleagues are refusing to put in language that protects the deal.
  It is like that exchange I was referring to. I lend you a bicycle. 
You lend me a lawnmower. We agree to return them. I return the 
lawnmower, and you say: No, I changed my mind; I am keeping the 
bicycle.
  I am saying: We had a deal.
  And you are like: Yeah, but hey, too bad.
  Well, that doesn't exactly engender trust. For the next bipartisan 
deal, if one side says: But I am not actually compelled to honor this. 
That is what is giving us so much trouble where we are actually getting 
spending bills passed for the fiscal year that we are in already. And 
that is why we are in the middle of a conversation about a continuing 
resolution.
  And the continuing resolution that was proposed by the Republicans 
proceeded to say: Hey, remember that very partisan continuing 
resolution we passed in March? We want to continue doing that very 
partisan thing and expect you to sign on to it.
  And the Democrats responded and said: Well, no. There has only once 
in our history been a partisan continuing resolution. That was in 
March, but we are not doing that again. And, in fact, we are going to 
help save you from the huge mess you made on healthcare. We will work 
with you, but you have got to fix these tax credits that you changed 
and are doubling the price of healthcare on the exchange, making health 
insurance unaffordable to millions of families.
  And while we are at it, let's fix what you did to Medicaid because 
that is going to be even more devastating. You hid that to go into 
effect after the next election. It is that bad. That should be fixed as 
well, but we will help save you from yourselves.
  Let's fix these two attacks on healthcare that are so, so egregiously 
destructive to the American family. And we will get this continuing 
resolution done. And, by the way, we need to put into it that the 
programs that are in the continuing resolution cannot be unilaterally 
undone by the President of the United States slow-walking the funds and 
letting them evaporate on the last day of the fiscal year.
  And my Republican colleagues have come across, literally walked 
across this Chamber and said: You know, we know this was a big mess-up. 
We want to fix it, but let's just reopen the government first and then 
discuss how to fix it.
  Well, that is a trust level that is hard to have when you can sit 
down at a table that day and figure out a solution, but, no, no, no, 
just trust us. We will reopen the government with our partisan 
continuing resolution, and then we will discuss how to fix the 
healthcare mess we made.
  Yeah, well, Charlie Brown would take that deal from Lucy time after 
time after time, but that is not a deal that serves the American people 
because we know President Trump doesn't want to fix that healthcare 
mess, and, therefore, we need to fix it now. Right now. We should have 
fixed it. Well, here we are, the House of Representatives has been on 
vacation for a month. The head of the House of Representatives called 
the Speaker, the Speaker said there is nothing to discuss.
  Twenty million people are getting letters in the mail saying the 
average cost of their healthcare is being doubled, and the Speaker of 
the House of Representatives is saying there is nothing to discuss. No 
concerns.
  The attack on healthcare in the ``Big Ugly Betrayal of a Bill'' is 
going to put 15 million people out of insurance. Those folks are not 
going to be able to go to the doctor when they are sick because they 
can't afford it. And when they do go for an emergency because the 
disease has become so much worse, first, it might not be treatable; 
second, treating an advanced disease can be much more expensive than 
treating an early-stage disease; and, third, the treatments might be in 
the emergency room, which is the most expensive place of all to treat 
something.
  So, in addition to all that, because the folks don't have insurance, 
they can't pay the bill, and the revenues plummet for both the hospital 
and the clinic. And that means that they cut their programs and affect 
healthcare for everyone.
  So here we are in the government shutdown--shut down by my Republican 
colleagues voting against the Democratic bill that would fix those 
healthcare provisions, not because they don't want to fix it--because 
we have heard many of them say they do, certainly enough votes to pass 
it--but because the President says: Don't do it.
  That is not the vision of our Constitution. That this is a 
rubberstamp Chamber for the President of the United States. 
Participating in a rubberstamp for the President is to undermine the 
very architecture of the checks and balances, the separation of powers 
designed to prevent us from sliding into an authoritarian state.
  So that is the situation we are in right at the moment. We have the 
authoritarian strategy by the President against our fundamental 
freedoms. We have Russell Vought at OMB stealing the power of the 
purse--illegal and unconstitutional. We have a rubberstamp Congress and 
congressional majority that won't even sit down and discuss issues, 
even though the very function of a legislature is to discuss issues and 
try to find a path that both sides can agree to.
  So that kind of sums up this section, and I think now I am going to 
turn to chapter 2. So I am proceeding to the second chapter of ``How 
Democracies Die.'' So I am putting up this poster to remind folks that 
these are words that I am sharing from these scholars' understanding of 
the challenges across the planet and the challenges that we face here 
in America.
  So the chapter is entitled ``Gatekeeping in America.''

       In The Plot Against America, American novelist Philip Roth 
     builds on real historical events to imagine what fascism 
     might have looked like in prewar America.
       An early American mass-media hero, Charles Lindbergh, is 
     the novel's central figure: He skyrockets to fame with his 
     1927 solo flight across the Atlantic and later becomes a 
     vocal isolationist and Nazi sympathizer. But here is where 
     history takes a fantastic turn in Roth's hands: Rather than 
     fading into obscurity--


[[Page S7606]]


  In this novel--

     Lindbergh arrives by plane at the 1940 Republican Party 
     convention in Philadelphia . . . as a packed hall finds 
     itself deadlocked on the twentieth ballot. Cries of ``Lindy! 
     Lindy! Lindy!'' erupt for thirty uncontained minutes on the 
     convention floor, and in a moment of intense collective 
     fervor, his name is proposed, seconded, and approved by 
     acclamation as the party's nominee for president. Lindbergh, 
     a man with no political experience but unparalleled media 
     savvy, ignores the advice of his advisors and campaigns by 
     piloting his iconic solo aircraft, Spirit of St. Louis, from 
     state to state, wearing his flight goggles, high boots, and 
     jumpsuit.

  This is in the novel--describing the novel.

       In this world turned upside down, Lindbergh beats Franklin 
     Delano Roosevelt, the incumbent, to become president. And 
     Lindbergh, whose campaign is later revealed to be linked to 
     Hitler, goes on to sign peace treaties with America's 
     enemies. A wave of anti-Semitism and violence is unleashed 
     across America.
       Many Americans have found parallels between the 2016 
     presidential election and Roth's work of fiction. The 
     premise--an outsider with dubious democratic credentials 
     comes to power with the aid of a foreign nation--cannot help 
     but resonate. But the comparison raises another striking 
     question: Given the severity of the economic crisis in 1930s 
     America, why didn't this happen here?

  In the United States, in real life, why didn't it happen here?

       The reason no extremist demagogue won the presidency before 
     2016 is not the absence of contenders. . . . Nor is it the 
     lack of public support for them. To the contrary, extremist 
     figures have long dotted the landscape of American politics. 
     In the 1930s alone, as many as eight hundred right-wing 
     extremist groups existed in the United States. Among the most 
     important figures to emerge during this period was Father 
     Charles Coughlin, an anti-Semitic Catholic priest whose fiery 
     nationalist radio program reached up to forty million 
     listeners a week.

  Forty million a week--wow.

       Father Coughlin was openly antidemocratic, calling for the 
     abolition of political parties and questioning the value of 
     elections. His newspaper, Social Justice, adopted pro-fascist 
     positions in the 1930s, naming Mussolini its ``Man of the 
     Week'' and often defending the Nazi regime. Despite his 
     extremism, Father Coughlin was immensely popular. Fortune 
     magazine called him ``just about the biggest thing ever to 
     happen to radio.'' He delivered speeches to packed stadiums 
     and auditoriums across the country; as he traveled from city 
     to city, fans lined his route to see him passing by. Some 
     contemporary observers called him the most influential figure 
     in the United States after Roosevelt.
       The Depression also gave rise to Louisiana governor and 
     senator Huey Long, who called himself ``the Kingfish.'' Long 
     was described by the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. as 
     ``the great demagogue of the day, a man who resembled . . . a 
     Latin American dictator, a Vargas or a Peron.'' The Kingfish 
     was a gifted stump speaker, and he routinely flouted the rule 
     of law. As governor, Long built what Schlesinger described as 
     ``the nearest approach to a totalitarian state the American 
     republic has ever seen,'' using a mix of bribes and threats 
     to bring the state's legislature, judges, and press to heel. 
     Asked by an opposition legislator if he had heard of the 
     state constitution, Long replied, ``I'm the constitution just 
     now.'' Newspaper editor Hodding Carter called Long ``the 
     first true dictator out of the soil of America.'' When 
     Franklin Roosevelt's campaign manager, James A. Farley, met 
     Mussolini in Rome in 1933, he wrote that the Italian dictator 
     ``reminded me of Huey Long.''
       Long built a massive following with his call to 
     redistribute wealth. In 1934, he was said to have ``received 
     more mail than all other senators combined, more even than 
     the president.'' By then his Share Our Wealth movement had 
     more than 27,000 cells across the country and a mailing list 
     of nearly eight million names. Long planned a presidential 
     run, telling a New York Times reporter, ``I can take this 
     Roosevelt . . . I can out-promise him. And he knows it.'' 
     Roosevelt viewed Long as a serious threat but was spared when 
     Long, [terribly,] was assassinated in September 1935.
       America's authoritarian tendency persisted through the 
     post-World War II golden age. Senator Joseph McCarthy, who 
     used the Cold War fear of communist subversion to promote 
     blacklisting, censorship, and book banning, enjoyed wide 
     backing among the American public. At the height of 
     McCarthy's political power, polls showed that nearly half of 
     all Americans approved of him. Even after the Senate's 1954 
     censure of him--

  This body right here censured the man--

       [he] still enjoyed 40 percent support in Gallup polls.
       A decade later, Alabama governor George Wallace's defiant 
     segregationist stance vaulted him to national prominence, 
     leading to surprisingly vigorous bids for the presidency in 
     1968 and 1972. Wallace engaged in what journalist Arthur 
     Hadley called the ``old and honorable American tradition of 
     hate the powerful.'' He was, Hadley wrote, a master at 
     exploiting ``plain old American rage.'' Wallace often 
     encouraged violence and displayed a casual disregard for 
     constitutional norms, declaring:
       ``There is one thing more powerful than the Constitution . 
     . . That's the will of the people. What is a Constitution 
     anyway? They're the products of the people, the people are 
     the first source of power, and the people can abolish a 
     Constitution if they want to.

  Those are the words of Wallace.

       [His] message, which mixed racism with populist appeals to 
     [the] working-class . . . sense of victimhood and economic 
     anger, helped him make inroads into the Democrats' 
     traditional blue-collar base. Polls showed that roughly 40 
     percent of Americans approved of Wallace in his third-party 
     run in 1968, and in 1972 he shocked the establishment by 
     emerging as a serious contender in the Democratic primaries. 
     When Wallace's campaign was derailed by an assassination 
     attempt in May 1972, he was leading George McGovern by more 
     than a million votes. . . .
       In short, Americans have long had an authoritarian streak. 
     It was not unusual for figures [like] Coughlin, Long, 
     McCarthy, and Wallace to gain the support of a sizable 
     minority--30 or even 40 percent--of the country. We often 
     tell ourselves that America's national political culture in 
     some way immunizes us from such appeals, but this requires 
     reading history with rose-colored glasses. The real 
     protection against would-be authoritarians has not been 
     Americans' firm commitment to democracy but, rather, the 
     gatekeepers--our political parties.
       On June 8, 1920, as Woodrow Wilson's presidency was winding 
     down, Republican delegates gathered to choose their nominee 
     in the flag-draped but poorly ventilated Chicago Coliseum, 
     where the withering heat reached over one hundred degrees. 
     After nine ballots over four days, the convention remained 
     undecided. On Friday evening, in Suite 404 on the thirteenth 
     floor of the nearby Blackstone Hotel, Republican National 
     Committee Chairman Will Hays and George Harvey, the powerful 
     publisher of Harvey's Weekly, hosted a rotating group of U.S. 
     senators and party leaders in the original ``smoke-filled 
     back room.'' The Old Guard, as journalists called them, 
     poured themselves drinks, smoked cigars, and talked late into 
     the night about how to break the deadlock to get a candidate 
     the 493 delegates needed for the nomination.
       The leading contender on the convention floor was Major 
     General Leonard Wood, an old ally of Theodore Roosevelt who 
     had generated popular enthusiasm in the primaries and 
     dominated the ballot earlier in the week, with 287 delegates. 
     He was followed by Illinois governor Frank Lowden, California 
     senator Hiram Johnson, and Ohio senator Warren G. Harding . . 
     . [Ohio Senator Warren Harding was] trailing in a distant 
     fourth place with only 65\1/2\ delegates. From the convention 
     floor, reporters wrote, ``Nobody is talking Harding. . . . 
     [He is] not even considered as among the most promising dark 
     horses.'' But as reporters heard rumors about the discussions 
     taking place at the Blackstone, the most motivated of them 
     found their way to the thirteenth floor of the hotel and 
     quietly gathered in the hallways outside Suite 404 to catch a 
     glimpse as leading senators--including Henry Cabot Lodge of 
     Massachusetts, McCormick of Illinois, Phipps of Colorado, 
     Calder of New York, former senator Crane of Massachusetts, 
     and others--came and went.

  (Mr. SHEEHY takes the Chair.)

       Inside [the] Suite [404], the upsides and downsides of each 
     candidate were carefully reviewed and debated. (Knox was too 
     old; Lodge didn't like Coolidge.) At one in the morning, 
     seven members of the Old Guard remained in the room and took 
     a ``standing vote.'' Called in at 2:11 A.M. by George Harvey, 
     a stunned Harding was informed that he had been selected. 
     Word spread. By the next evening, on the tenth ballot and to 
     the great relief of the sweltering delegates, Warren G. 
     Harding received an overwhelming 692\1/2\ convention 
     delegates amid rousing cheers. Though he garnered just over 4 
     percent of the primary vote, he was now the Republican 
     Party's 1920 presidential nominee.
       Nobody likes smoke-filled rooms today--

  I am continuing to read Chapter 2, analyzing how gatekeeping has 
worked in America to prevent authoritarian takeovers. This is part of 
my effort to ring the alarm bells; to stand here, to share the insights 
of those who have studied how republics with a strong Constitution and 
strong values and a strong middle class have lost their separation of 
powers, their checks and balances, and become strongmen states. That is 
why I am reading Chapter 2.
  It continues:

       Nobody likes smoke-filled rooms today and for good reason. 
     They were not very democratic. Candidates were chosen by a 
     small group of power brokers who were not accountable to the 
     party rank and file.

  Now, the hour of midnight is approaching. With that, I am going to do 
a pause here. I would be happy to keep filling you all in later about 
this analysis of America's history, world history, and what one has to 
be aware of if you want to save our Republic. We

[[Page S7607]]

will return to that. But here at midnight--is it midnight already; how 
did that happen--are excerpts from Paul Revere's Ride. This was Henry 
Wadsworth Longfellow's 1860 poem. I won't read the whole thing, but I 
will read some of it:

     LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear
     Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
     On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
     Hardly a man is now alive
     Who remembers that famous day and year.
     And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height
     A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
     He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
     But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
     A second lamp in the belfry burns!
     One lamp, the British are attacking by land; two lamps, the 
           British are attacking by sea.
     A hurry of hooves in a village street,
     A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
     And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
     Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet;
     That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light
     The fate of the nation was riding that night;
     And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
     Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
     So through the night rode Paul Revere;
     And so through the night went his cry of alarm
     To every Middlesex village and farm,--
     A cry of defiance and not of fear,
     A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
     And a word that shall echo forevermore!
     For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
     Through all of our history, to the last,
     In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
     The people will waken and listen to hear
     The hurried hoof-beats of that steed
     And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

  My father was a mechanic. He grew up in a household that, I believe, 
early on did not have a radio, let alone, he certainly didn't have 
television. And his mother would bring the family together, and they 
would read poems. And my father learned just by hearing them. Any 
number of poems that he would recite as I was growing up, something 
would trigger that.
  I can imagine him now, my dad the mechanic, hearing about the 
situation we are in with the threat to our Republic and thinking back 
to how the Colonies were threatened by the British. And when they were 
threatened, Paul Revere rode through the night to warn people. And that 
is what has to happen in a democracy.
  When there are authoritarian impulses that gain hold, when they start 
to strengthen, when the norms fall away and when direct attacks are 
made on our freedoms, then each of us has the responsibility as a 
citizen to join together to cry out the warning to the rest of America: 
Our Nation is in trouble.
  Our Republic is facing a dire threat, greater than any it has faced 
since the Civil War. The constitutional checks and balances are being 
destroyed in realtime, right now. And this should be of concern to all 
of us who value our freedom of speech, our freedom of assembly, the 
freedom of a press that can say whatever the hell it wants and nobody 
goes to prison and nobody gets sued, nobody gets arrested, nobody gets 
disappeared because we have freedom to publish what you want. And we 
have the freedom to say what we want.
  I have done a fair amount of work here in the Senate on human rights, 
and I partnered, in particular, with our current Secretary of State in 
his former role as chair and vice chair of the Commission on China. In 
that Commission, we held hearing after hearing about China's assault on 
freedoms. One of the things they did was to violate their agreement 
with Great Britain over Hong Kong and to crush the self-governance of 
Hong Kong and to crush freedom of expression and freedom of press and 
freedom of assembly in Hong Kong.

  Another thing that we spent a fair amount of time on was what China 
was doing to the Tibetan children, taking those children away from 
their parents at 4 and 5 years of age to try to destroy the culture--
culture continuation, to destroy the language, the dances, the arts, 
the understandings that happen when you grow up with your own family, 
your own community, take them away to boarding school.
  We focused on the Uighurs, a Muslim minority in China that has been 
effectively enslaved. And every possible technology is used to track 
every single Uighur, everything they say, every movement they make. It 
is like a science fiction novel about a futuristic society that 
proceeds to track every person, every moment, so the slightest 
deviation of behavior, the slightest resistance is crushed immediately. 
That is what has been done to the Uighurs. We worked together on the 
Uyghur Forced Labor Prevention Act that said any product made by the 
Uighurs, those products cannot be brought to the United States because 
they are being made with slave labor.
  We created a safe harbor. We said, if a company can have an 
investigation and show that its particular products are not made 
through slave labor, then they can be admitted to the United States. 
Well, to my knowledge, no company has effectively utilized that safe 
harbor because China won't let them run an investigation.
  First of all, it may well be if their products are made in that 
territory where the Uighurs live, they quite likely are produced by 
slave labor. But let's say they weren't. They need to do an 
investigation. China won't let them do it.
  I just recited this because this is a bipartisan effort to promote 
and protect human rights around the world. And there has been 
bipartisan concern about other oppression around the world where 
freedom of assembly, freedom of speech, freedom of the press are being 
attacked or diminished.
  But now it is happening here in the United States under the direction 
of this President. He is trying to tell universities what they can 
teach and networks what they can air and citizens, how they can 
protest.
  Why, if there is bipartisan support for defending human rights around 
the world, why isn't there bipartisan support for defending human 
rights right here at home? Because what Paul Revere did wasn't 
Democratic or Republican. He was a patriot, letting his communities 
know they were under attack so they could prepare to respond and fend 
off that attack. That is what we need now, no matter what party people 
belong to--coming together to raise the alarm, to ring the alarm bells, 
to say that no matter what party or what loyalty may exist, when rights 
are attacked, we will respond together to protect them.
  That is why I wanted to read that at midnight. In another 50 minutes, 
it will be midnight in some other part of the country, so maybe my 
colleague will remind me of what States are at midnight in an hour. 
Maybe we will return there again.
  In this second chapter, the authors note--and I am back to reading 
what they are saying:

       Nobody likes smoke-filled rooms. . . . They were not very 
     democratic. Candidates were chosen by a small group of power 
     brokers who were not accountable to the party rank and file, 
     much less to average citizens. And smoke-filled rooms did not 
     always produce good presidents--Harding's term, after all, 
     was marked by scandal. But backroom candidate selection had a 
     virtue often forgotten today: It served a gatekeeping 
     function, keeping demonstrably unfit figures off the ballot 
     and out of office. To be sure, the reason for this was not 
     the high-mindedness of party leaders. Rather, party 
     ``bosses,'' as their opponents called them, were most 
     interested in picking safe candidates who could win. It was, 
     above all, their risk aversion that led them to avoid 
     extremists.
       Gatekeeping institutions go back to the founding of the 
     American republic. The 1787 Constitution created the world's 
     first presidential system. Presidentialism poses distinctive 
     challenges for gatekeeping. In parliamentary democracies, the 
     prime minister is a member of parliament and is selected by 
     leading parties in parliament, which virtually ensures he or 
     she will be acceptable to political insiders. The very 
     process of government formation serves as a filter. 
     Presidents, by contrast, are not sitting members of Congress, 
     nor are they elected by Congress. At least in theory, they 
     are elected by the people and anyone can run for president 
     and--if he or she earns enough support--win.
       Our founders were [very] concerned with gatekeeping.

  I appreciate that these scholars are helping us understand different 
pathways that authoritarian power can creep into and destroy our 
democracy and how concerned our Founders were about that and how they 
tried to protect us from that happening.

       [They] were deeply concerned with gatekeeping. In designing 
     the Constitution and electoral system, they grappled with a 
     dilemma that, in many respects, remains with us today. On the 
     one hand, they sought not a monarch but an elected 
     president--one who conformed to their idea of a republican 
     popular government--

  small ``r'' republican--

     reflecting the will of the people. On the other, the founders 
     did not fully trust the

[[Page S7608]]

     people's ability to judge candidates' fitness for office. 
     Alexander Hamilton worried that a popularly elected 
     presidency could be too easily captured by those who would 
     play on fear and ignorance to win elections and then rule as 
     tyrants. ``History will teach us,'' Hamilton wrote in the 
     Federalist Papers, that ``of those men who have overturned 
     the liberties of republics, the great number have begun their 
     career by paying an obsequious court to the people; 
     commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.''

  So here are our Founders already observing the efforts to create 
republics around the world that have fallen to authoritarian powers. 
They were already concerned. This is not just something new to us. It 
is not something that just happened a couple hundred years later. No. 
It was a problem the Founders saw from the beginning. For Hamilton and 
his colleagues, elections required some kind of built-in screening 
device.
  In continuing with the description here of these scholars:

       The device the founders came up with was the Electoral 
     College. Article II of the Constitution created an indirect 
     election system that reflected Hamilton's thinking [as he 
     expressed it] in Federalist 68.
       ``The immediate election should be made by men most capable 
     of analyzing the qualities adapted to the station, and acting 
     under the circumstances favorable to deliberation, and to a 
     judicious combination of all the reasons and inducements 
     which were proper to govern them.''

  In other words, a group would be elected--the electoral college--that 
would make sure that the person who went to the Presidency had the 
character and the knowledge suitable to the task.
  In continuing with the paper--or with their book:

       The Electoral College, made up of locally prominent men in 
     each state, would thus be responsible for choosing the 
     president. Under this arrangement, Hamilton reasoned, ``the 
     office of president will seldom fall to the lot of any man 
     who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite 
     qualifications.'' Men with ``talents for low intrigue, and 
     the little arts of popularity'' would be filtered out. The 
     Electoral College thus became our original gatekeeper.
       This system proved short-lived, however, due to two 
     shortcomings in the founders' original design. First, the 
     Constitution is silent on the question of how presidential 
     candidates are to be selected. The Electoral College goes 
     into operation after the people vote, playing no role in 
     determining who seeks the presidency in the first place. 
     Second, the Constitution never mentions political parties. 
     Though Thomas Jefferson and James Madison would go on to 
     pioneer our two-party system, the founders did not seriously 
     contemplate those parties' existence.
       The rise of parties in the early 1800s changed the way our 
     electoral system worked. Instead of electing local notables 
     as delegates to the Electoral College, as the founders had 
     envisioned, each state began to elect party loyalists. 
     Electors became party agents, which meant that the Electoral 
     College surrendered its gatekeeping authority to the parties. 
     The parties have retained it ever since.
       Parties, then, become the stewards of American democracy. 
     Because the parties select our candidates--

  My editorializing on this is that it is, therefore, the parties that 
have to serve this gatekeeping role. It is just something for us to 
understand as we seek to restore, reclaim our Republic from this 
authoritarian takeover.
  I continue to read:

       They must, therefore, strike a balance between two roles: a 
     democratic role, in which they choose the candidates that 
     best represent the parties' voters; and what political 
     scientist James Ceaser calls a ``filtration'' role, in which 
     they screen out those who pose a threat to democracy or 
     otherwise unfit to hold office.

  This chapter goes on to examine the history of gatekeeping in 
America. I encourage folks to feel free to read all of it, but I am 
going to fast-forward to the last couple of pages that come into a more 
contemporary time than the entire analysis over the course. If I have 
time later tonight or this morning, I may come back to share some of 
that in more detail.
  But here we are, looking at the question of how, in our system, we 
make sure that the person who makes it to the Oval Office has the 
qualifications and the character necessary to carry that office in good 
fashion for the benefit of America. What this chapter has been 
explaining is that the Founders were very worried about this. They had 
seen efforts for republican control fall victim to Presidents who 
become Kings--republics that become strongmen states.
  So they had this idea: Well, if local communities elect kind of their 
leading citizens whom they trust to have good judgment and good 
character and if those leading citizens go and gather in the capital 
and put their heads together, they will produce a vote for someone who 
has the qualifications and the character to fill the office; so the 
electoral college would be the filter. But when it became that the 
candidates you vote for, when you vote for the electoral college, are 
simply bound to the party, pledged to the party, that whole process of 
sending people to use their judgment is gone because they are simply a 
vessel--a predetermined vote, if you will--for the parties' nominees. 
So that is the challenge that we have.

  In turning to Humphrey, Humphrey was hardly the first Presidential 
candidate to win the nomination without competing in primaries. He 
would, however, be the last. The events that unfolded in Chicago that 
were displayed on television screens across America mortally wounded 
the party insider Presidential selection system.
  Now I want to just comment for a moment on Hubert Humphrey.
  Back in 1975, I am in my second year of college, and someone mentions 
to me the idea of serving as an intern for a U.S. Senator. I thought, 
Wow, that sounds like a really cool thing to do. I asked my father whom 
did he really admire in the Senate, and he mentioned four people: One 
was Humphrey, another was Kennedy, another was Inouye, and the fourth 
was Church, Senator Church from Idaho. So I sent off letters to all 
four of them.
  Had Humphrey responded and said, ``Yes, you can be my intern,'' I 
might have some more personal stories to share about Humphrey, but he 
did not. He did not accept me as an intern nor did any of the other 
three, but they had an intern series here in the Senate where Senators 
would go and speak during the summer, and interns would come and listen 
in.
  I went into a crowded room to hear Hubert Humphrey, the ``happy 
warrior,'' and I must say that I was impressed. I loved everything he 
had to say. So, whenever Humphrey is involved, my ears kind of pick up 
a little bit. He did not become a President, but he certainly brought 
fierce love for our country and for making this country work better for 
working people, and that, I appreciate.
  So, in going back to the commentary that is here in the book rather 
than my commentary, what happened in Chicago mortally wounded the party 
insider Presidential selection system even before the convention began. 
The crushing blow of Robert Kennedy's assassination, the escalating 
conflict over Vietnam, and the energy of the anti-war protesters in 
Chicago's Grant Park zapped any remaining public faith in the old 
system.

       On August 28, the protesters turned to march on the 
     convention: Blue-helmeted police attacked the protesters and 
     bystanders, and bloodied men, women, and children sought 
     refuge in nearby hotels. The so-called Battle of Michigan 
     Avenue then spilled over into the convention hall itself. 
     Senator Abraham Ribicoff, of Connecticut, in his nomination 
     speech for anti-war candidate George McGovern, decried ``the 
     gestapo tactics'' of the Chicago police, looking--on live 
     television--directly at Mayor Daley. As confrontations 
     exploded on the convention floor, uniformed police officers 
     dragged several delegates from the auditorium. Watching in 
     shock, NBC anchor Chet Huntley observed, ``This surely is the 
     first time policemen have ever entered the floor of a 
     convention.'' His coanchor, David Brinkley, wryly added, ``In 
     the United States.''
       The Chicago calamity triggered far-reaching reform. 
     Following Humphrey's defeat in the 1968 election, the 
     Democratic Party created the McGovern-Fraser Commission and 
     gave it the job of rethinking the nomination system. The 
     commission's final report, published in 1971, cited an old 
     adage: ``The cure for the ills of democracy is more 
     democracy.'' With the legitimacy of the party at stake, party 
     leaders felt intense pressure to open up the presidential 
     nomination process. As George McGovern put it, ``Unless 
     changes are made, the next convention will make the last look 
     like a Sunday-school picnic.'' If the people were not given a 
     real say, the McGovern-Fraser report . . . warned, they would 
     turn to the ``anti-politics of the street.''
       The McGovern-Fraser Commission issued a set of 
     recommendations that the two parties adopted before the 1972 
     election. What emerged was a system of binding presidential 
     primaries. Beginning in 1972, the vast majority of the 
     delegates to both the Democratic and Republican conventions 
     would be elected in state-level primaries and caucuses. 
     Delegates would be preselected by the candidates themselves 
     to ensure their loyalty. This meant that for the first time, 
     the people who chose the parties' presidential candidates 
     would be neither beholden to

[[Page S7609]]

     party leaders nor free to make backroom deals . . . rather, 
     they would faithfully reflect the will of their states' 
     primary voters. There were differences between the parties, 
     such as the Democrats' adoption of proportional rules in 
     many states and mechanisms to enhance the representation 
     of women and minorities. But in adopting binding 
     primaries, both parties substantially loosened their 
     leaders' grip over the candidate selection process--
     opening it up to voters instead. Democratic National 
     Committee chair Larry O'Brien called the reforms ``the 
     greatest Goddamn changes since the party system.'' George 
     McGovern, who unexpectedly won the 1972 Democratic 
     nomination, called the new primary system ``the most open 
     political process in our national history.''
       [And] McGovern was right. The path to the nomination no 
     longer had to pass through the party establishment. For the 
     first time, the party gatekeepers could be circumvented--and 
     beaten.
       The Democrats, whose initial primaries were volatile and 
     divisive, backtracked somewhat in the . . . 1980s, 
     stipulating that a share of national delegates would be 
     elected officials--governors, big-city mayors, senators, and 
     congressional representatives--appointed by state parties 
     rather than elected in primaries. These ``superdelegates,'' 
     representing between 15 and 20 percent of national delegates, 
     would serve as a counterbalance to primary voters--and a 
     mechanism for party leaders to fend off candidates they 
     disapproved of. The Republicans, by contrast, were flying 
     high under Ronald Reagan. . . . Seeing no need for 
     superdelegates, the GOP opted, fatefully, to maintain a more 
     democratic nomination system.
       Some political scientists worried about the new system. 
     Binding primaries were certainly more democratic. But might 
     they be too democratic? By placing presidential nominations 
     in the hands of voters, binding primaries weakened parties' 
     gatekeeping function, potentially eliminating the peer review 
     process and opening the door to outsiders. Just before the 
     McGovern-Fraser Commission began its work, two prominent 
     political scientists warned that primaries could ``lead to 
     the appearance of extremist candidates and Demagogues'' who, 
     unrestrained by party allegiances, ``have little to lose by 
     stirring up mass hatreds or making absurd promises.''
       Initially, these fears seemed overblown. Outsiders did 
     emerge: Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson ran for the . . . 
     Party nomination in 1984 and 1988 . . . while Southern 
     Baptist leader Pat Robertson . . . television commentator Pat 
     Buchanan . . . Forbes magazine publisher Steve Forbes [all] 
     ran for the Republican nomination [in various years: 1988, 
     1992, 1992, 2000, 1996]. But they all lost.
       Circumventing the party establishment was, it turned out, 
     easier in theory than in practice. Capturing a majority of 
     delegates required winning primaries all over the country, 
     which, in turn, required money, favorable media coverage . . 
     . crucially, people working on the ground in all states. Any 
     candidate seeking to complete the grueling obstacle course of 
     U.S. primaries needed allies among donors, newspaper editors, 
     interest groups, activist groups . . . state-level 
     politicians such as governors, mayors, senators, and 
     congressmen. In 1976, Arthur Hadley described this arduous 
     process as the ``invisible primary.'' He claimed that this 
     phase, which occurred before the primary season . . . was 
     ``where the winning candidate is actually selected.'' Members 
     of the party establishment--elected officials, activists, 
     allied interest groups--were, thereby, not necessarily locked 
     out of the game. Without them, Hadley argued, it was nearly 
     impossible to win either party's nomination.
       [And] for a quarter of a century, Hadley was right.

  That concludes the second chapter.
  My whole political instinct has been to make everything as democratic 
as possible. I like to see the direct election of Presidents, but in 
this moment, as we face an authoritarian takeover, I think we have a 
responsibility to ponder not just how we fix it but how we prevent it 
from happening again.

  It is interesting to hear through the observations of these scholars 
the filtering role that has been played in various setups over the 
course of our history trying to establish a system in which the person 
who did finally make it into the Oval Office had the character and the 
qualifications to execute the responsibilities effectively for the 
benefit--the collective benefit--of our Nation.
  Trump is violating free speech and free press. Between each chapter, 
I am trying to address a different feature of Trump's assault on our 
democracy. In the previous section, we addressed continuous violation 
of laws that cover the Presidency, including the inspector generals and 
then so many other laws, including laws that control the distribution 
of funds. In this interlude, I am speaking to his attack on free speech 
and free press.
  Benjamin Franklin wrote that ``whoever would overthrow the liberty of 
a nation must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.'' In other 
words, the path to authoritarian control begins by subduing free 
speech.
  Trump began his assault on free speech immediately after his 
election. He sued CBS News for $10 billion--yes, billion with a ``b''--
because he disliked its editing of an interview with then-Vice 
President Kamala Harris on the program ``60 Minutes.''
  In April, Bill Owens, the executive producer of CBS's ``60 minutes,'' 
resigned, citing encroachments on his journalistic independence in the 
face of mounting pressure from Paramount, which is CBS's parent 
company.
  A reported possible source of that pressure was Shari Redstone, 
Paramount's controlling shareholder, who was reportedly eager to secure 
the Trump administration's approval of a multibillion-dollar sale of 
Paramount to Skydance.
  On July 6, Paramount--the owner of CBS--settled Trump's lawsuit for 
$16 million, agreeing to pay $15 million to a future Trump Presidential 
library and $1 million for his legal fees.
  So the President sues CBS because of the way they edited an 
interview, and CBS settled the case even though the case had, according 
to the legal scholars, essentially no merit. Wow. Talk about trying to 
influence what is done.
  There was further fallout regarding ``60 Minutes'' and the 
journalistic freedom that they had felt and always had to do their 
segments every Sunday night. They felt now that they couldn't be free 
to do those segments because the government was looking over their 
shoulder. The President of the United States was suing for $10 billion, 
so CBS proceeded to settle the case and give Trump $16 million.
  On July 17, CBS announced it was canceling the ``Late Show with 
Stephen Colbert.'' The Colbert show is the top-rated late night show. 
Colbert is a frequent critic of Trump.
  Not surprisingly, only 3 weeks after CBS canceled Colbert, on August 
7, the government, run by Trump, gave the green light, and Skydance and 
Paramount completed their merger.
  This is unheard of stuff--a President using the power of the 
government and personal lawsuits to try to change what the press can do 
in broadcasts. That is freedom of the press under attack.
  A similar story occurred at ABC. In 2024, Trump sued ABC News because 
George Stephanopoulos said on air that Trump had been found liable for 
rape instead of saying he had been found liable for sexual assault in 
the E. Jean Carroll lawsuit.
  Rather than challenging Trump's lawsuit in court, which experts 
expected ABC would win--a misstatement of sexual assault or rape--very 
close cousins to each other on a broadcast; not a foundation for 
winning any normal lawsuit, so experts expected ABC would win. But ABC, 
like CBS, bent the knee under this Presidential pressure and agreed to 
a similar settlement like CBS, paying Trump in this case $15 million 
toward a future Trump Presidential library and $1 million for his legal 
fees.
  But this bending of the knee by ABC, this acquiescence to Trump, 
didn't protect ABC. On September 17, Brendan Carr, head of the FCC--
Federal Communications Commission--went onto a conservative podcast and 
said that ABC should remove late night host Jimmy Kimmel from his show.
  Nexstar and Sinclair Broadcast Group, which own dozens of local ABC 
affiliates, and Disney, which owns ABC, all have major deals pending 
that require FCC approval.
  On that podcast, Carr threatened--Brendan Carr, the head of the FCC--
saying ``We can do this the easy way, or we can do this the hard way,'' 
like a mob boss.
  Let's be clear. This is the power of the state being used to silence 
free speech it dislikes.
  Brendan Carr himself wrote on Twitter in 2023:

       Free speech is the counterweight--it is the check on 
     government control. That is why censorship is the 
     authoritarian's dream.

  I couldn't have said it better myself. Yet this man, Brendan Carr, 
who talked about free speech as a counterweight, now in that powerful 
position where he can control licenses and mergers, proceeds to use 
that power to control what our networks air. How did he slide from 
being a champion of free speech into being an instrument of 
authoritarian suppression of free speech?
  These tactics mirror other authoritarian approaches to silencing 
dissent.

[[Page S7610]]

Here is reporting by the Associated Press from Hungary, where another 
authoritarian regime is using similar tactics. This is a PBS article 
titled ``Trump's moves against media outlets mirror authoritarian 
approaches to silencing dissent'' from September 18 of last month.

       Since taking office in January, President Donald Trump has 
     waged an aggressive campaign against the media unlike any in 
     modern U.S. history, making moves similar to those of 
     authoritarian leaders that he has often praised.
       On Wednesday, Trump cheered ABC's suspension of Jimmy 
     Kimmel's late-night show after the comedian made remarks 
     about the assassination of . . . activist Charlie Kirk.

  Trump said: ``Congratulations to ABC for finally having the courage 
to do what had to be done.''

       It was the latest in a string of attacks against news 
     outlets and media figures . . . he believes are overly 
     critical of him. Trump has filed lawsuits against outlets 
     whose coverage he dislikes, threatened to revoke TV broadcast 
     licenses and sought to bend news organizations and social 
     media companies to his will.
       The tactics are similar to those used by leaders in other 
     countries who have chipped away at speech freedoms and 
     independent media while consolidating political power, 
     including Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, a close 
     Trump ally whose leadership style is revered by many 
     conservatives in the U.S.
       Trump's approach to governing has drawn comparisons to 
     Orban, who has been in power since 2010. The Hungarian leader 
     has made hostility toward the press central to his political 
     brand, borrowing Trump's phrase ``fake news'' to describe 
     critical outlets. He has not given an interview to an 
     independent journalist in years.
       Media watchdog Reporters Without Borders says Orban has 
     built ``a true media empire subject to his party's orders'' 
     through allies' acquisitions of newspapers and broadcasters. 
     The group says that strategy has given Orban's Fidesz party 
     control of about 80% of Hungary's media market. In 2018, 
     Orban's allies donated nearly 500 news outlets they had 
     acquired to a government-controlled conglomerate, a group 
     that included all of Hungary's local daily newspapers.

  Continuing in another part of this article about Kimmel:

       Kimmel became the second late-night comic with a history of 
     pillorying Trump to lose their show this year. CBS canceled 
     Stephen Colbert's show just days after he had criticized the 
     network's settlement of a lawsuit filed by Trump over its 
     editing of . . . ``60 Minutes.''
       CBS said the July move was made for financial reasons, but 
     Trump celebrated it nevertheless while appearing to 
     foreshadow this week's developments: ``I absolutely love that 
     Colbert got fired. His talent was even less than his 
     ratings,'' he wrote on his social media platform at the time. 
     ``I hear Jimmy Kimmel is next.''

  And the President was right.

       ABC's suspension of Kimmel on Wednesday came after Federal 
     Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr made a 
     pointed warning about the comedian on a conservative podcast 
     earlier in the day.

  So the attack on freedom of press is in full swing. And there is 
more. On July 18, Trump sued Rupert Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal 
for $10 billion after the newspaper published a story reporting on 
Trump's ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. That story 
included the sexually suggestive letter that Trump wrote Epstein, or 
reportedly wrote to Epstein, with a drawing of a woman's body for 
Epstein's 50th birthday book.
  Here is what the Wall Street Journal wrote:

       It was Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday, and Ghislaine 
     Maxwell was preparing a special gift to mark the occasion. 
     She turned to Epstein's family and friends. One of them was 
     Donald Trump. Maxwell collected letters from Trump and dozens 
     of Epstein's other associates for a 2003 birthday album, 
     according to documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal.
       Pages from the leather-bound album--assembled before 
     Epstein was first arrested in 2006--are among the documents 
     examined by Justice Department officials who investigated 
     Epstein and Maxwell years ago, according to people who have 
     reviewed the pages. It's unclear if any of the pages are part 
     of the Trump administration's recent review.
       The president's past relationship with Epstein is at a 
     sensitive moment. The Justice Department documents, the so-
     called Epstein files, and who or what is in them are at the 
     center of a storm consuming the Trump administration. On 
     Wednesday, after angry comments about how the files are a 
     hoax created by Democrats, President Trump lashed out at his 
     own supporters for refusing to let the matter go.
       The letter bearing Trump's name, which was reviewed by the 
     Journal, is bawdy--like others in the album. It contains 
     several lines of typewritten text framed by the outline of a 
     naked woman, which appears to be hand-drawn with a heavy 
     marker. A pair of small arcs denotes the woman's breasts, and 
     the future president's signature is a squiggly ``Donald'' 
     below her waist.
       The letter concludes: ``Happy Birthday--and may every day 
     be another wonderful secret.''
       In an interview with the Journal on Tuesday evening, Trump 
     denied writing the letter or drawing the picture. ``This is 
     not me. This is a fake thing. It's a fake Wall Street Journal 
     story,'' he said.
       ``I never wrote a picture in my life. I don't draw pictures 
     of women,'' he said. ``It's not my language. It's not my 
     words.''
       He told the Journal he was preparing to file a lawsuit if 
     it published an article. ``I'm gonna sue The Wall Street 
     Journal just like I sued everyone else,'' he said.
       Allegations that Epstein had been sexually abusing girls 
     became public in 2006, and he was arrested that year. Epstein 
     died in 2019, in jail, after his arrest a second time on a 
     charge of sex trafficking and conspiracy.
       Justice Department officials didn't respond to requests for 
     comment or address questions about whether the Trump page 
     or other pages of the birthday album were part of the 
     Agency's recent documents review, and the FBI declined to 
     comment.
       The existence of the album and the contents of the birthday 
     letters haven't previously been reported. The album had 
     poems, photos, and greetings from businesspeople, academics, 
     Epstein's former girlfriends and childhood pals, according to 
     documents reviewed by the Journal and people familiar with 
     them.
       Among those who submitted letters were billionaire Leslie 
     Wexner and attorney Alan Dershowitz. The album also contained 
     a letter from a now-deceased Harvard economist, one of 
     Epstein's report cards from Mark Twain junior high school in 
     Brooklyn and a note from a former assistant that included an 
     acrostic with Epstein's name: ``Jeffrey, oh Jeffrey! Everyone 
     loves you! Fun in the sun! Fun just for fun! Remember . . . 
     don't forget me soon! Epstein . . . you rock! You are the 
     best!''
       The longtime leader of Victoria's Secret wrote a short 
     message that said: ``I wanted to get you what you want, so 
     here it is.''

  I don't think I will read the rest of this paragraph. You can imagine 
what that leader was referring to.
  Dershowitz's letter included a mockup of a ``Vanity Unfair'' magazine 
cover with mock headlines.
  The list goes on.
  Now, the point of this is that, by the President of the United States 
suing the Wall Street Journal, of all publications--the Wall Street 
Journal, not exactly a liberal bastion; the Wall Street Journal, the 
business newspaper of America, conservative in everything it does. It 
certainly is considered, from my point of view, to be a venue where the 
very powerful talk about the affairs affecting the very powerful. It is 
hardly concerned with the basics of families, like healthcare and 
housing and education; hardly concerned with human rights in the world. 
It is a business newspaper about the powerful people and companies.
  So this was not some lefty paper, if you will--some liberal paper--
that Trump is suing. And when the President of the United States 
launches a huge lawsuit--I think it was $10 billion, I believe--
checking the number to make sure I had that right--$10 billion, wow. 
That is a whopper, even for an establishment as large as the Wall 
Street Journal. That is an intimidating factor.
  If you are in the press and you know that ABC has been sued and 
settled; CBS has been sued and settled; the Wall Street Journal, for 
disclosing a story, is sued for $10 billion, you get a little careful 
about what you think of putting in your newspaper. This is 
intimidation. This is not freedom of the press. This is the corruption 
of freedom of the press.
  Now, at this moment, there is a discharge petition over in the House 
of Representatives. And in the House, under their rules, if you get a 
certain number of signatures, you can get a bill voted on--debated and 
voted on--on the floor.
  There is no such thing here in the Senate, or maybe we would be 
beneficiaries, should there be such a rule. But we don't have it; the 
House does.
  And that petition is short one signature to be able to discharge, and 
it so happens that there was an election; and in that election, the 
candidate who won is a Democrat and has pledged that when she is sworn 
in to the House of Representatives she will sign that petition. That 
petition is to hold a vote on releasing the Epstein files.
  The House of Representatives left town in part to escape having to 
vote on disclosing the Epstein files because the President of the 
United States

[[Page S7611]]

doesn't want them to vote. Now, that is not the way it should work 
under our Constitution. The collective opinion of the House about what 
they should do should prevail. They shouldn't simply just be a 
rubberstamp for the opinion of the President. So they have been out for 
a month--a month--partly to avoid swearing in the winner of a by-
election who, when sworn in, will provide a signature that could lead 
to a House vote on the Epstein files.
  Now, here in the Senate, we had a vote. There was a place in the 
amendment tree that was free. So the minority leader thought it was 
important that we vote on releasing the Epstein files. So he filed my 
bill, as it turns out, as an amendment so that we would vote on it. And 
he called it up. So we did have a vote here. Only the vote wasn't 
directly on the amendment. It was on the motion to table the amendment.
  Nevertheless, it reflected the disposition. And more or less, it was 
a party-line vote. Every Democrat voted against tabling so that we 
would, in fact, consider that Epstein file bill directly, and almost 
all Republicans voted to table. In other words, they wanted to kill 
this amendment rather than vote on it.
  So we have had the vote in the Senate. I would like to still see us 
have a vote directly because if there is, in fact, evidence of crimes 
involving assaults and rapes on underage women in America, people 
should be held accountable. I would think 100 Senators would say that 
if there is evidence of individuals who were involved in the rape of 
teenage girls, they should be held accountable.
  But the majority of the Senate decided not to hold the President 
accountable, and the President filed a $10 billion lawsuit over the 
release of just a single page of a drawing that he did for Epstein's 
50th birthday book. That is how worried the President is about his 
association with Epstein.
  Trump has gone after government-funded media as well. But before I 
turn to that, the assault on PBS and NPR, I want to note that the clock 
is turning midnight in Alabama, in Arkansas, in Illinois, in Iowa, and 
in Louisiana and Minnesota and Missouri and Mississippi and Oklahoma 
and Wisconsin--a great swath of American States.
  Since it is turning midnight for the second time in America, the 
first time here on the east coast, I will turn again to this excerpt 
from ``Paul Revere's Ride.''
  Do you have the full poem?

     LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear
     Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
     On the eighteenth of April, in seventy-five;
     Hardly a man is now alive
     Who remembers that famous day and year.
     And lo! As he looks, on the belfry's height
     A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
     He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
     But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
     A second lamp in the belfry burns!

  The second lamp indicated an attack by the British was coming from 
the sea.

     A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
     A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
     And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
     Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:
     That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
     The fate of a nation was riding that night;
     And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
     Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
     So through the night rode Paul Revere;
     And so through the night went his cry of alarm
     To every Middlesex village and farm,--
     A cry of defiance and not of fear,
     A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
     And a word that shall echo forevermore!
     For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
     Through all our history, to the last,
     In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
     The people will waken and listen to hear
     The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
     And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

  The midnight message was that the Colonies were in trouble, that they 
were under attack by the British. Now it is our U.S. Constitution and 
our freedoms that are under attack by the President of the United 
States.
  I was asking for the full poem from my team member Mike because I 
love the first part of this poem, which describes how a person put the 
lamps in the belfry.

     Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
     By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
     To the belfry-chamber overhead,
     And startled the pigeons from their perch
     On the sombre rafters, that round him made
     Masses and moving shapes of shade,
     By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
     To the highest window in the wall,
     Where he paused to listen and look down
     A moment on the roofs of the town,
     And the moonlight flowing over all.
     Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
     In their night-encampment on the hill,
     Wrapped in silence so deep and still
     That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
     The watchful night-wind, as it went
     Creeping along from tent to tent,
     And seeming to whisper, ``All is well!''
     A moment only he feels the spell
     Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
     Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
     For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
     On a shadowy something far away,
     Where the river widens to meet the bay,--
     A line of black that bends and floats
     On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.
     Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
     Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
     On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
     Now he patted his horse's side,
     Now gazed at the landscape far and near,
     Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
     And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
     But mostly he watched with eager search
     The belfry-tower of the Old North Church,
     As it rose above the graves on the hill,
     Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
     And lo! As he looks, on the belfry's height--

  That is when he saw the glimmer of light and then not one but two 
lanterns--the signal that a ship was the source of the attack. The 
attack was coming from the sea. And off he went to make the warnings to 
folks.
  There are times in our history when it is important to ring the alarm 
bells, and I am standing before you here at 1:05 eastern time, 
uncomfortable after standing this many hours. My back is not a happy 
camper; I messed it up jogging some weeks ago. But I am going to stand 
here for some time more to do all I can to ring the alarm bells, to 
sound the alarm that an authoritarian has taken control of our 
government and is brutally assaulting due process and freedom of speech 
and freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, and weaponizing the 
judiciary to go after the folks he considers to be his political 
enemies. This is what dictators do in foreign countries--they lock up 
their opponents.
  I was down in Nicaragua with my daughter a few years ago. She was 
working for the summer guiding trucks through the volcanoes in that 
country. While I was there, there was an election approaching. What was 
happening? The President of the country, Daniel Ortega, was 
coordinating the imprisonment of those that might run against him.
  Nothing quite intimidates you from running for President like the 
existing President locking you up. Campaign over. No election held.
  Now we have a President with an enemies list who is targeting those 
he has disagreed with, those who have criticized him, for a special 
strategy of persecution and prosecution. That is not the way we do 
things in America. That is injustice, not justice. It is a huge assault 
against the values that every child hears when they hear that the law 
applies to the rich and powerful here and that it is administered with 
integrity, not with political vengeance. But here we are now, just like 
those countries with dictators, where the government targets its 
political enemies and goes after them.
  And, of course, Trump goes after government-funded media as well as 
the broadcast media. On May 1, he issued Executive orders slashing 
funding for PBS and NPR. Now, the President doesn't have a line-item 
veto--can't do that, but he did.
  In this case, he did submit a request to Congress to approve his 
cuts, and I would say, unfortunately, it did get a majority vote in the 
House and the Senate. So at least that piece--that attack was done 
according to the law, unlike these other lawsuits, which were kind of 
extortionist.
  On September 30, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting ceased 
operating.
  In March, Trump began to dismantle the Voice of America, which was 
created to counter propaganda from authoritarian governments during the 
Second World War. Why in the hell is the President of the United States 
dismantling a voice that counters propaganda from authoritarian 
governments?
  We think of Liberty's torch held high, the Statue of Liberty--beacon 
of the world. It has some deeper meanings to Americans. Welcome to the 
land of freedom, welcome to the land of opportunity, not welcome to the 
land of authoritarian control. As a beacon, as a

[[Page S7612]]

light to the world, it represents what we stand for and have stood for 
in so many corners of the globe, leading to such enormous respect and 
admiration for our country. But here is the President of the United 
States dismantling the Voice of America, which stood up for freedom 
around the world.
  Voice of America had become a powerful check on disinformation from 
authoritarian regimes, broadcasting in 49 languages to 360 million 
people every week. Now that powerful voice has been silenced. 
Authoritarians around the world celebrated these cuts, including the 
Chinese Government, which quickly took over the radio frequencies.
  Let's not forget that on February 12, Trump removed the Associated 
Press from the White House press pool because they refused to change 
the name from the ``Gulf of Mexico'' to the ``Gulf of America,'' 
controlling who can be in the press pool at the White House.
  So ABC, attacked; CBS, attacked; the Wall Street Journal, attacked; 
Voice of America, attacked; public broadcasting, attacked; Associated 
Press, attacked. That is what an assault on freedom of the press looks 
like.
  Even the world's richest billionaires who own social media platforms 
and claim to champion free speech have fallen in line, to the point of 
literally falling in line behind Trump at his inauguration.
  To understand why, we only need to think back to 2016. At a rally in 
Fort Worth, TX, in 2016, Trump threatened Jeff Bezos, who owns Amazon 
and the Washington Post, with an antitrust action, saying: If I become 
President, oh, do they have problems. They are going to have such 
problems. They were going to have such problems that the Washington 
Post editorial board did not endorse a Presidential candidate in 2024 
for the first time in 26 years after being threatened by Donald Trump. 
His threats have impact because he is President of the United States. 
Nor did the Los Angeles Times endorse.

  Trump has gone further in suppressing freedom of speech--taking 
control of the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian museums, canceling 
programs, reviewing exhibits, firing employees, scrubbing Federal 
websites of words he opposes. Censorship alive and well.
  Then, egregiously, we have the utilization of a 1952 Red Scare law. 
That law said that the Secretary of State--if he didn't like what 
someone said or views that were held and thought that person might be a 
risk to the United States, they could be denied a visa. But even during 
McCarthyism at its height, this law was never used to expel people from 
the United States of America for expressing an opinion.
  But this year, our Secretary of State bragged about throwing hundreds 
of students out of our country because they expressed an opinion on the 
Middle East that our Secretary of State did not like. Talk about 
censorship and an assault on freedom of speech.
  I was always struck by the power of the phrase ``I disagree with what 
you say, but I would defend to death your right to say it.'' That is 
the spirit that has imbued, invigorated our democracy and our freedom 
for 250 years. But now, because a student criticizes the Netanyahu 
government for their bombing campaign in Gaza and their deprivation 
campaign in Gaza and their destruction campaign in Gaza, they are 
thrown out of the country.
  I thought universities were places where we encourage students to 
examine each other's views, to debate the issues right and wrong. 
Certainly, a university is a place where robust debate and differences 
of opinions should be aired. That is part of the learning process. 
People grow up when they are in a university and hear things that 
conflict with the established viewpoint they have with their family.
  I grew up in a blue-collar community. I didn't know people who had 
gone to college. Nobody in my family had gone to college. I go off to 
my first year of college, and I am in classes about European history 
and American history, about international affairs, and I am going, 
really? The things I am hearing and the things I am reading don't match 
the impressions I had growing up. But those impressions came from 
Reader's Digest, and Reader's Digest had a certain light on the world, 
a certain angle on the world, and now the university has exposed me to 
many other opinions.
  Throwing people out of our country because they express an opinion 
the Secretary of State doesn't like is a massively egregious assault on 
freedom of speech and is intimidation. Students like Mahmoud Khalil at 
Columbia University or Rumeysa Ozturk at Tufts--neither was accused of 
a crime. Both simply exercised the freedom of speech we all assume they 
have. But they exercised it to protest Netanyahu's war in Gaza. That 
was unacceptable to our Secretary of State, and he revoked their visas 
and the visas of hundreds of other students, saying: We do it every 
day, every time I find one of these lunatics.
  There are a lot of people I disagree with. It is kind of just a cheap 
shot to dismiss their viewpoints by calling them a lunatic. They often 
have a whole set of arguments that are worth hearing and worth 
understanding.
  That is what should be happening in the process of learning, the 
process of education, not throwing people out because they air a view 
you disagree with--that one person in our government, the Secretary of 
State, disagrees with.
  We should get rid of that law. We should have 100 Senators here 
saying: Amen; we are getting rid of that law.
  It says that an alien can be excluded if the Secretary of State 
personally determines the alien's admission to the United States would 
compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy interest. It doesn't even 
sound like that law authorizes someone being expelled from the United 
States. The alien's admission sounds like an alien's entry into the 
United States would compromise a compelling U.S. foreign policy issue. 
Well, extraordinarily vague standard, for sure. Extraordinary power to 
be invested in one person, to be chief censor of the United States of 
America. It is a chilling attempt to silence free speech that presents 
viewpoints out of favor with the administration.
  Now the Trump administration is seeking complete control of press 
reporting at the Pentagon. Thankfully, all media outlets--or virtually 
all, I should say--have refused to submit to this new policy.
  I will read and share a report from the Washington Post and a second 
from an NPR journalist.
  The first story: ``Media including FOX News overwhelmingly reject 
Pentagon press policy.'' It is October 15, so hot off the press almost:

       FOX News, along with ABC, CBS, and NBC, did not sign the 
     Defense Department's press policy by Tuesday's deadline, 
     having earlier in the day denounced the new regulations in a 
     joint statement that included CNN, which previously said it 
     would not sign.
       ``Today, we join virtually every other news organization in 
     declining to agree to the Pentagon's new requirements, which 
     would restrict journalists' ability to keep the nation and 
     the world informed of important national security issues,'' 
     the news networks wrote. ``The policy is without precedent 
     and threatens core journalistic protections. We will continue 
     to cover the U.S. military as each of our organizations has 
     done for many decades, upholding the principles of a free and 
     independent press.''
       FOX's dissent is notable considering the Trump-friendly 
     views of many of its opinion hosts, whose ranks previously 
     included Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
       The policy prohibits journalists from accessing or 
     soliciting information the Defense Department doesn't make 
     available for them and revokes Pentagon press credentials for 
     those who will not sign on. The new rules have drawn an 
     anguished chorus of detractors across the ideological 
     spectrum since they were announced last month.

  Censorship, plain and simple--reporters being told they cannot ask 
questions; they can only report the information that is handed to them 
in a press release. Well, so much for any story that matters. A press 
release is just tooting the Department's own horn. They are certainly 
not going to lay out the stories that Americans need to hear about.
  I worked for 2 years in the Pentagon for Secretary Weinberger. 
Secretary Weinberger was President Reagan's Secretary of Defense. I was 
hired as a Presidential fellow. I had the privilege in that role of 
interviewing with about 50 offices throughout the building and then 
arranging to work for different offices, often for 3 or 4 months and 
then rotating, so I worked a lot of different roles.
  My first assignment was to serve as the desk officer for Jordan for 
the Defense Security Assistance Agency. The

[[Page S7613]]

reason for that is one desk officer had previously covered Lebanon and 
Jordan, but then the tower the marines were housed in in Lebanon was 
blown up. A lot of marines died. From that moment going forward, 
Lebanon required our whole attention. Yet Jordan--we were trying to get 
involved in the Middle East peace process. There was an upcoming 
meeting to discuss military aid, and someone needed staff to prepare 
us. That was my role in that first assignment.
  I was in a bunch of different assignments, most of them involving 
strategic nuclear policy. But one of the assignments was to be a budget 
analyst for a research and engineering section. The way this worked was 
that every program got a budget review. I was assigned a long list of 
programs, and then I would hold a little hearing in which the colonel 
or whoever was in charge of that program would come in, and we would 
look at all the financial records and determine, is this program making 
sense?
  I would write up what was called a program budget decision, a PBD. 
That program budget decision basically said things like ``No, we can 
cut this program by X because there are carried-over funds'' or ``We 
can cut this program or eliminate this program because it is no longer 
serving the purpose it was intended, and in fact, they didn't actually 
use the funds the previous year'' or so on and so forth. In the course 
of that, I saw a huge amount of waste in the Pentagon programs.
  At that time, there were tons of stories being written about waste in 
the Pentagon. They still to this day can't account for the money that 
is given to them. You hear people on both sides of the aisle say that 
even after all these years and all these requirements that they have a 
vastly improved auditing system to be able to track where the money 
goes, they still can't do it, and they still don't do it.
  None of the stories would be written if you were just reporting on a 
press release because they weren't flattering stories. You had 
journalists asking questions about this and that and asking for 
documents and trying to get to the bottom of what was really going on. 
All that is what Pete Hegseth is trying to suppress in his assault on 
the freedom of the press.
  Now I am reading the story again:

       The TV networks joined many other outlets in saying no, 
     including The Washington Post, the New York Times, the Wall 
     Street Journal, the Associated Press, Reuters, Bloomberg News 
     and the Atlantic. Right-wing outlets including Newsmax, the 
     Washington Times, the Daily Caller and Washington Examiner 
     also declined to sign, along with a raft of defense-related 
     trade publications.
       As of Tuesday's 5 p.m. deadline, only the MAGA-friendly One 
     America News had said it would sign the policy.

  Well, that is certainly an egregious attack on freedom of the press. 
Ring the alarm bells. It is not one misunderstood event. It is ABC. It 
is CBS. It is the use of licenses and mergers to compel and lawsuits to 
compel. It is the Wall Street Journal. It is NPR. It is Voice of 
America. And then it is all of these other news agencies being asked to 
stop doing basic reporting on military affairs.
  This is a page that has all of the groups that refused to sign and 
the one that did. One America News signed, and approximately 35-ish 
organizations refused.
  OK. Now, Tom Bowman wrote an article titled: ``Why I'm handing in my 
Pentagon press pass.''

       Today, NPR will lose access to the Pentagon because we will 
     not sign an unprecedented Defense Department document, which 
     warns that journalists may lose their press credentials for 
     ``soliciting'' even unclassified information from federal 
     employees that has not been officially approved for release. 
     That policy prevents us from doing our job. Signing that 
     document would make us stenographers parroting press 
     releases, not watchdogs holding government officials 
     accountable.
       No reputable news organization signed the new rule--not 
     mainstream outlets like NPR, The Washington Post, CNN, and 
     The New York Times, nor the conservative Washington Times or 
     the right-wing Newsmax, run by a noted ally of President 
     Trump. Some 100 resident Pentagon press will be barred from 
     the building if they don't sign by the end of business on 
     Tuesday.

  This is Tom Bowman speaking.

       I've held my Pentagon press pass for 28 years. For most of 
     that time, when I wasn't overseas in combat zones embedding 
     with troops, I walked the halls, talking to and getting to 
     know officers from all over the globe, at times visiting them 
     in their offices.
       Did I as a reporter solicit information? Of course. It's 
     called journalism: finding out what's really going on behind 
     the scenes and not accepting wholesale what any government or 
     administration says.
       I remember how then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld was 
     ecstatic after the fall of Baghdad in 2003, insisting that it 
     showed the success of the U.S. invasion. Not long after, I 
     ran into an officer at the Pentagon who told me, ``No, Tom. 
     It's not a success. Saddam Hussein's supporters are attacking 
     our supply lines. Now, we have to send more troops back to 
     guard them.'' That was because the United States, at 
     Rumsfeld's insistence, never sent an adequate number of 
     forces to Iraq to begin with--a fact another Army general 
     warned me about, unsolicited--and I reported on, before the 
     war even began.
       Instead of toeing the official line, that reporting helped 
     people understand what U.S. troops were really facing. Far 
     from being a success, the fall of Baghdad marked the 
     beginning of an insurgency that stretched on for years.

  Then the article goes on to convey.
  You know, when I was first elected and came here to the Senate, we 
were still in the Afghanistan war, which I quite fiercely opposed as 
well as the strategy of trying to occupy Afghanistan--a country of a 
vastly different population from the United States, an economy that was 
often based on very rural-, agricultural-, village-based practices; 
that often had regional militias; that was controlled by a strongman; 
was a place where, obviously, the dominant language differed from the 
U.S., where the dominant religion differed, and where the world 
experiences differed.
  I remember there was a poem by Rudyard Kipling about the British 
experience in Afghanistan. The end of the poem always stuck in my head, 
although I may not have the lines exactly right, but it went something 
like this: If you are injured and lying on the Afghanistan plains, roll 
over on your rifle and blow out your brain before the women come out 
and carve up what remains. It was something like that, but the essence 
of it was the British were unwelcome in Afghanistan. The Afghani people 
prided themselves on having expelled foreign group after foreign group 
after foreign group over the centuries, including the Russians.
  I went up to the bridge in the northern part of Afghanistan where the 
last Russian forces had retreated back into Russia out of Afghanistan. 
We needed reporters to tell us what the hell was really going on in 
Afghanistan because, when you visited there, you got the rosiest story: 
Oh, we have this great program in which people are signing up to be 
part of the army, and it is ending corruption in the society, and they 
are really taking to that training, and they are going to be able to 
defend themselves, and we won't be needed, and we have this new 
strategy of take and hold because our old strategy of take and then 
leave didn't work, and so on and so forth.
  Reporters are essential to understanding the defense enterprise. The 
idea the Department of Defense is trying to shut down reporters and 
only have them issue the happy face press releases is a terrible insult 
to the American people. It is a terrible transgression of freedom of 
the press--so not OK.
  Well, this has been quite a list of assaults by this government on 
freedom of the press.
  When I was seated in the Rotunda for the President's inauguration and 
his inaugural speech--just down the hall from here--Trump claimed in 
that speech to have ``brought free speech back to America,'' but the 
opposite is the case. This President has launched an unparalleled 
assault on free speech and freedom of the press and is doing all he 
can, with every lever available, to intimidate and silence his critics.

  But let me pause for a moment and return to why we are in a 
government shutdown--and in one word: healthcare. Republicans have shut 
down the government to continue the strategy of slashing Americans' 
healthcare.
  Why did they pass this, what they call the Big Beautiful Bill that 
was actually a big, ugly assault on Americans' healthcare? Why did they 
do it? Well, the short answer is, to help fund tax breaks for 
billionaires.
  Why did they proceed to lay out a vast reduction in Medicaid that 
would be implemented after the next election? Because they thought a 
lot of

[[Page S7614]]

people would be upset by it. Well, because it helps fund tax breaks for 
billionaires.
  Why did they cut nutrition programs for children? Because it is tax 
breaks for billionaires and because all those cuts weren't enough to 
fund all the tax breaks they wanted to give.
  The bill also increases the national debt by $30 trillion over the 
next 30 years--hardly a monument to fiscal responsibility. It is a 
``families lose, billionaires win'' proposition.
  In Oregon, the average cost of buying healthcare on the exchange is 
forecast to increase by some 68 percent. Now, we will probably have 
some updates to that number because the new cost of the premiums and 
the new lower tax credits have been posted and people are starting to 
get letters, telling them what their policies will be, but it is 
estimated to be about $1,300 a person.
  Nationally, it is expected to skyrocket by 114 percent on average--
more than double, more than double. It is not inflation of 3 percent or 
4 percent or 5 percent. People might grumble about 3, 4, or 5 percent 
and be pretty upset by 10 percent, but 68 percent or 114 percent--a 
doubling? a more than doubling? That is an issue for families, and that 
is what is being done--slashing those credits.
  People will be hurt. People will go without insurance, and their 
modest healthcare problems will become big healthcare problems, and 
their trips to the emergency room to address those big healthcare 
problems will be more expensive both because of the emergency room and 
because their problems are now much larger.
  The fact that they don't have insurance to pay the bill means there 
will be a lot less revenue for those clinics and hospitals. The Sheps 
Center estimates 300-plus rural hospitals will be forced to close by 
the drop in revenue from the attack on healthcare, including the attack 
on Medicaid. It is a red carpet for the billionaires. It is redtape for 
America's families. Make it hard to sign up for healthcare.
  I believe healthcare is so fundamental that it is a right. In any 
nation that seeks to provide a foundation for its families to thrive, 
basic healthcare is a given, and the health outcomes are better in 
virtually every other advanced nation around the world--developed 
nation around the world. They spend less, and they have better health 
outcomes than our system.
  So our system is not perfect, but it was vastly improved under 
President Obama. It was improved because we said: Folks who are not 
eligible for Medicaid should be eligible, like people with disabilities 
and veterans; and we said the level of which you are eligible should be 
expanded upwards because the people outside of Medicaid are still too 
poor to buy insurance.
  Then we said: But middle class insurance was too expensive, so we 
should provide some tax credits to help people buy those policies, and 
we should put it up on an exchange so people can compare those private 
policies so they can pick the best policy for their family.
  In April of 2009, I am a new Senator. I am here, and somebody hands 
me a copy of a piece written by Frank Luntz. He was an adviser to the 
Republican Party. What this said was, regardless of what Democrats 
propose under the Obama administration and the Democratic majority to 
improve healthcare, we will try to stop it, and we have done focus 
groups to find out the most effective way to stop it and the most 
effective ways to call it a government takeover.
  I was just stunned--just absolutely stunned--by this presentation. 
Here is someone saying, if the other party has some good ideas to 
improve healthcare, we are going to oppose it regardless, and no matter 
what it is we will call it a government takeover because that phrase 
makes people angry. Well, it was such a big lie.
  The proposal that came forward was modeled on a Republican Governor 
who was later a Senator here, Mitt Romney. When he was a Governor for a 
Democrat State, he proposed giving tax credits to help people buy 
insurance policies from private companies--no government takeover at 
all. But here was this press release saying: Here is our strategy.
  It wasn't even a press release. It was an internal document advising 
Republicans and Republican leadership on the best way to defeat a 
healthcare proposal regardless of what the proposal was.
  And I just thought, aren't we all here working together to improve 
healthcare? Boy, did I feel naive.
  What I found was something I had heard about but didn't really 
believe until I came here, which is we have become trapped in 
entrenched warfare in which the minority party, instead of seeking to 
actually produce good policies, is mainly aiming at frustrating the 
majority party.
  This was kind of the revelation and strategy--or the revolution and 
strategy--that Gingrich pursued. He said, you know, we here in the 
House have been striving every cycle to get our ideas into the 
majority's bills. We get quite a few of them in, and we like that, but 
it doesn't present a case for us to be in the majority. So let's shift 
gears. Quit working with the Democrats, and frustrate them as much as 
we can, and when they fail, we will say: Look, dump them. Elect us. 
They didn't get the job done. Over here in the Senate, Mitch McConnell 
said: Hey, obstruction--Gingrich gives obstruction a good name.

  And then this cycle of obstruction began here in the Senate. Only in 
the Senate, there are more tools for the minority to obstruct the 
majority of either party--Republicans obstructing a majority of 
Democrats or Democrats obstructing a Republican majority. That is not 
the way to make this world work better, this country to work better.
  So here we are with this purely partisan ``Big Ugly Betrayal of a 
Bill'' that slashes healthcare, and Democrats reach out and said: Look, 
let's fix this. This is going to be bad politics for you all 
Republicans.
  Seventy-five percent--actually, I think it was 78 percent--of the 
folks who are on the policies are in States Trump won--on the exchange, 
on policies on the exchange. So it isn't Democrats saying: Hey, the 
bulk of the folks are in blue States; so we are going to propose 
something.
  No, no. The idea is to help anyone afflicted by this egregious attack 
on healthcare because we want families to thrive. We don't want a 
``families lose, billionaires win'' to slash programs that are 
fundamental to families to give even bigger trust funds for 
billionaires to pass on to five generations into the future. That is 
not going to make America better. Enable families to thrive, and 
healthcare is one of the foundations.
  One of the questions becomes: What is the connection between this 
bill and Trump's authoritarian takeover?
  The key is that when you have an authoritarian takeover, you listen 
to the billionaires.
  Do we have that picture, still, of the billionaires lined up behind 
the President at the Inaugural Address, his swearing in--not champions 
for healthcare and housing and education and infrastructure investment 
and good-paying jobs, but, instead, folks like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos 
and Mark Zuckerberg--the billionaires.
  So an authoritarian government listens to billionaires. They have 
power, and they pass a bill giving even more money and power to the 
billionaires, slashing the programs for the people. That is the 
connection between the authoritarian strategy of President Trump, his 
inclinations, his violations of the separation of powers and violations 
of the checks and balances. It is a connection between that 
authoritarianism and the bill that was passed, what Trump called the 
Big Beautiful Bill and many of us called the ``Big, Ugly Betrayal.''
  Why do we call it a betrayal? Because Trump campaigned on helping 
families, but that bill slashed programs to help families to fund tax 
breaks for billionaires. That bill slashed nutrition to fund tax breaks 
for billionaires. That bill added $30 trillion to our debt over the 
next 30 years to fund tax breaks for billionaires. Authoritarian 
government stops caring about what serves the people of the United 
States of America and starts producing bills designed to help 
billionaires at their expense. That is the connection. It is a 
``families lose, billionaires win'' authoritarian takeover of America, 
and every red-blooded patriot in this country who values our freedom 
needs to make sure they hear the alarm bells ringing and ring the bells 
themselves so we can have a ``families thrive and billionaires pay 
their fair share'' agenda in this place.

[[Page S7615]]

  (Mr. ROUNDS assumed the Chair.)
  The third chapter of this book, ``How Democracies Die,'' lays out a 
little bit more about the American story.
  I am just reading straight from the book here.

       On June 15, 2015, real estate developer and reality-TV star 
     Donald Trump descended an escalator to the lobby of his own 
     building, Trump Tower, to make an announcement: He was 
     running for president. At the time, he was just another long-
     shot candidate who thought his wealth and celebrity might 
     give him a chance or, at the very least, allow him to bask in 
     the spotlight for a few months. Like fellow businessman Henry 
     Ford a century earlier, Trump held some extremist views--his 
     most recent experience with politics had been as a 
     ``birther,'' questioning whether President Barack Obama was 
     born in the United States. To the extent that leading media 
     and political figures took him seriously, it was to denounce 
     him.
       But the primary system had opened up the presidential 
     nomination process more than ever before in American history. 
     And openness is always double-edged. In this new environment, 
     a wider range of politicians, from George McGovern to Barack 
     Obama, could now compete seriously for the presidency. But 
     the window was now also open to true outsiders--individuals 
     who [hadn't] held elective office. In the twenty-three years 
     between 1945 and 1968, under the old convention system, only 
     a single outsider (Dwight Eisenhower) publicly sought the 
     nomination of either party. By contrast, during the first two 
     decades of the primary system, 1972 to 1992, eight outsiders 
     ran (five Democrats and three Republicans), an average of 
     1.25 per election; and between 1996 and 2016, eighteen 
     outsiders competed in one of the two parties' primaries--
     an average of three per election.
       The post-1972 primary system was especially vulnerable to a 
     particular kind of outsider: individuals with enough fame or 
     money to skip the ``invisible primary.''

  Now, the invisible primary, as we talked about earlier, is the fact 
that in order to run, you have to put a lot of money together. So it 
means you have to reach out to a lot of folks across America and ask 
for their support, ask for the support of mayors and county 
commissioners and Governors and Senators and House Members and other 
people with deep pockets to contribute to your campaign. That is the 
invisible primary.
  The editorial page writers, you reach out to them all to try to say: 
Hey, listen to my message. It matters. I would be a good choice. Please 
get involved. Please help. Please write a favorable story about me.
  That is the invisible primary. In other words, those who can skip the 
individual primaries are the celebrities, affluent celebrities.

       Although conservative outsiders Pat Robertson, Pat 
     Buchanan, and Steve Forbes did not manage to overcome the 
     effects of the invisible primary during the 1980s and 1990s, 
     their relative success provided clues [on] how it might be 
     done. Forbes, an extraordinarily wealthy businessman, was 
     able to buy name recognition, while Robertson, a 
     televangelist who founded the Christian Broadcasting Network 
     [CBN], and Buchanan, a television commentator (and early 
     Republican proponent of white nationalism), were both 
     colorful figures with special media access. Although none of 
     them won the nomination, they used massive wealth and 
     celebrity status to become contenders.
       But in the end, celebrity outsiders had always fallen 
     short. And so on [the] early-summer afternoon in the gilded 
     lobby of [the] Trump Tower, there seemed [to be] no reason to 
     think things would be different. To win the nomination, Trump 
     would have to compete in an intricate web of caucuses and 
     primaries against sixteen other candidates. Many of his 
     rivals boasted the kind of resume that had been the hallmark 
     of successful candidates in the past. At the head of the pack 
     was Florida Governor Jeb Bush . . . brother of [the] former 
     president. There were other governors, as well, including 
     Wisconsin's Scott Walker, Louisiana's Bobby Jindal, New 
     Jersey's Chris Christie . . . Ohio's John Kasich, and several 
     rising Republican stars--younger, media-savvy politicians 
     such as Senators Marco Rubio and Rand Paul, who hoped to 
     replicate Barack Obama's fast track to the presidency. Texas, 
     home to three of the last eight elected presidents, offered 
     two more candidates: Senator Ted Cruz and former governor 
     Rick Perry. Besides Trump, two other outsiders threw their 
     hats into the ring: businesswoman Carly Fiorina and 
     neurosurgeon Ben Carson.
       Trump could not hope to win the support of the 
     establishment. Not only did he lack . . . political 
     experience, but he wasn't even a lifelong Republican. Whereas 
     Bush, Rubio, Cruz, Christie, Walker, and Kasich all had deep 
     Republican roots, Trump had switched his party registration 
     several times and . . . even contributed to Hillary Clinton's 
     campaign for the . . . Senate.
       Even after Trump began to surge in the polls, few people 
     took his candidacy seriously. In August 2015, two months 
     after Trump declared his candidacy, Las Vegas bookmakers gave 
     him one-hundred-to-one odds of winning the White House. And 
     in November 2015, as Trump sat high atop the Republican 
     polls, Nate Silver, founder of the FiveThirtyEight blog, 
     whose uncannily accurate predictions in the 2008 and 2012 
     elections had earned him fame and prestige, wrote an article 
     titled ``Dear Media: Stop Freaking Out About Donald Trump's 
     Poll Numbers.'' The article predicted . . . Trump's weakness 
     among party insiders would spell his demise. Despite Trump's 
     seemingly large lead, Silver assured us, his chances of 
     winning the nomination were ``considerably less than 20 
     percent.''
       But the world had changed. Party gatekeepers were shells of 
     what they once were, for two main reasons. One was a dramatic 
     increase in the availability of outside money, [that outside 
     money] accelerated (though hardly caused) by the Supreme 
     Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling. Now even marginal 
     presidential candidates--Michele Bachmann, Herman Cain, 
     Howard Dean, Bernie Sanders--could raise large sums of money, 
     either by finding their own billionaire financier or through 
     small donations via the Internet. The proliferation of well-
     funded primary candidates indicated a more open and fluid 
     political environment.
       The other major factor diminishing the power of traditional 
     gatekeepers was the explosion of alternative media, 
     particularly cable news and social media. Whereas the path to 
     national name recognition once ran through relatively few 
     mainstream channels, which favored establishment 
     politicians over extremists, the new media environment 
     made it easier for celebrities to achieve wide name 
     recognition--and public support--practically overnight. 
     This was particularly true on the Republican side, where 
     the emergence of Fox News and influential radio talk-show 
     personalities--what political commentator David Frum calls 
     the ``conservative entertainment complex''--radicalized 
     conservative voters, to the benefit of ideologically 
     extreme candidates. This gave rise to such phenomena as 
     Herman Cain, the former Godfather Pizza CEO and radio 
     talk-show host, who rocketed to the top of the Republican 
     polls in late 2011 before flaming out because of scandal.
       The nomination process was now wide open.

  So this chapter lays out how, in our modern system, the filters that 
were first envisioned by our Founders, which was that people would 
elect local leaders that they trusted and admired to go to the 
electoral college and the electoral college would make sure that the 
person in the White House was a person of character and had qualities 
that suited the office--the responsibilities of the office, the demands 
of the office--well, that was wiped out when the electors became bound 
to the party.
  And still, there was another factor that served as a bit of a 
filtering mechanism, and that is what the authors are calling the 
invisible primary--the fact that, in order to run across a land as 
large as the United States, you have to find a lot of support, and you 
have to find a lot of support through an incredible number of meetings, 
phone calls, persuasion of mayors and State leaders and congressional 
Members and news media commentators and so forth.
  In that invisible primary, you have to raise a lot of money, as well, 
and that served as sort of a vetting mechanism that gave folks who had 
been in the business of policy and politics some considerable 
influence. But the modern system in Citizens United allows massive 
donations, unlimited in size; allows anonymous donations, as long as 
those donations go not directly to the candidate but to someone 
supporting a parallel campaign of the candidate.
  Now, I want to come back to this question of how Citizens United has 
proceeded to change the dynamics of American politics, but it is now 12 
o'clock somewhere, and that somewhere, midnight, is mountain time--
midnight on mountain time in Colorado, in Montana, New Mexico, Utah, 
Wyoming, Idaho, and Arizona--basically all but the west coast now.
  And so it is midnight again. Let's turn back to ``Paul Revere's 
Ride'' once again and the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Before, I 
was reading excerpts. I think I will read the whole poem this time 
around. It is kind of an American classic, but it has to do with the 
importance of ringing the alarm bells when there is a threat--a threat 
to the Colonies in that case, a threat to the United States now from 
authoritarian control, from the President.
  So this is the poem that Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote about the 
ride of Paul Revere:

       LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear
       Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
       On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
       Hardly a man is now alive
       Who remembers that famous day and year.
       He said to his friend, ``If the British march
       By land or sea from the town to-night,

[[Page S7616]]

       Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
       Of the North Church tower as a signal light,--
       One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
       And I on the opposite shore will be,
       Ready to ride and spread the alarm
       Through every Middlesex village and farm,
       For the country folk to be up and to arm.''
       Then he said, ``Good night!'' and with muffled oar
       Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
       Just as the moon rose over the bay,
       Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
       The Somerset, British man-of-war;
       A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
       Across the moon like a prison bar,
       And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
       By its own reflection in the tide.
       Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street,
       Wanders and watches with eager ears,
       Till in the silence around him he hears
       The muster of men at the barrack door,
       The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
       And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
       Marching down to their boats on the shore.
       Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
       By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
       To the belfry-chamber overhead,
       And startled the pigeons from their perch
       On the sombre rafters, that round him made
       Masses and moving shapes of shade,--
       By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
       To the highest window in the wall,
       Where he paused to listen and look down
       A moment on the roofs of the town,
       And the moonlight flowing over all.
       Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
       In their night-encampment on the hill,
       Wrapped in silence so deep and still
       That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
       The watchful night-wind, as it went
       Creeping along from tent to tent,
       And seeming to whisper, ``All is well!''
       A moment only he feels the spell
       Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
       Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
       For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
       On a shadowy something far away,
       Where the river widens to meet the bay,--
       A line of black that bends and floats
       On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.
       Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
       Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
       On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
       Now he patted his horse's side,
       Now gazed at the landscape far and near,
       Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
       And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
       But mostly he watched with eager search
       The belfry-tower of the Old North Church,
       As it rose above the graves on the hill,
       Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
       And lo! As he looks, on the belfry's height
       A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
       He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
       But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
       A second lamp in the belfry burns!
       A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
       A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
       And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
       Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:
       That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
       The fate of a nation was riding that night;
       And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
       Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
       He has left the village and mounted the steep,
       And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
       Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
       And under the alders that skirt its edge,
       Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
       Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.
       It was twelve by the village clock,
       When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
       He heard the crowing of the cock,
       And the barking of the farmer's dog,
       And felt the damp of the river fog,
       That rises after the sun goes down.
       It was one by the village clock,
       When he galloped into Lexington.
       He saw the gilded weathercock
       Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
       And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
       Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
       As if they already stood aghast
       At the bloody work they would look upon.
       It was two by the village clock,
       When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
       He heard the bleating of the flock,
       And the twitter of birds among the trees,
       And felt the breath of the morning breeze
       Blowing over the meadows brown.
       And one was safe and asleep in his bed
       Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
       Who that day would be lying dead,
       Pierced by a British musket-ball.
       You know the rest. In the books you have read,
       How the British Regulars fired and fled,--
       How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
       From behind each fence and farm-yard wall,
       Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
       Then crossing the fields to emerge again
       Under the trees at the turn of the road,
       And only pausing to fire and load.
       So through the night rode Paul Revere;
       And so through the night went his cry of alarm
       To every Middlesex village and farm,--
       A cry of defiance and not of fear,
       A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
       And a word that shall echo forevermore!
       For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
       Through all our history, to the last,
       In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
       The people will waken and listen to hear
       The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
       And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

  I am here tonight to ring the alarm bells about the attack on due 
process, on freedom of speech, freedom of the press, the weaponization 
of the Department of Justice against political enemies, the assault on 
our fundamental constitutional separation of powers, particularly the 
power of the purse and the effort to direct the military into our towns 
to assault peaceful protesters.
  This is the work of an authoritarian government, featuring all the 
basic features when a republic has lost its checks and balances. It has 
instead a rubberstamp for a legislature, a Supreme Court that delivers 
court rescission after court rescission, transmitting powers to the 
Executive that don't exist in our Constitution, and an aggressive 
authoritarian personality at the helm.
  We are in deep trouble. Ring the alarm bells. Hear the alarm bells.
  When folks in my townhalls asked what they can do, I said: Get off 
the couch. You can't save our Republic with a pillow over your head. 
Fiercely hold your electeds accountable. Press them with your messages 
on the phone, with your messages in the email, with your messages at 
the townhalls, with your demonstrations in the street. Demonstrate 
outside their office. Let them know you want us to defend our Republic 
against this authoritarian takeover. And join affinity groups--because 
to be angry and alone is to be depressed, but to be angry and organized 
with others is to be energized and effective. And the only way you stop 
an authoritarian takeover is for citizens to be energized and 
effective.
  And those folks at my townhall, they challenged me. They said: You 
are not doing enough. Look at what happened last week with the assault 
on our networks, with the President trying to shape and intimidate what 
they can say and who they can have on their programs and even what 
comedians can be there at night. If the comedians are insulting the 
President, the President doesn't like that, and they need to behave 
because their licenses--their broadcast licenses--their mergers are in 
trouble.
  So ABC and CBS bent the knee. How can this be happening? Do more. 
Call it out.
  Here is a President attacking public broadcasting, shutting down the 
Voice of America, which has been our voice to counter disinformation 
around the world since it was founded with a particular emphasis on 
making sure that the disinformation from authoritarian governments 
around the world was countered with truth and light to the world, to so 
many populations who could never get the truth from their own 
government but could get the truth from the Voice of America.
  The attack on the Wall Street Journal, threatened $10 billion lawsuit 
because they published a picture allegedly drawn by President Trump 
that President Trump didn't want publicly disclosed.
  Collectively, we are in deep trouble. When Paul Revere rode, the 
underlying sense was people heard him, and they responded, and they 
repulsed the British attack.
  Now we need Americans to make sure that they hear the voices 
expressed--7 million strong at 2,700 locations across the country on 
Saturday--saying we do not have a King. A President is not a King, and 
the law is not a suggestion, and the Constitution is not optional--7 
million people taking to the streets to hold us accountable, to hold 
the President accountable.
  Are we listening? Are we responding to the threat?
  So I am going to skip through the balance of this chapter which lays 
out essentially what I was describing, and that is that the 
circumstances have changed about the way Presidential candidates are 
selected which gave a lot of room to have candidates who would not have 
been eligible before because they didn't carry, if you will, the life 
experience or the character suitable to serving in the Oval Office.

[[Page S7617]]

  But Citizens United changed a lot of that. Citizens United said: Hey, 
if you are an ordinary citizen and you make a donation, it has to be 
disclosed if it is over $200, and you are limited as to how much you 
can give. I think the levels are quite high actually. There are very 
few people who can afford to give that amount. But it is $7,000 now at 
this moment; $3,500 in primary; $3,500 in the general. The limit is 
$7,000 and disclosure.
  But if you give it to the friend of the candidate to run a parallel 
campaign, you can give unlimited sums, and you can give it secretly.
  So what did we see in the last election? Well, we saw, for example, 
executives from the crypto community put $40 million into an Ohio 
Senate race because the incumbent was the chair of the Banking 
Committee, and the crypto community did not think that individual, that 
Senator, had been attentive enough to their desires--and so $40 
million.
  Can you imagine? Think about this from the normal point of view from 
Americans. If you are going to raise $1 million in 3 months--90 days--
you won't do it, even if you get on the phone and you raise $10,000 
every night. You will still only have $900,000, and a couple hundred of 
that would be spent on the cost of fundraising.
  So just imagine, who in America thinks they can sit on the phone and 
raise $10,000 a night? Simply absurd. That is an absurd amount of 
money. But that is for $1 million. Here a couple executives put $40 
million into a race. And although they weren't required to disclose who 
they were, they wanted the world to know.
  So a crypto bill flew through this Chamber because Senators are 
terrified that they will be the next target of Citizens United money 
just like our former colleague from Ohio was a target.
  Massive money like that, massively corrupting, and the argument of 
the Supreme Court: Oh, if you give the money directly to the 
candidate--well, yes, there can be limits because we could see how that 
can influence a candidate, but if you give it to the friend of the 
candidate, well, the candidate isn't directly receiving the money from 
you so they are not influenced, so, therefore, no countervailing 
interest in our democracy to put a limit on donations going to the 
friend of the candidate to run a parallel campaign.

  It is a completely bogus argument. Nobody that is operating in the 
real world of politics thinks that if you give massive money to their 
friend to run a parallel campaign, somehow they are not aware of it and 
potentially influenced by it.
  At the end of this chapter, they summarize the four warning signs of 
authoritarian power in the context of the early Trump administration. 
Remember, this was written in 2018.
  So the first question or sign, concern about identifying 
authoritarian power was: Does the candidate--or in this case, the 
President--successfully, I will note, reject the Constitution and 
express a willingness to violate it?

       Do they suggest a need for antidemocratic measures, such as 
     canceling elections, violating or suspending the 
     Constitution, banning certain organizations, or restricting 
     basic civil or political rights?
       Do they seek to use (or endorse the use of) 
     extraconstitutional means to change the government, such as 
     military coups, violent insurrections, or mass protests 
     [thereby] forcing a change in the government?
       Do they attempt to undermine the legitimacy of elections, 
     for example, by refusing to accept credible electoral 
     results?

  They proceed to go through and restate each of these four foundations 
that should make you worry that you are headed for an authoritarian 
takeover.
  No 2. was the denial of legitimacy of political opponents.

       Do they baselessly describe their partisan rivals as 
     criminals, whose supposed violation of the law (or potential 
     to do so) disqualifies them from full participation in the 
     political arena?

  Well, ``Lock her up.'' The cry ``Lock her up'' answers that question.
  No. 3, toleration or encouragement of violence.

       Have they tacitly endorsed violence by their supporters by 
     refusing to unambiguously condemn it and punish it?
       Have they praised (or refused to condemn) other significant 
     acts of political violence, either in the past or elsewhere 
     in the world?

  Well, yes, again and again for Mr. Donald Trump. Think about how he 
tacitly encouraged violence against this Capitol. And many of us 
currently in the Senate were here at the moment that the mob, urged on 
by Trump, assaulted this Capitol, calling for the death of the Vice 
President and tried to interrupt the counting of the ballots.
  The fourth, readiness to curtail civil liberties of opponents, 
including media.

       Have they supported laws or policies that restrict civil 
     liberties, such as expanded libel or defamation laws or laws 
     restricting protest, criticism of the government, or certain 
     civic or political organizations?
       Have they threatened to take legal or other punitive action 
     against critics in rival parties, civil society, or the 
     media?
       Have they praised repressive measures taken by other 
     governments, either in the past or elsewhere in the world?

  Well, yes and yes and yes.

       Have they threatened to take . . . punitive action against 
     critics?

  Trump has his list of enemies. He has said publicly he intends to 
weaponize and is weaponizing the Justice Department to go after them.

       [Has he] praised repressive measures?

  Well, yes, time and time again praising dictators around the world--
not democracies but dictators.
  So it is four for four in terms of the warning signs that exist for 
our democracy, and that was before the straight-out actions that we are 
witnessing today.
  As I noted, after I kind of summarized what the experts have laid out 
in this book ``How Democracies Die,'' the key point being that you may 
think democracies die through military coups, through men with guns. 
And, yes, many democracies did die that way, but now the way they are 
dying around the world is not men with guns; it is elected leaders who 
erode the boundaries of the checks and balances of the Constitution. 
That is the version as we have seen in republic after republic after 
republic slide into a strongman authoritarian state, and that is 
exactly what we are in the middle of right now here in the United 
States.
  So I addressed free speech. I addressed the violation of laws 
governing the Executive. I addressed free press. Let's talk about how 
Trump is violating due process.
  Earlier, I noted how Secretary Rubio has used the McCarthyist 1952 
law to silence the freedom of speech for foreign students who disagree 
with the administration over foreign policy. There was no due process 
for the students that Rubio disfavored, just as there was no due 
process for the Venezuelan immigrants Trump sent to El Salvador.
  Trump ignored the Supreme Court's 9 to 0 order to facilitate the 
return of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, ignoring the Supreme Court's order is a 
huge--huge--flag that we are deep into the authoritarian takeover of 
our country.
  Due process, the words, may sound like legal mumbo jumbo, but it is 
the guardian of our freedom; that before you can take away my freedom, 
you have to proceed in a certain fashion that gives me the ability to 
defend myself and not be simply tossed into a van and deported from the 
country or tossed into a prison cell.
  You must follow step by step. That is the due process, and that is 
what protects my freedom. The guardian of our freedom, due process, 
keeps any one of us from being locked up by an offended strongman.
  I want to read two pieces about the thrust of due process and what 
that can mean for all of us. The first is titled ``The Emergency Is 
Here.'' It is an Ezra Klein editorial or opinion piece--an op ed.

       The emergency is here.
       The crisis is now. It is not six months away. It is not 
     another Supreme Court ruling away from what is happening. 
     It's happening now.
       Perhaps not to you, not yet. But to others. Real people. We 
     know their names. We know their stories.
       The president of the United States is disappearing people 
     to a Salvadoran prison for terrorists. A prison known by its 
     initials--CECOT. A prison built for disappearance. A prison 
     where there is no education or remediation or recreation, 
     because it is a prison that does not intend to release its 
     inhabitants back out into the world. It is a prison where the 
     only way out, in the words of El Salvador's so-called justice 
     minister, is a coffin.
       On Monday, President Trump said, in the Oval Office, in 
     front of the cameras, sitting next to President Nayib Bukele 
     of El Salvador, that he would like to do this to U.S. 
     citizens, as well.


[[Page S7618]]


  Donald Trump word for word:

       If it's a homegrown criminal, I have no problem. Now, we're 
     studying the laws right now. Pam is studying. If we can do 
     that, that's good. And I'm talking about violent people. I'm 
     talking about really bad people. Really bad people. Every bit 
     as bad as the ones coming in.
       He told Bukele that he needed to build five more of these 
     prisons because America has so many people Trump wants to 
     send.

  Trump said:

       ``Why? Do you think there's a special category of person? 
     They're as bad as anybody that comes in. We have bad ones, 
     too. And I'm all for it. Because we can do things with the 
     president for less money and have great security. And we have 
     a huge prison population. We have a huge number of prisons. 
     And then we have the private prisons, and some are operated 
     well, I guess, and some aren't.''
       The Trump administration holds the view that anyone they 
     send to El Salvador is beyond the reach of American law--they 
     have been disappeared not only from our country but from our 
     system--and from any protection or process that system 
     affords.

  Again, this is Ezra Klein's article.

       In our prisons, prisoners can be reached by our lawyers, by 
     our courts, by our mercy. In El Salvador, they cannot.
       Names. Stories. Let me tell you one of their names, one of 
     their stories, as best we know it.
       Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia is from El Salvador. His 
     mother, Cecilia, ran a pupuseria in San Salvador. A local 
     gang, Barrio 18, began extorting the business, demanding 
     monthly and then weekly payments. If the family didn't pay, 
     Barrio 18 threatened to murder Kilmar's brother Cesar or to 
     rape their sisters.
       Eventually, Barrio 18 demanded Cesar join their gang, at 
     which point the family sent Cesar to America. Then Barrio 18 
     demanded the same of Kilmar, and Kilmar, at age 16, was sent 
     to America, too.
       This was around 2011. This was what we mean when we say he 
     entered illegally: A 16-year-old fleeing the only home he's 
     known, afraid for his life.
       Abrego Garcia's life here just seems to have been a life--
     and not an easy one. He lived in Maryland. He worked in 
     construction. He met a woman. Her name is Jennifer, a U.S. 
     citizen. She had two children from a past relationship--one 
     had epilepsy, the other autism. In 2019, they had a child 
     together. That child, now 5, is deaf in one ear and also has 
     autism.
       Jennifer was pregnant in 2019 on the day Abrego Garcia 
     dropped off one kid at school, dropped off another with the 
     babysitter and drove to Home Depot to find construction work. 
     He was arrested for loitering. Asked if he was a gang member.
       He said no. He was put into ICE detention.
       The story gets stranger from here. About four hours after 
     Abrego Garcia was picked up--and that appears to be the first 
     contact he had with local police--a detective produced an 
     allegation, citing a confidential informant, that Abrego 
     Garcia is a gang member.
       Abrego Garcia has no criminal record--not here, not in El 
     Salvador.
       He was accused of being part of a gang that operates in New 
     York, a state he never lived in. Whoever produced the 
     allegation was never cross-examined.
       But when Abrego Garcia's attorney later tried to get more 
     information, he was told that the detective behind the 
     accusation had been suspended, and the officers in the unit 
     would not speak to him.
       Abrego Garcia's partner, Jennifer Stefania Vasquez Sura, 
     said she was ``shocked when the government said he should 
     stay detained because Kilmar is an MS-13 gang member. Kilmar 
     is not and has never been a gang member. I'm certain of 
     that.''
       In June of 2019, while Abrego Garcia was still detained, he 
     and Jennifer got married, exchanging rings through an 
     officer, separated by a pane of glass. Later that year, a 
     judge ruled that Abrego Garcia could not be deported back to 
     El Salvador because he might be murdered by Barrio 18--that 
     his fear was credible. Abrego Garcia was then set free.
       Each year since then, he has checked in with immigration 
     authorities. He has been employed as a sheet metal 
     apprentice. He is a member of a union. He was studying for a 
     vocational license at the University of Maryland. His last 
     check-in with immigration authorities was on January 2. There 
     has been no evidence, anywhere, offered by anyone, that 
     suggests Abrego Garcia poses a threat to anyone in this 
     country.
       But on March 12, Abrego Garcia was pulled over while 
     driving, his 5-year-old in the backseat. He was told his 
     immigration status had changed. On March 15, in defiance of a 
     2019 court ruling, Abrego Garcia was flown to El Salvador and 
     imprisoned at CECOT as a terrorist.

  That is the prison that was described earlier. The only way out is a 
coffin.

       The Trump administration, in its own legal filings, has 
     said this was an ``administrative error.'' They themselves 
     said they should not have done this--that it was a mistake.
       This is not just my opinion.

  And by ``my opinion,'' I mean the opinion of Ezra Klein, who wrote 
this article.
  I want to read to you from an editorial from The National Review, 
probably the country's leading conservative magazine. Here is the first 
sentence:

       ``The court fight over Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia is a 
     most unusual one in that no one denies that the government 
     violated the law in deporting him.''
       This case has made its way to the Supreme Court. And the 
     Supreme Court ordered that the administration ``facilitate 
     Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador and to 
     ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he 
     not been improperly sent to El Salvador.''
       I feel I do not have the proper words to describe this next 
     part--how grotesque it all is.
       The Trump administration does not deny that they deported 
     Abrego Garcia unlawfully. What they deny is that they have 
     the authority to bring him back. That authority, they say, 
     lies with President Bukele. But President Bukele says he also 
     cannot send him back.

  Again, you don't have to take it from me. I want to quote The 
National Review, which writes:

       ``This is a ridiculous pretense because the president of El 
     Salvador, Nayib Bukele, will clearly do anything we ask. If 
     the deputy assistant secretary of state for Latin America 
     requested that he ride a unicycle wrapped in an American flag 
     in San Salvador's central square, Bukele would probably ask 
     whether it should be a Betsy Ross flag or the traditional 
     Stars and Stripes.''
       If nothing else, Trump could slap those tariffs he is so 
     fond of on El Salvador. But we are paying Bukele to imprison 
     Abrego Garcia--and others. He is not doing this against 
     Trump's wishes. He is Trump's subcontractor.
       That Oval Office meeting between Trump and Bukele was a 
     moment when the mask fully slipped off. I thought Jon Stewart 
     pinpointed part of its horror when he said that the thing 
     that came through so clearly was how much Trump and Bukele 
     were enjoying themselves, each of them declaring that there 
     was nothing they could do for Abrego Garcia--no way to 
     allow him his day in court, no way to allow the American 
     legal system to do its job and assess whether he is a 
     danger. No way to follow the clear order of the Supreme 
     Court.
       And from their perspective, maybe they're right. Because 
     here's the scary thing that I think sits at least partially 
     beneath their calculus: Politically, they cannot let Abrego 
     Garcia out, nor any of the other people they sent to CECOT, 
     without due process.
       Because what if he was released? What if he returned to the 
     U.S.? What if he could tell his story? What if--as seems 
     likely--he has been brutalized and tortured by Trump's 
     Salvadoran henchmen? Well, he can't be allowed to tell the 
     American people that.

  The article went on to say:

       We are not even 100 days into this administration, and we 
     are already faced with this horror. And I can feel the desire 
     to look away from it, even within myself. What all of this 
     demands is too inconvenient, too disruptive.
       But Trump has said it all plainly and publicly: He intends 
     to send those he hates to foreign prisons beyond the reach of 
     U.S. law. He does not care--he will not even seek to 
     discover--if those he sends into these foreign hells are 
     guilty of what he claims. Because this is not about their 
     guilt--it is about his power.

  And if he is--
  Meaning Trump--

     capable of that, if he wants that, then what else is he 
     capable of? What else does he want? And if the people who 
     serve him are willing to give him that, to defend his right 
     to do that, what else will they give him? What else will they 
     defend?
       This is the emergency. Like it or not, it's here.

  A second piece from The Atlantic is titled ``A Loophole That Would 
Swallow the Constitution.''
  If we want to preserve freedom, we better make sure that due process 
is vigorously defended--end of story.
  This is by Jonathan Chait. It starts out by saying, if Donald Trump 
can disappear people to El Salvador without due process, he can do 
anything.

       Donald Trump's most frightening power grab was undertaken 
     with an undertone of sinister jocularity. There was no column 
     of tanks in the streets, no burning of the legislature. The 
     president and his partner in despotism, President Nayib 
     Bukele of El Salvador, were bantering amiably in the Oval 
     Office in front of the press corps, mocking the American 
     court system with evident delight.
       Trump's ploy is almost insultingly simple. He has seized 
     the power to arrest any person and whisk them to Bukele's 
     notorious Terrorism Confinement Center, where they will be 
     held indefinitely without trial. Once they are in Bukele's 
     custody, Trump can deny them the protections of American law. 
     His administration has admitted that one such prisoner, 
     Kilmar Abrego Garcia, was sent to El Salvador in error, but 
     insists that it has no recourse. Trump, who has threatened 
     the territorial integrity of multiple hemispheric neighbors, 
     now claims that requesting the return of a prisoner he paid 
     El Salvador to take would violate that country's sovereignty.

[[Page S7619]]

       Neither Trump nor Bukele bothered to make this absurd 
     conceit appear plausible. Even as Trump and his officials 
     claim that only El Salvador has the power to free wrongfully 
     imprisoned American residents, the United States is paying El 
     Salvador to hold the prisoners. (Naturally, Congress never 
     appropriated such funds; Trump has already seized large 
     swaths of Congress's constitutionally mandated spending power 
     for himself.)

  That is a reference to what we call the power of the purse, the power 
vested in the Congress of the United States of America by our 
Constitution that the author of this article Jonathan Chait is 
referring to.

       ``I don't have the power to return him to the United 
     States.'' Trump, not even attempting to maintain the pretense 
     that the two countries were somehow at an impasse, told his 
     counterpart, ``You are helping us out, and we appreciate 
     it.''

  Well, this article goes on, much like the first one, to note that 
when due process is abandoned, the freedom of all is endangered. Sure, 
it may be someone else today, but it might well be you or you or you 
tomorrow. That is why we collectively have the responsibility to defend 
due process for every single person.

       The Trump administration's illiberalism has two main 
     sources. One is the personality at the center of its cult. 
     Donald Trump gravitates instinctively towards despots, sees 
     the constraints that democracies place upon elected leaders 
     as a form of weakness, and refuses to accept the legitimacy 
     of any electoral or judicial proceeding that goes against 
     him.
       Trump's personal contempt for liberal democracy has been 
     augmented by a growing school of ``post-liberal'' thought on 
     the right, with liberal referring not to the American center-
     left, but to the broader philosophical tradition that 
     emphasizes that the state be governed by neutral rules that 
     all sides agree to abide by.

  Neutral rules all sides agree to abide by. That is kind of a sense of 
how you organize everything about a government.
  Well, I think that the balance of this article and the showdown at 
the Supreme Court just reinforce the first article by Ezra Klein that 
really lays out in detail the lack of shame that the administration 
violated civil rights.
  Lack of shame that they did so, throwing people out of our country 
because they expressed a view on the Middle East that the Secretary of 
State didn't like, lack of shame that they threw people into a 
notorious prison in El Salvador without a hearing, without even knowing 
for sure who they were or why they were sending them. These are 
mistakes, like this one.
  This leads us to chapter 4: Subverting Democracy.
  I am going to untie my shoelace because standing in place for this 
much time, well, made my shoes a little tight.
  That feels a little better.
  In general, I don't recommend standing through the night and 
talking--not a healthy pursuit. But I am standing here to ring the 
alarm bells as loudly as I possibly can, using the privilege of serving 
in this Chamber.
  You know, I never envisioned that I would have this opportunity in 
life. In fact, if you told me I would be an early passenger to the Moon 
colony, I would consider that more likely than I would be able to serve 
here in the Senate.
  And yet here I am, sworn to uphold our Constitution, an obligation to 
the constituents who sent me here to do all I can to protect our 
freedom and to raise the alarm when an authoritarian is destroying our 
democracy.
  The first hint that I might have some association with this Chamber 
was when I was a sophomore in college, and someone mentioned that 
possibility to do internships here. And earlier I mentioned that one of 
the people I applied to was Hubert Humphrey and that I was not 
accepted, nor by any of the other four Democrats.
  But I was accepted by Senator Hatfield, and I had a lot of respect 
for Senator Hatfield. Senator Hatfield had taken a courageous stand as 
a Governor and a U.S. Senator against the Vietnam war at a time it was 
not popular to oppose the Vietnam war. He had been one of the first 
members of the Armed Services in Hiroshima following the nuclear bomb. 
He had seen the utter destruction. He had seen the shadow of a person 
emblazoned on the wall because the flash and the light were so bright 
that it changed the color of the wall around the silhouette of the 
individual.
  And he understood that many wars were fought for reasons that made no 
sense and that you had to be very diligent in examining the arguments 
that a government put forward for a war--something that I thought a lot 
about during that summer as his intern.
  I read the books he had written, including one called ``Between a 
Rock and a Hard Place,'' as he wrestled with different moral challenges 
that we face and how to best use his public voice and his power in 
confronting those challenges.
  One of the things that he was deeply dedicated to was trying to 
reduce the risk of nuclear weapons.
  Out in the walk, if you go outside the doors of the Senate, and you 
are staring at the Supreme Court--so you are going out these south 
doors--and you take the curved path through the Capitol grounds toward 
the Russell Senate Office Building, there is a tree, and it has a 
plaque on it, and it says: The Hatfield Peace Tree. And this tree was 
planted by Senator Hatfield and Senator Kennedy. And the way that tree 
came to be there is that there was an intern named Sean O'Hollaren. And 
since Hatfield liked to walk outside, he often would have the intern 
accompany him.
  I had this privilege when I was covering this floor for Senator 
Hatfield in 1976. But in, I think it was 1985, Sean O'Hollaren was an 
intern, and when Senator Hatfield started talking about the trees, this 
intern said: Senator Hatfield, you love these trees so much, you should 
plant one.
  He said: Well, that will be your job as an intern.
  So he wrote to the--the intern prepared and Hatfield sent a letter to 
the Architect of the Capitol and said: I want to plant a tree.
  But the tree he wanted to plant is referred to as a ``dawn redwood.''
  Now, the interest in this tree is that this tree grew all over the 
northwestern part of the United States, but it has been extinct for 
millions of years. But it was found growing in a valley in China. And 
so it was reimported back to the United States as one of these kind of 
discovered ancient species. Occasionally, we read about some deepwater 
fish washing up, some ancient fish, and discover there is still 
something that exists that we didn't know about.
  So here is just this one grove in China, and so that is the tree I 
want to plant.
  And the Architect of the Capitol responded and said: Well, the 
brothers who designed the landscape plan for the Capitol didn't have 
that tree in their plan, so sorry.
  And Hatfield responded and said: Well, if they had known about the 
existence of the tree, maybe they would have included that tree. You 
know, it was considered extinct so they didn't know about it. So maybe 
you should give a special exemption and plant the tree.
  Well, eventually Hatfield knocks on the door of the Architect, takes 
him out, and says: Here is where I want to plant the tree, and the 
Architect says: OK.
  As they are preparing to plant the tree, his team sees Senator 
Kennedy, and so they go and get Senator Kennedy and said: Hey, you may 
want to plant this tree with Senator Hatfield? And the two of them had 
worked so closely on the nuclear freeze movement, trying to reduce the 
risk of nuclear war in the world. The result of trying to reduce the 
risk of nuclear war had produced a lot of results in that decade of the 
1980s, and Senator Kennedy said: This should be known as the Peace 
Tree.
  And so the Peace Tree is out there as a memorial to the effort to 
reduce one of the major risks to human kind, nuclear war, but also as a 
memorial to a Democrat and Republican working closely together on a 
significant challenge.
  (Mr. MULLIN assumed the Chair.)
  And that is a vision all of us should embrace: trying to find on each 
issue a partner across the aisle because we may disagree on 7 out of 10 
things, but that means we agree on 3 out of 10. Why not work together 
on those 3 out of 10 issues?
  Well, I did end up, through this internship, coming here in 1976. It 
was our bicentennial summer--200-year celebration. And, oh, my 
goodness, there was so much going on here. They

[[Page S7620]]

had just opened the first part of the metro underground system. It had 
only a couple stops from Union Station going north on the red line.
  And the Union Station itself, the train station, had been refurbished 
as a national visitor center. So that was a center of activity. And the 
Capitol Mall, all summer long, had the American Folklife Festival that 
was just booming--people coming from all over the country in a 
bicentennial year to come here to witness our Capitol and think about 
and celebrate our history.
  And the fireworks on the Fourth of July that summer were like nothing 
you had ever imagined. I was watching them from the balcony of the 
Capitol here, and then, in the middle of it--this is back when I was in 
good shape and a good runner--I said: I want to run down and be right 
underneath the fireworks as they are going off. So I ran down to the 
Washington Monument, a couple miles down the Mall, and laid on the 
ground and looked up at those fireworks.
  And it seemed America was on a course, a course that year, in which 
we were emerging from Watergate. We were emerging from the Vietnam war. 
We had just passed major provisions to try to clean up our air, clean 
up our water. These were done under the Nixon administration.
  Gerald Ford was President by virtue of Nixon's resignation. He was 
running for President--and Jimmy Carter.
  And I recall being in an elevator with Senator Hatfield. The reason I 
saw a fair amount of him was I was assigned to cover this floor for the 
Tax Reform Act of 1976. And at that time, there was no television here 
in the Chamber. There were often very long speeches, and Wayne Morse of 
Oregon particularly enjoyed doing long speeches--although he was no 
longer the Senator at that moment. He had died in 1974 of a heart 
attack.
  But even without television, people came and delivered long 
statements that were often--they were printed in the Congressional 
Record. They were followed by people across the country.
  But because there was no television and no fax machines had been 
invented and no cell phones, each Senator had somebody here monitoring 
the floor of the Senate. And then when the vote came, that area out 
there, outside these doors on the southern side--where now reporters 
gather--you would have those individuals who represented the Senators 
standing, waiting for the Senators to come out of the elevator, grab 
their Senator, brief them on what the debate had been, brief them on 
what the folks back home said as they came in to vote.
  And then you would run up to the Staff Gallery to cover the next 
amendment. There were 125 votes on that Tax Reform Act of 1976, all of 
them by simple majority.
  Anyway, my point where I started was that I never expected to be 
serving in the Senate. My mother stayed at home to help raise the kids. 
My dad was a mechanic. We had no particular political network. The idea 
of people serving here was that they would come, in my mind, from 
families with huge networks and huge wealth that would make it possible 
for them to meet folks who serve here in the Senate.
  So I think about that, the total unlikeliness that I would end up 
here. The fact is that any number of spots--I could list a dozen of 
them--my life might have taken a slightly different turn. But one 
advocacy, one job, one opportunity led to another, and then I got angry 
about positions the incumbent was taking promoting the Iraq war and 
promoting tax relief for the richest Americans and just felt like 
democracy demanded a conversation. And a year-and-a-half later, here I 
am.
  And it is incumbent on each of us who have the privilege to serve in 
this body to try to do the best damn job we can to defend the freedoms 
of the country.
  I was quite sure our debates would always just be about policies--
about healthcare, about housing, about education, about investment in 
infrastructure, about the creation of good-paying jobs, about the 
environment, certainly about climate change, certainly about equality 
of opportunity for every American and ending discrimination policies.
  I never--never--thought we would be in a moment where the President 
of the United States is engaged in a full-fledged authoritarian 
takeover, a dismantlement of the checks and balances of our 
Constitution. Yet that is where we are.
  And having the privilege to serve here and the responsibility to the 
Constitution that we take on when we come means that every one of us--
all 100 of us--should be full-fledged advocates to end this 
authoritarian takeover. All 100 of us should be ringing the alarm bells 
in every way we possibly can.
  The American people get it. Seven million turned out on Saturday--the 
largest demonstration in American history--to say: Pay attention. There 
are no Kings in America. Laws are not suggestions. And all of you we 
elected. Get to work and save our Republic.
  We will, I believe, save our Republic with the combined effort of a 
mobilized citizenry and mobilized champions here in the House and 
Senate. I hope and pray those champions would come from both sides of 
the aisle because saving our Republic, defending our Constitution 
should not be a partisan affair.
  We are now at the fourth time midnight has been struck in America. 
This time, midnight is arriving in Washington and Oregon and Nevada and 
California, and in another couple of hours, Alaska and then Hawaii, 
which my team will track.
  The reason I am pausing at midnight is to remind folks that at 
moments of crisis in our country, folks have raised the alarm and 
people have listened and responded. And one of those moments is 
memorialized by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's 1860 poem about Paul 
Revere's ride.
  I really don't know how much of his story is fact and how much is 
myth, and I really don't care. It is a beautiful presentation of the 
importance of making the effort to defend our Nation--in this case, 
actually pre-Nation, since it was before 1776; I think 1775--but to 
defend the Colonies against the attack by the British.

     LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear--

  I am doing this particularly for the folks in Oregon and Washington 
and Nevada and California, who are now reaching midnight, since this 
poem is about action at midnight.

     LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear
     Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
     On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
     Hardly a man is now alive Who remembers that famous day and 
           year.
     He said to his friend, ``If the British march
     By land or sea from the town to-night,
     Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
     Of the North Church tower as a signal light,--
     One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
     And I on the opposite shore will be,
     Ready to ride and spread the alarm
     Through every Middlesex village and farm,
     For the country folk to be up and to arm.''
     Then he said, ``Good night!'' and with muffled oar
     Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
     Just as the moon rose over the bay,
     Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
     The Somerset, British man-of-war;
     A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
     Across the moon like a prison bar,
     And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
     By its own reflection in the tide.
     Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street,
     Wanders and watches with eager ears,
     Till in the silence around him he hears
     The muster of men at the barrack door,
     The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
     And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
     Marching down to their boats on the shore.
     Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
     By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
     To the belfry-chamber overhead,
     And startled the pigeons from their perch
     On the sombre rafters, that round him made
     Masses and moving shapes of shade,--
     By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
     To the highest window in the wall,
     Where he paused to listen and look down
     A moment on the roofs of the town,
     And the moonlight flowing over all.
     Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
     In their night-encampment on the hill,
     Wrapped in silence so deep and still
     That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
     The watchful night-wind, as it went
     Creeping along from tent to tent,
     And seeming to whisper, ``All is well!''
     A moment only he feels the spell
     Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
     Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
     For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
     On a shadowy something far away,
     Where the river widens to meet the bay,--
     A line of black that bends and floats
     On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.
     Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
     Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
     On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
     Now he patted his horse's side,

[[Page S7621]]

     Now gazed at the landscape far and near,
     Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
     And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
     But mostly he watched with eager search
     The belfry-tower of the Old North Church,
     As it rose above the graves on the hill,
     Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
     And lo! As he looks, on the belfry's height
     A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
     He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
     But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
     A second lamp in the belfry burns!
     A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
     A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
     And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
     Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:
     That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
     The fate of a nation was riding that night;
     And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
     Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
     He has left the village and mounted the steep,
     And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
     Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
     And under the alders that skirt its edge,
     Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
     Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.
     It was twelve by the village clock,
     When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
     He heard the crowing of the cock,
     And the barking of the farmer's dog,
     And felt the damp of the river fog,
     That rises after the sun goes down.
     It was one by the village clock,
     When he galloped into Lexington.
     He saw the gilded weathercock
     Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
     And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
     Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
     As if they already stood aghast
     At the bloody work they would look upon.
     It was two by the village clock,
     When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
     He heard the bleating of the flock,
     And the twitter of birds among the trees,
     And felt the breath of the morning breeze
     Blowing over the meadows brown.
     And one was safe and asleep in his bed
     Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
     Who that day would be lying dead,
     Pierced by a British musket-ball.
     You know the rest. In the books you have read,
     How the British Regulars fired and fled,--
     How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
     From behind each fence and farm-yard wall,
     Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
     Then crossing the fields to emerge again
     Under the trees at the turn of the road,
     And only pausing to fire and load.
     So through the night rode Paul Revere;
     And so through the night went his cry of alarm
     To every Middlesex village and farm,--
     A cry of defiance and not of fear,
     A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
     And a word that shall echo forevermore!
     For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
     Through all our history, to the last,
     In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
     The people will waken and listen to hear
     The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
     And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

  That last stanza:

     Through all our history, to the last,
     In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
     The people will waken and listen to hear--

  The call to action because we are threatened--and we are threatened 
now by the authoritarian takeover of President Trump of our 
Constitution.
  Chapter 4, ``Subverting Democracy.'' If you are just tuning in at 3 
a.m., eastern time, this is a passage from ``How Democracies Die,'' by 
two scholars who have studied how democracies die all around the world.
  They say: You know, we think of democracies dying because of men with 
guns. And, certainly, there have been many military coups, and, in many 
cases, democracies have perished in that fashion.
  But they said that is rare. That is now rare. They say this is not 
the way democracies are dying now. They are now dying because elected 
leaders decide to take authoritarian powers onto themselves, and they 
get away with it, when they are aided by a rubberstamp legislature like 
we have right now; and by a supreme court that gives them more power, 
like we have right now; and there is a well-planned, aggressive 
authoritarian President, like we have right now.
  We are three for three, and that is why we are in the middle of this 
crisis for our Republic--the most perilous moment for our Nation, the 
most perilous moment for our Constitution, the most perilous moment for 
our Republic since the Civil War.
  And 100 of us here in the Senate have the responsibility, because we 
are serving now, to take on this threat, to ring the alarm bells and 
then take collective action. And taking action will require bipartisan 
work. So we need bipartisan bell ringing. We need bipartisan advocacy. 
We need bipartisan recognition that the problem exists in the first 
place.
  And it is not just a tiny problem. It is not a wrinkle to be ironed 
out. It goes to the very heart of our Constitution and our separation 
of powers.
  Authoritarian takeover is a knife at the heart of government of, by, 
and for the people.
  Chapter 4:

       Peru's Alberto Fujimori didn't plan to be dictator. He 
     didn't even plan to be president. A little-known university 
     rector of Japanese descent, Fujimori had hoped to run for a 
     senate seat in 1990. When no party would nominate him, he 
     created his own and nominated himself. Short of funds, he 
     threw his hat into the presidential race to attract publicity 
     for his senate campaign. But 1990 was a year of acute crisis. 
     Peru's economy had collapsed into hyperinflation, and a 
     Maoist guerrilla group called the Shining Path, whose brutal 
     insurgency had killed tens of thousands of people since its 
     launching in 1980, was closing in on Lima, the capital city. 
     Peruvians were disgusted with the established parties. In 
     protest, many of them turned to the political nobody whose 
     campaign slogan was ``A President Like You.'' Fujimori surged 
     unexpectedly in the polls. He shocked Peru's political world 
     by finishing second and qualifying for a runoff against Mario 
     Vargas Llosa, the country's most prominent novelist. 
     Peruvians admired Vargas Llosa, who would go on to win a 
     Nobel Prize in literature. Virtually the entire 
     establishment--politicians, media, business leaders--backed 
     Vargas Llosa, but ordinary Peruvians viewed him as too cozy 
     with the elites, who seemed deaf to their concerns. Fujimori, 
     whose populist discourse tapped into this anger, struck many 
     as the only real option for change. [And] he won.

  His was one of the most unlikely Presidential campaigns in the world, 
I think. A little-known university rector hopes to run for a Senate 
seat, launches a Presidential campaign to draw attention to his Senate 
race, and ends up as President of the nation.

       In his inaugural address, Fujimori warned that Peru faced 
     ``the most profound crisis in its republican history.'' The 
     economy, he said, was ``on the brink of collapse,'' and 
     Peruvian society had been ``broken apart by violence, 
     corruption, terrorism, and drug trafficking.'' Fujimori 
     pledged to ``dig [Peru] out of the state that it's in and 
     guide it to a better destiny.'' He was convinced that the 
     country needed drastic economic reforms and that it would 
     have to step up the fight against terrorism. But he had only 
     a vague idea of how to accomplish these things.
       He also faced daunting obstacles. As a political outsider, 
     Fujimori had few friends among Peru's traditional power 
     brokers. Opposition parties controlled Congress, and their 
     appointees sat on the supreme court. The traditional media, 
     most of which had backed Vargas Llosa, distrusted him. 
     Fujimori had been unsparing in his attacks on the political 
     elite, describing it as a corrupt oligarchy that was ruining 
     the country. Now he found that those he had attacked and 
     defeated during the campaign still controlled many of the 
     levers of power.
       [He] got off to a rocky start. Congress failed to pass any 
     legislation during his first months in office, and the courts 
     did not seem up to the task of responding to the mounting 
     terrorist threat. Fujimori not only lacked experience with 
     the intricacies of legislative politics, he also lacked the 
     patience for it. As one of his aides put it, Fujimori 
     ``couldn't stand the idea of inviting the President of the 
     Senate to the presidential palace every time he wanted 
     Congress to approve a law.'' He preferred, as he sometimes 
     bragged, to govern Peru alone--from his laptop.

  So this chapter goes on with an extensive recap of Fujimori's rise to 
authoritarian status. It started with an election, and he ended up as 
an authoritarian.
  So he started governing by decree.

       In November 1991 he sent a massive package of 126 decrees 
     for congressional approval. The decrees were far-reaching, 
     including some antiterrorism measures that threatened civil 
     liberties. Congress demurred. Not only did it repeal or water 
     down several of the most important decrees, it passed 
     legislation curbing Fujimori's power. The conflict escalated. 
     Fujimori accused congress of being controlled by drug 
     traffickers, and in response, the senate passed a motion to 
     ``vacate'' the presidency because of Fujimori's ``moral 
     incapacity.'' Although the motion fell a few votes short in 
     the Chamber of Deputies, the conflict had reached a point 
     where one government official worried that ``either the 
     Congress would kill the President, or the President would 
     kill the Congress.''
       The president killed congress. On April 5, 1992, Fujimori 
     appeared on television and announced that he was dissolving 
     congress and the constitution. Less than two years after his 
     surprising election, the long-shot outsider had become a 
     tyrant.
       Although some elected demagogues take office with a 
     blueprint for autocracy, many, such as Fujimori, do not. 
     Democratic breakdown doesn't need a blueprint. Rather, as 
     Peru's experience suggests, it can be the result of a 
     sequence of unanticipated events--

[[Page S7622]]

     an escalating tit-for-tat between a demagogic, norm-breaking 
     leader and a threatened political establishment.
       The process often begins with words. Demagogues attack 
     their critics in harsh and provocative terms--as enemies, as 
     subversives, and even as terrorists. When he first ran for 
     president, Hugo Chavez described his opponents as ``rancid 
     pigs'' and ``squalid oligarchs.'' As president, he called his 
     critics ``enemies'' and ``traitors''; Fujimori linked his 
     opponents to terrorism and drug trafficking; and Italian 
     Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi attacked judges who ruled 
     against him as ``communist.'' Journalists also become 
     targets. Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa called the media 
     a ``grave political enemy'' that ``has to be defeated.'' 
     Turkey's Recep Tayyip Erdogan accused journalists of 
     propagating ``terrorism.'' These attacks can be 
     consequential: If the public comes to share the view that 
     opponents are linked to terrorism and the media are spreading 
     lies, it becomes easier to justify taking actions against 
     them.
       And the assault rarely ends there. Though observers often 
     assure us that demagogues are ``all talk'' and that their 
     words should not be taken too seriously, a look at demagogic 
     leaders around the world suggests that many of them do 
     eventually cross the line from words to action. This is 
     because a demagogue's initial rise to power tends to polarize 
     society, creating a climate of panic, hostility, and mutual 
     distrust. The new leader's threatening words often have a 
     boomerang effect. If the media feels threatened, it may 
     abandon restraint and professional standards in a desperate 
     effort to weaken the government. And the opposition may 
     conclude that, for the good of the country, the government 
     must be removed via extreme measures--impeachment, mass 
     protest, even a coup.

  When I read this, I think a little bit about Guatemala. In Guatemala, 
a couple of years ago, they had a candidate who had been a professor, 
not very involved in politics, but he decided to run for President. I 
believe his father had been a President.
  And he was eighth in the polls, but he talked about fighting for all 
the people of Guatemala, which included the indigenous population, and 
the indigenous population is often absolutely overlooked. And the 
government is often run by and for the nonindigenous population.
  And then some young folks proceeded to hear his talk about 
strengthening the country for all. They got very excited about him, and 
they started using modern social media. And in a few weeks' time--it 
kind of reminds me a little bit of the response in Peru with Fujimori--
he became just a phenomenon, and he took second place.
  And then there was a runoff with the establishment candidate, and he 
won, but the establishment was so aggressive against him that they 
wanted to keep him out of power.
  And so he came up here to Washington, DC, and met with a few of us. 
And after listening to him, I said: What would be the most helpful 
thing we could do to support democracy in Guatemala?
  He said: Well, of course, I would appreciate your support.
  I said: Well, it sounds like you are worried that you may never even 
make it to be installed as President because of the opposition of the 
establishment and the potential effort to invalidate the election by 
the establishment.
  And he said, yes, that was his concern.
  And I said: What if a group of us go down to Guatemala before you are 
installed to just show support for the democratic process.
  He said that would be the single best thing we could do.
  And Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, one of our best Spanish speakers 
and also the chair, at that time, of the Latin American section of the 
Foreign Affairs Committee--I talked to him the next day, and he liked 
the idea. And so we went.
  And two of the people we went with were Guatemalans who had been 
elected to Congress, to the House, and so that was pretty cool. I think 
we had a delegation of six Members.
  And sure enough, while we are there, the Attorney General of 
Guatemala declares the elections to be null and void. We immediately 
held a press conference to say, by all the international standards, 
these elections were fair and the United States stands strongly on the 
side of democracy.
  And then the outgoing President--and my memory is that the Guatemalan 
President had a term limit; so he was not running for reelection. The 
outgoing President, by the end of the day, said, yes, he supported the 
peaceful transition and the respect for the elections. And the 
Europeans had weighed in.
  And what very much struck me is the difference between Guatemala 2 
years ago and Guatemala when I passed through there as a student of 
foreign affairs back in the summer of 1980. In that summer, Guatemala 
was in a full-fledged civil war. The military was going town to town 
killing young men for fear they would become future combatants in the 
civil war.
  The roads to some of the towns were shut down by the military. In 
fact, we heard at one of the stops that the reason it was shut down was 
for the army to go town to town and kill as many young men as they 
could. I didn't really believe it, and it turned out I got back to the 
United States and got more information, and that was exactly what was 
going on. There were a lot of assassinations going on.
  And while we were in Guatemala City, there was an assassination of 
the president of the chamber of commerce. And we had gone to a 
synagogue for a service, and people were going to his home to pay their 
respects afterward.
  And then we are in the street, in Guatemala City, and we met a fellow 
who said his father was flying a light plane into one of the towns 
where there is historical ancient Mayan ruins and would we like to fly 
in his light plane with him. We said, sure, we would be up for that 
adventure.
  At that time of year, with the rain, you couldn't get there by an 
autobus because the roads were soaked with rain and therefore with mud, 
and the transportation through the jungle was pretty much shut down.
  So we arranged to meet him at our little inexpensive hotel, called a 
pension. I think we were paying three or four bucks a night to stay 
there. And we were at the post office mailing some things back to the 
United States, and we were running out of time to make the appointment. 
So my friend proceeded back to the pension ahead of me, and I proceeded 
about 5 minutes later.
  And I come to the street where the pension is, and there is nobody on 
the street. And then I see a head sticking out between two cars. And I 
thought it was a car accident. And back from my days of Boy Scouts and 
first aid, my reaction was to run up and give help.
  And I run up, and here is a body just absolutely riddled with 
bullets. And the street was not very wide across, maybe 20 feet at 
most, maybe less. And our pension was on the opposite side.
  So I ran across the street to duck into the pension. My friend, who 
had arrived a few minutes before, had walked into the cantina across 
the street, and as he was walking out with a beer in his hand, the 
person walking out behind him was gunned down by assassins. That was 
the person whose body I found a few minutes later.
  At that time, the United States was not supportive of democracy in 
Latin America, and the battle that was taking place between the 
factions in Guatemala was a battle of bullets.
  But 2 years ago, when a delegation of us went down to support 
democracy, instead of a battle of bullets, it was a battle of ballots. 
It was a legitimate, high-integrity election in which people were 
choosing a champion to take them forward.
  That is what the United States should inspire around the world: high-
integrity elections serving the people and their opportunity to have 
their vision embodied by electing a person who shares that vision they 
hold.
  So we have all of these folks who have been elected that then lead 
their countries into authoritarian control. And that is what is 
happening right now in the United States of America. That is why I am 
here tonight at 3:30 in the morning ringing the alarm bells.
  You have heard pieces of the story. At some point over the last 9 
months, you have heard a bit about due process being attacked. You have 
heard a bit about the President trying to influence and control what 
universities teach, of his effort to control the broadcast media and 
intimidate them through the use of the power of licenses and mergers.
  You have heard some of the stories of his weaponizing the Department 
of Justice to go after his political enemies. And you have heard about 
his effort to federalize our National Guard to go to suppress dissent 
in peaceful cities.

[[Page S7623]]

  Take this entire collection, and what you have is a massive, broad, 
intense assault on our democracy. So ring the alarm bells and listen to 
others who are ringing alarm bells. And when folks say at my townhalls: 
What should I do, I say: Get off the couch. You can't change the course 
of the country with a pillow over your head. Fiercely hold your 
electeds accountable, write to them, make phone calls to them, 
demonstrate, demonstrate outside their offices. Hold me accountable.
  Exercise your opportunity of free speech and free assembly so you can 
keep those freedoms for this generation and the generations to come and 
join an affinity group because to be angry and alone is to be 
depressed. But to be angry and organized with others is to be energized 
and effective, and we need Americans to be energized and effective in 
order to save our Republic.
  So this chapter goes through the various countries, including 
Malaysia, and to many other countries. But then it turns a little bit 
to the United States. So let me pick up at that point.

       Perhaps the most striking example of rewriting the rules to 
     lock in an authoritarian advantage comes from the United 
     States. The end of post-Civil War Reconstruction in the 1870s 
     led to the emergence of authoritarian single-party regimes in 
     every post-Confederate state. Single-party rule was not some 
     benign historical accident; rather, it was a product of 
     brazenly antidemocratic constitutional engineering.
       During the era of Reconstruction, the mass enfranchisement 
     of African Americans posed a major threat to southern white 
     political control and to the political dominance of the 
     Democratic Party. Under the 1867 Reconstruction Act and the 
     Fifteenth Amendment, which prohibited suffrage limitations on 
     account of race, African Americans suddenly constituted a 
     majority of the voting population in Mississippi, South 
     Carolina, and Louisiana and a near-majority in Alabama, 
     Florida, Georgia, and North Carolina. Federal troops oversaw 
     the mass registration of black voters throughout the South. 
     Nationwide, the percentage of black men who were eligible to 
     vote increased from 0.5 percent in 1866 to 80.5 percent two 
     years later. In many southern states, black registration 
     rates exceeded 90 percent. And black citizens voted. In the 
     1880 presidential election, estimated black turnout was 65 
     percent or higher in North and South Carolina, Tennessee, 
     Texas, and Virginia. Enfranchisement empowered African 
     Americans: More than two thousand southern freedmen won 
     elective office in the 1870s, including fourteen congressmen 
     and two U.S. senators.

  I often ask my interns or other student groups about that period. Do 
they know where the first two African-American Senators came from? What 
State they came from? And they have never gotten this right. I don't 
know if anyone in this room would get it right, right now. The answer 
is Mississippi.
  When Mississippi rejoined the Union, they had two Senate seats to 
fill, and they worked out a deal that recognized the political power of 
the fact that Black Americans could now vote in the South and the 
legislature--because we had indirect elections--sent the first Black 
Senator here and then sent a second one a couple years later.

  It was, in this Chamber, a big public event. I think they referred to 
it in the newspapers as the ``15th Amendment in body and soul,'' flesh 
right here.
  But what happened? A deal was struck in the election of 1876. And in 
that election, there were four States that had contested slates. The 
Democrat had one vote short--was one vote short of winning the 
electoral college, but the four outstanding slates, if every vote went 
to the Republican, the Republican, Rutherford Hayes, would be elected.
  So what unfolded? Well, a standoff. The Republicans said: Hey, in the 
Constitution, it is the Vice President who receives the slate of folks 
serving in the electoral college over in the House, and so it should be 
the Vice President who decides the slates.
  The Democrats said: Not so fast. There is nothing in the Constitution 
that assigns that responsibility to the Vice President.
  Now, if that story sounds like the election of 2020, you are 
absolutely right. It is a scary parallel. And so they decided to pass a 
bill and create a Commission of 15. There would be five Senators and 
five House Members and five Supreme Court Justices, and they would be 
chosen so that there were seven Republicans and seven Democrats and one 
Independent. And this panel would decide which slates to accept.
  Well, the Independent on the Supreme Court proceeded to resign, and a 
Republican was assigned. So now there was an 8-to-7 split. And in that 
8-to-7 split, they voted exactly by party. The Republicans voted for 
all of the contested slates to go to the Republican nominee, Rutherford 
Hayes. The Democrats voted in the opposite direction.
  And it looked like the Republican had won--but not so fast. The 
Democrats controlled the House of Representatives, and the Democrats 
said: We will filibuster the vote-counting in the House. And so they 
retired to a house not here--far from this Chamber--and a deal was 
struck. And that deal was this: The Republican, Rutherford Hayes, would 
get every single one of the contested slates and become President, but 
the first action would be to end Reconstruction. And doing any 
reconstruction, it meant that the military forces that were protecting 
registration and voting in the South would be pulled out. And with that 
deal, civil rights were crushed in the southern United States.
  It would be, from that time forward until the Voting Rights Act, 
extraordinarily difficult and unlikely that you would be able to vote 
if you were a Black man or woman in the southern States of the United 
States.
  So that was the--what was going on at this time was this tension 
post-Civil War tension, particularly over political power in the South.

       The Democrats--

  As a result of the elections, elections that included the newly 
registered Black citizens--

     lost power of North Carolina, and Tennessee, and Virginia in 
     the 1880s and 1890s, and they nearly lost it in Alabama, 
     Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, and Texas. If 
     democratic elections continued, political scientist V.O. Key 
     observed, it ``would have been fatal to the status of black 
     belt whites.''
       So they changed the rules--and did away with democracy. 
     ``Give us a [constitutional] convention, and I will fix it so 
     that . . . the Negro shall never be heard from,'' former 
     Georgia senator Robert Toombs declared as Reconstruction was 
     coming to an end. Between 1885 and 1908, all eleven Post-
     Confederate states reformed their constitutions and electoral 
     laws to disenfranchise African Americans. To comply with the 
     letter of the law as stipulated in the Fifteenth Amendment, 
     no mention of race could be made in efforts to restrict 
     voting rights, so states introduced purportedly ``neutral'' 
     poll taxes, property requirements, literacy tests, and 
     complex written ballots. ``The overarching aim of all of 
     these restrictions,'' historian Alex Keyssar observed, ``was 
     to keep poor and illiterate blacks . . . from the polls.'' 
     And because African Americans were overwhelmingly Republican, 
     their disenfranchisement could be expected to restore the 
     Democrats' electoral dominance. The goal, as a state senator 
     from North Carolina put it, was to write a ``good square, 
     honest law that will always give a good Democratic 
     majority.''

  And in that political deal rewriting, the rules of the road led to 
nearly a century of disenfranchisement of millions of Americans. And 
one of the things that these scholars point out is, you really just 
have two significant opportunities to stop the entrenchment of an 
authoritarian state.
  So we are in the middle of an authoritarian state, and what are these 
two ways that we have to keep it from becoming entrenched and to save 
our Republic?
  One is a significant protest during the first year because if people 
don't respond to the fact that these freedoms are being attacked--
freedom of the press, freedom of assembly, the organization and 
jurisdiction of his political enemies list, the doing away with due 
process that protects our freedom from an overbearing government, the 
effort to be able to send the military into our cities--if people don't 
pay attention, there is no outcry, then people become accustomed to 
believing, well, perhaps these things aren't that far off from the 
norm; perhaps they aren't that much of the breaking of the law; perhaps 
they aren't that much a disturbance of the Constitution, so perhaps I 
shouldn't be so worried about it, and I should just continue in my 
path.
  That outcry is essential in that first year so that folks know that, 
yes, this is outside the norms; yes, this is breaking the law; yes, 
this is scrapping, shredding the Constitution; and it is not OK.
  And through that demonstration, through that protest, people say 
there are others who feel the same way that we can organize with and 
save our Republic.
  The second main way that you have a chance to keep authoritarian 
power from becoming entrenched is the next election, because it always 
happens:

[[Page S7624]]

The authoritarian tries to rig the elections. And if you don't win the 
next election, they have too much time to rig the system and leave you 
stranded in a strongman state that can endure for decades.
  Do we have any real evidence of that happening even now? We sure do. 
The President is trying to have his team compile a national voter 
registration list so that it will be easier to manipulate that voting 
registration list in the next election, easier to purge names of folks 
that the President's team thinks might vote against the Republicans.
  And then there is the gerrymandering, a full-on-force effort to 
redistrict in the middle of a 10-year period--normally, we redistrict 
after each census, every 10 years--to redistrict now, to split up seats 
that are held perhaps in a city that tends to be more blue and a 
Democrat holds the seat. So redistrict it and slice it into little 
pieces and reglue it on the edge of surrounding red districts so that 
you take away that little representation that the people in that blue 
city had. That effort is in full mode right now.
  And then we have the President attacking vote-by-mail. The President 
hates vote-by-mail because it stops the election day shenanigans.
  On election day, it is so simple to rig the vote. If you don't want 
people in the city to vote, you, well, produce fewer sites to vote, 
which means a lot more people have to crowd into the same election 
site. You proceed to put in machines that don't function very well, so 
you slow things down. You put in staff members who slow things down as 
well. You relocate the location so it is a new place, so people go to 
the wrong place and give up. You put out misinformation about the time 
of the election.
  You have heard about those tweets in the past: So sorry you missed 
the election last Tuesday. Hope you will make it next time--when, 
actually, the election is the coming Tuesday. They put out 
misinformation about the location.
  When people are in long lines, they send people down to look 
intimidating, discourage them; create a law that says you can't hand 
out glasses of water to people waiting in the heat for hour after hour 
to vote.
  These are all things that are done. With vote-by-mail, you can't do 
any of that. Vote-by-mail, high integrity. Voting at the precincts, 
easily manipulated. President Trump wants to end the high integrity 
system of voting that he can't manipulate and make everyone go to the 
system he can manipulate.
  That is exactly why the experts say the next election matters so 
much, because those efforts, if given an additional 2 years, just get 
amplified across the country.
  So that is the responsibility we have. It should be a responsibility 
held by both parties to defend our Constitution, to defend the 
integrity of our elections.

       Most constitutions--

  I am getting back to chapter 4, ``Subverting Democracy.''

       Most constitutions permit the expansion of executive power 
     during crisis. As a result, even democratically elected 
     presidents can easily concentrate power and threaten civil 
     liberties during war. In the hands of a would-be 
     authoritarian, this concentrated power is far more dangerous. 
     For a demagogue who feels besieged by critics and shackled by 
     democratic institutions, crises open a window of opportunity 
     to silence critics and weaken rivals. Indeed, elected 
     autocrats often need crises--external threats offer them a 
     chance to break free, both swiftly and, very often, 
     ``legally.''

  And I think it is appropriate to note here that this inclination of 
authoritarians to create artificial crises is on full display in the 
United States of America right now. The President of the United States 
tried to federalize the Oregon National Guard, saying that there were 
uncontrolled riots and war-ravaged zones in downtown Portland.
  Well, nobody visiting Portland could see anything of the kind. If you 
go back some 2\1/2\, 3 months, there were, over a course of weeks, a 
few dozen arrests of protesters, but nothing not easily handled by the 
local police, which they did.
  And at the time Trump was actually focused on Portland, that had gone 
away, and there were virtually no arrests. And what you did have was 
people protesting in a manner particularly special to Portland, and 
that is protesting with joy and whimsy.
  So here is Trump, claiming that there is a war-ravaged zone and you 
need to federalize Oregon's National Guard to address it. And there is 
no such thing.

  So when the district judge hears the case--because the State of 
Oregon, led by Dan Rayfield, attorney general, challenged it--the judge 
wrote: The case presented by the administration is ``untethered'' from 
the facts.
  They made up that there was a crisis in Portland in order to 
federalize the military against the American people. Now, I can tell 
you, and you will see some interesting things if you go down outside 
the ICE building.
  You will see women coming down in a ``pastries and pajamas'' 
demonstration, in their pajamas handing out pastries. You might catch a 
glimpse of the Unipiper, the man who plays his bagpipes on a unicycle 
as he makes his way through the zone. You might get to witness a 
wedding because one was held. They rolled out a red carpet and had a 
little wedding outside the ICE building.
  You might get to witness a whole bunch of folks with their puppy dogs 
in a ``Keep Your Paws off Portland'' demonstration or a ``Paws for 
Peace'' demonstration.
  You might get to see a whole bunch of people in inflated frog 
outfits, the frog squad.
  Why did the frog become so popular? It is a demonstration of joy and 
whimsy. There are people dancing. They are doing the cha cha slide. 
They are handing out flowers, putting candles on the ground, and the 
reason they are protesting in this fashion is because they know what 
Trump wanted to do.
  He lied to the public that there was a crisis in Portland, and then 
he wanted to create a crisis because, if there isn't one, create one. 
And so he had his Federal agents go out and attack peaceful protesters. 
Well, they did not engage. They backed off. And then he had his agents 
stage a fake riot in which he had the agents back up the protesters 
three blocks, which they did without altercations. They followed 
instructions.
  And behind the Federal agents were videographers, and upon command, 
the Federal agents threw down flash-bangs. They sound like gunfire 
going off. They threw down tear gas. There were clouds of tear gas. 
They shot pepper balls. And the combination was to create chaos, for 
the videographers to do a video of, maybe convince a judge that there 
had been a riot, maybe to convince the American people watching some 
far-right news channel that was claiming: Look, there is a riot in 
Portland.
  Or maybe they were just replaying from 2020, when there actually were 
significant disturbances in Portland.
  A government that is faking a riot in order to persuade a court to 
give the President the power to use the military against the people--
shouldn't that disturb every single Member of the U.S. Senate?
  So as this goes on:

       The combination of a would-be authoritarian and a major 
     crisis can, therefore, be deadly for democracy. Some leaders 
     come into office facing crisis. For example, Fujimori took 
     office amid hyperinflation and a mounting guerrilla 
     insurgency, so when he justified his 1992 presidential coup 
     as a necessary evil, most Peruvians agreed with him. 
     Fujimori's approval rating shot up to 81 percent after the 
     coup.
       Other leaders invent crises. There was a backstory to 
     Ferdinand Marcos's declaration of martial law in 1972: His 
     ``crisis'' was largely fabricated. Acutely aware that he 
     needed to justify his plan to skirt the constitution's two-
     term limit in the presidency, Marcos decided to manufacture a 
     ``communist menace.'' Facing only a few dozen actual 
     insurgents, President Marcos fomented public hysteria to 
     justify an emergency action. Marcos wanted to declare martial 
     law as early as 1971, but selling his plan required an act of 
     violence--a terrorist attack--that generated widespread fear. 
     That would come the following year with the Manila bombings, 
     which U.S. intelligence officials believed to be the work of 
     government forces, and the assassination attempt on Defense 
     Secretary Enrile--which Enrile later admitted was ``a sham.'' 
     In fact, he said he was ``nowhere near the scene'' of the 
     reported attack.

  So Marcos manufactured a crisis in order to accentuate his 
authoritarian control. President Trump manufactured a fake riot in 
Portland to try to convince the courts or the public that there was, in 
fact, violence that would justify the federalization of the Oregon 
National Guard.

[[Page S7625]]

  And when the judge said ``no way,'' then, he said: I will just send 
in the National Guard that have already been federalized from Texas and 
California.
  And the judge said: Not so fast, because it isn't just the act of 
federalizing them. They can't be sent in unless this is something that 
meets the standard of the law.
  The standard of the law, unless you have the cooperation from a 
Governor, is there has to be either an invasion or there has to be a 
rebellion. Well, neither existed. So if you couldn't meet the standard 
to federalize the Oregon forces, you also couldn't meet the standard to 
send the federalized forces from California or Texas.
  And as of the moment, that is more or less where things stand, but a 
lot is going on. There is a three-judge panel, the Ninth Circuit, that 
came out and said: Well, we don't agree with the district judge. The 
district judge who said you can't federalize because it is a standard 
in the law, and you have to have a rebellion or you have to have an 
invasion and neither exists.
  And those two judges of that three-judge panel said: Well, you know, 
there were some arrests a couple of months earlier, and maybe, maybe 
that was fair basis.
  (Mr. JOHNSON assumed the Chair.)
  But clearly it was nothing like a rebellion or an invasion. And the 
judges said: Maybe the definition of ``rebellion''--which appropriately 
reflected the understanding of what a rebellion was at the time the 
laws were written--maybe we should use a more flexible definition of 
``rebellion.''
  Then the real clincher of an argument: Defer to the President's 
judgment.
  Now, here is the thing: If the law says the President can only bring 
in the military domestically against U.S. citizens if there is a 
rebellion or an invasion, that is an objective standard of the law. But 
these two judges said: Toss that objective standard aside. As long as 
the President claims there is a rebellion, defer to the President.
  Well, that is not a standard of law. There is nothing in this law 
that says defer to the President. It sets a standard, and people knew 
what a rebellion was. It was a sizeable, organized, weaponized group 
seeking to overthrow the government. That is a rebellion. A bunch of 
women handing out pastries in their pajamas is not a rebellion. A bunch 
of people in inflatable frog suits holding protest signs is not a 
rebellion.
  You may wonder, well, how did they decide the whole frog suit thing? 
Well, it is because of one of the provocative acts by the Federal 
agents, who walked up and sprayed pepper spray inside the suit of this 
person wearing an inflatable frog suit. It was such an outrageous act 
that others said: I am going to wear one too. So suddenly, you have the 
frog squad.
  So there we are. If the court says that standards in the law mean 
nothing, that the President can fictionalize and just claim something 
exists that doesn't exist, then we have thrown the door wide open to 
not just the authoritarian assault on our freedoms that is in full 
force but to using the military against our citizens, and that is a 
horrendously dangerous place to go.
  Now we will see if the Ninth Circuit has a 12-member panel, called an 
en banc panel, to take a broader look at this question, and we will 
also see what happens when the Chicago court--which had the same 
opinion: that there was no rebellion, there was no invasion under title 
10 that can justify the federalization or the use of federalized 
National Guard in Illinois--that is going to the Supreme Court. They 
may issue something from the shadow docket, where they never even hold 
a hearing, but they just assert a principle, often without explaining 
why or how they got to the conclusion. So much may happen or unfold in 
the coming days.
  But I am ringing the alarm bells to say that this is an 
extraordinarily dangerous moment right now in which a couple judges 
have said that the standards required in the law can be cast aside, and 
just give full deference to a fictionalized story told by a President.
  The courts are to hold the President accountable to the law, hold all 
of us accountable to the law. If the courts simply roll over and say 
``Whatever the President says goes'' and this Chamber is just a 
rubberstamp for whatever the President says, then we have an 
authoritarian state, and that is what we have right now.
  Well, we have arrived at another hour where it is 12 o'clock 
somewhere, and somewhere in this pile, I have the first page of Henry 
Wadsworth Longfellow's poem on Paul Revere's ride. I have been reading 
it every hour as we come to midnight somewhere in the country, and this 
will be the fifth reading. We had it at midnight and at 1 a.m. here, 
which was midnight somewhere else, farther west, and then at 2 a.m. 
here and then at 3 a.m., when it was midnight on the west coast and in 
Oregon and California and Washington and, I think, Idaho and Nevada. 
Now it is Alaska's turn. It is midnight in Alaska.
  The reason I am reading this poem repeatedly, once an hour, is simply 
to try to drill in the fact that when our country is threatened, when 
our Republic is threatened, a warning needs to go out, the bells need 
to be rung, and the lanterns have to be put in the belfry to convey to 
the citizens: This is not right. This is wrong. It is a threat to our 
freedom. It is breaking laws. It is shredding the Constitution. And we, 
as patriots, will not stand for it, and we will do everything within 
our power--our heart, our nerve, our sinew--everything within our power 
to restore our Republic for the people.

       LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear
       Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
       On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
       Hardly a man is now alive
       Who remembers that famous day and year.
       He said to his friend, ``If the British march
       By land or sea from the town to-night,
       Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
       Of the North Church tower as a signal light,--
       One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
       And I on the opposite shore will be,
       Ready to ride and spread the alarm
       Through every Middlesex village and farm,
       For the country folk to be up and to arm.''
       Then he said, ``Good night!'' and with muffled oar
       Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
       Just as the moon rose over the bay,
       Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
       The Somerset, British man-of-war;
       A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
       Across the moon like a prison bar,
       And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
       By its own reflection in the tide.
       Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street,
       Wanders and watches with eager ears,
       Till in the silence around him he hears
       The muster of men at the barrack door,
       The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
       And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
       Marching down to their boats on the shore.
       Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
       By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
       To the belfry-chamber overhead,
       And startled the pigeons from their perch
       On the sombre rafters, that round him made
       Masses and moving shapes of shade,--
       By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
       To the highest window in the wall,
       Where he paused to listen and look down
       A moment on the roofs of the town,
       And the moonlight flowing over all.
       Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
       In their night-encampment on the hill,
       Wrapped in silence so deep and still
       That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
       The watchful night-wind, as it went
       Creeping along from tent to tent,
       And seeming to whisper, ``All is well!''
       A moment only he feels the spell
       Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
       Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
       For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
       On a shadowy something far away,
       Where the river widens to meet the bay,--
       A line of black that bends and floats
       On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.
       Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
       Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
       On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
       Now he patted his horse's side,
       Now gazed at the landscape far and near,
       Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
       And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
       But mostly he watched with eager search
       The belfry-tower of the Old North Church,
       As it rose above the graves on the hill,
       Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
       And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height
       A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
       He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
       But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
       A second lamp in the belfry burns!
       A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
       A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
       And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
       Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:
       That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
       The fate of a nation was riding that night;
       And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
       Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
       He has left the village and mounted the steep,

[[Page S7626]]

       And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
       Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
       And under the alders that skirt its edge,
       Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
       Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.
       It was twelve by the village clock,
       When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
       He heard the crowing of the cock,
       And the barking of the farmer's dog,
       And felt the damp of the river fog,
       That rises after the sun goes down.
       It was one by the village clock,
       When he galloped into Lexington.
       He saw the gilded weathercock
       Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
       And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
       Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
       As if they already stood aghast
       At the bloody work they would look upon.
       It was two by the village clock,
       When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
       He heard the bleating of the flock,
       And the twitter of birds among the trees,
       And felt the breath of the morning breeze
       Blowing over the meadows brown.
       And one was safe and asleep in his bed
       Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
       Who that day would be lying dead,
       Pierced by a British musket-ball.
       You know the rest. In the books you have read,
       How the British Regulars fired and fled,--
       How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
       From behind each fence and farm-yard wall,
       Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
       Then crossing the fields to emerge again
       Under the trees at the turn of the road,
       And only pausing to fire and load.
       So through the night rode Paul Revere;
       And so through the night went his cry of alarm
       To every Middlesex village and farm,--
       A cry of defiance and not of fear,
       A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
       And a word that shall echo forevermore!
       For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
       Through all our history, to the last,
       In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
       The people will waken and listen to hear
       The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
       And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

  When the Colonies were threatened, Paul Revere rode his steed to warn 
them. Two lanterns in the belfry window; the British were attacking by 
sea.
  We here in America have had a phenomenal 9 months in which an 
authoritarian has grabbed the Oval Office and proceeded to attack 
liberty after liberty after liberty, including the weaponization of the 
Department of Justice; including taking an effort to fake a riot to 
justify deploying the National Guard into Portland, OR, deploying and 
federalizing the National Guard in Southern California, and trying to 
send them into Chicago; trying to get the courts to set the standard 
that he is seeking. And two judges on the Ninth Circuit have already 
granted that standard. And what is that standard? That if the President 
says there is a rebellion, then he is justified in sending in troops 
just because he says so, even if it is untethered to the facts. Well, 
that is about as phony of an argument in terms of defending the 
integrity of the law as anything I have ever heard.
  Did this Chamber or the House Chamber set a standard and then say 
that it is up to the President, and if he invents a fake demonstration 
that is not even a rebellion, doesn't come close to the definition, he 
is still justified in doing this even if he hasn't met the standard? 
No. The words meant something when this Chamber voted for that law, 
title 10.
  They meant something when the House voted that only in the case of a 
rebellion--a significant, organized, weaponized effort to overturn the 
government--that is a rebellion. That is the standard this Chamber set 
into law. And for two judges from the Ninth Circuit to sweep that away 
and say: No, just give deference to the President--are we already such 
an authoritarian government that our judges just say defer to the 
President? That is an authoritarian nation right there.
  Extremely, extremely troublesome.
  If you cherish liberty, if you cherish freedom, if you cherish the 
right to free speech and free assembly and free press and due process, 
those words should terrify you.
  The book goes on to say:

       Other leaders invent crises. There was a backstory to 
     Ferdinand Marcos's declaration of martial law.

  I read this paragraph which notes there was a fake assassination 
attempt. It was fake. Even the person who supposedly made the effort to 
assassinate him actually wasn't at the location and was never in that 
location and said so. But Marcos wanted to declare martial law, so his 
plan required an act of violence, and if faking it was the way to go, 
then that is what he did.
  The President of the United States faking a riot in Portland, trying 
to justify the federalization of the National Guard, is in shocking 
parallel--not an exact parallel, maybe does not quite rise to the same 
level as a fake assassination or a faked terrorist attack--but the fact 
that it was a faked riot to try to persuade a quarter of the people 
that there was violence when there was not, that is pretty damn scary. 
I don't know of any other instance in the history of the United States 
where a President faked a riot.
  Returning to the script of the book here:

       Whether real or not, would-be authoritarians are primed to 
     exploit crises to justify power grabs. Perhaps the best-known 
     case is Adolf Hitler's response to February 27, 1933, 
     Reichstag fire, just a month after he was sworn in as 
     chancellor. The question of whether a young Dutchman with 
     communist sympathies started the fire in the Berlin 
     parliament building or whether the Nazi leadership itself did 
     remains a matter of debate among historians. Whatever the 
     case, Hitler, Hermann Goring, and Joseph Goebbels arrived at 
     the burning Reichstag and immediately used the event to 
     justify emergency decrees that dismantled civil liberties. 
     This, along with the Enabling Act one month later, destroyed 
     all opposition, consolidating Nazi power until the end of the 
     Second World War.
       A security crisis also facilitated Vladimir Putin's 
     authoritarian turn. In September 1999, shortly after Putin 
     was named prime minister, a series of bombings in Moscow and 
     other cities--presumably by Chechen terrorists--killed nearly 
     three hundred people. Putin responded by launching a war in 
     Chechnya and a large-scale crackdown. As in the case of Nazi 
     Germany, there is some debate over whether the bombings were 
     committed by Chechen terrorists or by the Russian 
     government's own intelligence service. What is clear, 
     however, is that Putin's political popularity received a 
     major boost with the bombings. The Russian public rallied 
     behind Putin, tolerating, if not supporting, attacks on the 
     opposition over the months and years that followed.
       Most recently, the Erdogan government in Turkey used 
     security crises to justify his tightening grip on power. 
     After the AKP lost its parliamentary majority in June 2015, a 
     series of ISIS terrorist attacks enabled Erdogan to use the 
     rally-'round-the-flag effect to call snap elections and 
     regain control of parliament just five months later. Even 
     more consequential was the July 2016 coup attempt, which 
     provided justification for a wide-ranging crackdown. Erdogan 
     responded to the coup by declaring a state of emergency and 
     launching a massive wave of repression that included a purge 
     of some 100,000 public officials, the closure of several 
     newspapers, and more than 50,000 arrests, including hundreds 
     of judges and prosecutors, 144 journalists, and even two 
     members of the Constitutional Court. Erdogan also used the 
     coup attempt as a window of opportunity to make the case for 
     sweeping new executive powers. The power grab culminated in 
     the April 2017 passage of a constitutional amendment that 
     demolished checks on presidential authority.
       For demagogues hemmed in by constitutional constraints, a 
     crisis represents an opportunity to begin to dismantle the 
     inconvenient and sometimes threatening checks and balances 
     that come with democratic politics. Crises allow autocrats to 
     expand their room to maneuver and protect themselves from 
     perceived enemies. But the question remains: Are democratic 
     institutions so easily swept away?

  So if we ring the alarm bells, as we understand these numerous 
assaults on our freedoms; as we recognize the weaponization of the 
Justice Department going against a public enemies list; as we see the 
President doing everything in his power to try to get the courts to 
allow him to federalize the National Guard when any facts he is 
presenting are untethered to reality; as we see his effort to create a 
fake riot to persuade the press or the judges or the public that there 
really was a crisis to be addressed; as we understand that his goal is 
to provoke violence in order to justify greater authoritarian control--
this is straight out of the authoritarian playbook.

  As this set of professors relays, you see it again and again and 
again: You are using an actual crisis or generating a fake crisis to 
expand authoritarian power.
  So be on the watch, colleagues, patriots, for the misinformation or 
the fake crisis being used to expand Presidential authoritarian power. 
Already, we have seen it as he has pursued the authorization, the 
federalization of the National Guard in California and Texas and Oregon 
and Illinois; as he has tried to

[[Page S7627]]

send those federalized National Guard from Texas to California and 
Oregon. That is really a move, at this point, to do two things: One is 
to get a court precedent that makes it legitimate to send in the 
National Guard whenever the President wants. In addition to using title 
10, he is threatening to using insurrection. Well, the Insurrection Act 
explicitly gives deference to the President about whether it is an 
insurrection, not like title 10 that deals with rebellion.
  Presidents are enormously reluctant because they understand the 
Constitution, and the troops are used to defend America, not attack 
Americans. But an authoritarian wants those military forces available, 
and the President is trying to get the precedence in place. He may get 
it from the Supreme Court. He may get it on the shadow docket just this 
week. If that happens, ring the alarm bells even louder that the gates 
have been thrown wide open to the President's use of the military to 
suppress dissent here in the United States of America.
  In between each chapter and discussion of these different elements, 
these different elements of authoritarian power, I laid out some of 
what is happening here in America. We looked at the assault on free 
speech. We looked at the assault on free press. We looked at the 
assault on due process. We looked at the deliberate and willful 
rejection of accountability to the laws that govern the executive.
  And now we turn to his attack on law firms. Another of Trump's 
strategies is to go after those who enforce the law. Trump has attacked 
a host of major law firms, in some cases, hamstringing the firms by 
suspending their national security clearances. We talked about how the 
FCC was using the power of the licenses and mergers to intimidate the 
networks on the programming they provide, even down to the comics they 
employ. And here, we have the government using access to national 
security clearance to attack the ability of law firms to defend their 
clients. He has done this to punish their past association with 
individuals or cases that threaten his power and to dissuade them from 
using their skills and new efforts to threaten his power.
  The attacks have generated some results. Skadden, Arps and Paul, 
Weiss have capitulated to Trump, agreeing, among other concessions, to 
end diversity policies and contribute millions of dollars of pro bono 
work to conservative clients. They are not alone. Several firms have 
surrendered about a billion dollars in pro bono legal work to causes 
preferred by the administration.
  Can you imagine the outcry that would have happened in this Chamber 
if President Biden had proceeded to use security clearances against 
conservative law firms and then said they had to use their services for 
progressive organizations preferred by Democrats? Every single Member 
across the aisle would be down here screaming. I would be down here 
screaming, too, because it is wrong. This is authoritarian abuse of 
government power. It should never be contingent on who is being 
attacked.
  So put yourself through the test, dear colleagues. Ask yourself: Why 
are you not down here making an issue out of this? If you would have 
made it an issue if President Biden had done it, why aren't you making 
it an issue now? I look forward to your answer.
  But other firms have fought back, challenging Trump's action--Perkins 
Coie, Jenner & Block, WilmerHale. Impressively, more than 500 other 
firms stood with them citing briefs denouncing Trump's actions.
  Trump's actions are having real-world consequences. Let me read you a 
report from Reuters published on July 31. It is titled ``How Trump's 
crackdown on law firms is undermining legal defenses for the 
vulnerable:''

       When the Texas Civil Rights Project needed lawyers to help 
     dozens of people arrested during U.S. President Donald 
     Trump's immigration crackdown, legal director Dustin Rynders 
     turned to a familiar strategy. He contacted major law firms 
     that for decades provided free legal service to nonprofits 
     like his.
       On that April day in Houston, he called his usual contacts, 
     many at firms that had previously handled challenges to 
     Trump's immigration policies. Before Trump's return to the 
     White House, they typically offered swift ``pro bono,'' or 
     free, legal help--a standard public service provided by elite 
     firms.
       This time, they all declined. ``We are just handling the 
     cases ourselves at this point,'' Rynders said.
       In March and April, Trump issued a series of executive 
     orders targeting law firms he considers adversaries, the 
     first such attacks by a U.S. president against the legal 
     profession.

  I am adding in, just to clarify, ``ever.'' Not in 200-plus years 
following the 1787 Constitution has a President proceeded to attack law 
firms and tried to blackmail them--sometimes successfully--into 
providing pro bono services for causes the President prefers. Wow--the 
first time ever.
  Another norm would not have been crossed by any other President 
because other Presidents didn't believe it was right for the government 
to blackmail law firms. And it is not right. It is abusing the power of 
government to threaten security clearances in order to get this result.

       Some of the orders lashed out at firms for donating their 
     time to cases involving immigration, transgender rights and 
     the January 6 attack by Trump supporters on the U.S. Capitol, 
     claiming this legal work undermined U.S. interests.
       Months later, the aftershocks threaten lasting damage to 
     America's tradition of mobilizing free lawyers to challenge 
     government actions on behalf of the vulnerable.
       Dozens of major law firms, wary of political retaliation, 
     have scaled back pro bono work, diversity initiatives and 
     litigation that could place them in conflict with the Trump 
     administration, a Reuters investigation found. Many firms are 
     making a strategic calculation: Withdraw from pro bono work 
     frowned on by Trump, or risk becoming the next target.
       Fourteen civil rights groups said the law firms they count 
     on to pursue legal challenges are hesitating to engage with 
     them, keeping their representation secret or turning them 
     down altogether in the wake of Trump's pressure, according to 
     interviews with the nonprofits and a review of filings they 
     have made in court.
       In an analysis of court dockets, Reuters also found that 
     Big Law firms have pulled back sharply from litigation 
     against the federal government. That's a departure from 
     Trump's first term, when the nation's largest firms were 
     often involved in challenges to his directives. Now, they're 
     mostly on the sidelines amid an avalanche of lawsuits 
     contesting administration policies spanning immigration, 
     funding cuts to nongovernmental organizations and attempts to 
     fire tens of thousands of federal workers.
       The retreat has been painful for the nonprofit advocacy 
     groups challenging Trump's sweeping assertions of executive 
     authority, limiting their resources for researching legal 
     arguments, preparing briefs and pursuing litigation. Such 
     groups offer legal aid to low-income communities and have 
     long relied on pro bono support.
       The result, he warned, is a chilling effect that is 
     discouraging elite law firms from confronting the 
     administration. ``Win or lose in court, the actions of the 
     president are accomplishing their goal,'' he said.
       Nine firms have capitulated to Trump, pledging nearly $1 
     billion in free work to administration-backed causes.

  One billion dollars of free work is extortion by the President of the 
United States. Threatening the security clearances for taking other 
actions will threaten the ability of the law firms to represent their 
clients or to gain new clients with nearly $1 billion in free work for 
administration-backed causes.

       The deals include pro bono work ensuring ``fairness'' in 
     the justice system and combating antisemitism, issues the 
     administration has cast as conservative, though the specific 
     cases the White House is expecting firms to pursue remain 
     unclear. The firms said their settlements protect employees 
     and clients without compromising core principles or their pro 
     bono commitments.
       Four firms--Perkins Coie, WilmerHale, Jenner & Block and 
     Susman Godfrey--successfully challenged Trump administration 
     orders targeting them, winning permanent injunctions from 
     judges who found the actions unconstitutional. All but Susman 
     Godfrey's case have been appealed.

  The important word in that paragraph is ``unconstitutional.'' It is 
unconstitutional to use the power of the government to blackmail law 
firms. The President acted unconstitutionally.
  Where is a single Member of my colleagues across the aisle, saying, 
``We are going to stand up for the Constitution''? One would be 
delighted to hear them stand up to the Constitution. One--just one--
would be great.

       Beyond those rulings, Trump's directives are reshaping the 
     profession in subtle but significant ways.
       A Reuters review found that 46 of the 50 top-grossing U.S. 
     firms have removed or altered website references to 
     diversity, equity and inclusion. Seventeen revised pro bono 
     descriptions to omit contentious areas like immigration and 
     racial justice. At least three added language highlighting 
     work aligned with Trump's agenda, such as supporting 
     veterans and fighting antisemitism.

[[Page S7628]]

       Court records show a sharp decline in major firms 
     challenging government policies, according to a Reuters 
     analysis of dockets in the legal database Westlaw, a unit of 
     Thomson Reuters.

  Well, that is a pretty fundamental conclusion that the strategy is 
pretty effective.

       Twenty of the nation's 100 highest-grossing law firms sued 
     the Trump administration during his first term, often over 
     politically sensitive issues such as immigration and 
     regulation, but have not filed similar cases so far in his 
     second term, a Reuters review of federal district court 
     dockets found.

  It is a very effective strategy: Threaten the success of a law firm 
by threatening their security clearances, and you get two effects. 
Either you get a settlement which they have to donate--now it is 
totaled at $1 billion of free legal services to whomever the President 
wants--or--in addition, I should say, you also get intimidation that 
has law firms changing their practices. They won't represent clients 
who might make them a target of the administration's blackmail-
extortion strategy. They won't put up on their website causes that they 
have been involved in that might disagree with the President's agenda.
  It is an effective strategy, and it is wrong. It is unconstitutional. 
The government should never be in the business of providing a strategy 
to extort services out of the law firms or to basically intimidate them 
into not doing the function that they would choose to do in a normal 
world.
  This is true of both sides of the aisle. No Democratic President 
should ever intimidate a law firm that wants to represent a pregnancy 
center from getting their representation. It is not the role of 
government to coerce private enterprises from choosing what they want 
to do for pro bono activities.
  It is a form of freedom. Freedom at the corporate level, yes, to be 
sure, is somewhat different from the individual level for their lawyers 
to represent groups that they care about according to their philosophy 
either individually or as a firm.
  Well, in the middle of this, we are still in the middle of the 
Republican shutdown because Republicans want to preserve the slashing 
cuts to healthcare that is affecting so many millions of Americans.
  Where is the connection between the authoritarian strategies of this 
administration's and the bill, what Trump called his Big Beautiful Bill 
and that others call the ``big, ugly betrayal''? What is the connection 
between them? The answer is that, under an authoritarian government, 
the incentive is to serve the billionaires.
  Maybe we can put up the billionaires chart again.
  That was clear from day one when Trump proceeded to be sworn into 
office and to give his inaugural speech just down this hallway in the 
rotunda. There he was, not giving a traditional speech. In a 
traditional speech, he would have been saying: Here, in America, I was 
elected for a vision, and my vision had these key elements to make 
America better. Now I am going to work with Congress and get that 
vision enacted.
  Instead, he simply announced, in his speech, one after another, 
fiats, as some countries call them. More formally, here, they are 
called Executive orders--Executive order this, Executive order that. 
The sound of the Executive order is all they are doing. I am not saying 
it is every Executive order but many of them. It is a substitute for 
passing legislation. They may be challenged in court, but courts are 
slow.
  There is no law that gives the President the power to do tariffs. 
Well, the courts are slow. They have never gotten to the point that 
they said: Stop doing the tariffs because you don't have that 
authority.
  Do you know the very first bill ever considered by the U.S. Senate 
was a tariff bill? If you want a barrel of nails or if you want a keg 
of molasses, what is the tariff going to be when you import it?
  When Senators sit around for 3 weeks, arguing over what price should 
be put--or what tariff amount should be put on each item, it has always 
been done by legislation until this administration.
  So, if the law gives no authority to the President to do tariffs, 
then how is the President doing all these tariffs day and night? It is 
because he is acting as an authoritarian outside the law--that is how--
and because the courts are too slow, too timid, too something, too 
overloaded to say: Hell no. You can't exercise authorities you don't 
have--authorities long invested in Congress to be done by law.
  But if authoritarianism is essentially about billionaires being 
empowered and too bad for the families, then it is a perfect fit for 
the bill passed by this Chamber and the House of Representatives, the 
bill Trump called the Big Beautiful Bill.
  What was the theory behind that bill? It was to run up the debt of 
the United States an additional $30 trillion over the next 30 years. It 
does grind on me every time I hear someone who voted to run up the debt 
$30 trillion over the next 30 years talk about how they are a fiscal 
conservative--because nothing could be further from the fact.
  They slashed the tax credits that support affordable health insurance 
on the exchange in order to fund tax breaks for billionaires, and they 
slashed child nutrition to fund tax breaks for billionaires, and they 
slashed Medicaid to fund tax breaks for billionaires. It makes the 
billionaires pretty happy.
  Here they are, standing behind the President on day one--Mark 
Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk--a government by and for the 
billionaires in the inaugural speech, in the inaugural picture, and in 
the President's big agenda bill. It is all the same. It flows from this 
authoritarian sense of taking control of the country to enhance the 
power of the powerful and toss the people under the bus.
  It is families lose and billionaires win, and if we were actually 
functioning now as a republic, we wouldn't see legislation that is 
families lose and billionaires win. We would see legislation for 
families to thrive and the billionaires or megamillionaires to pay 
their fair share.
  No. We are raised to believe that we have a fair chance at 
legislation that supports the people when everyone has a vote. But here 
is the challenge: We have a massive inequality in this country--I think 
at the highest level since the 1920s--and in that inequality is a power 
differential because those with huge amounts of assets, they can afford 
lawyers who work 365 days a year to get the result they want. They can 
afford media campaigns to mislead the American people.
  I remember early in my time here in the Senate, back when I took the 
light rail, the Metro up to Takoma Park, the big clean coal campaign. 
You know, coal, massively damaging to the environment--but no, this 
clean coal media campaign to make something that is so damaging appears 
like a good option. So they have got the lawyers. They have got the 
media campaigns. They have the lobbyists.
  When I arrived here 17 years ago, it was said there were two pharma 
lobbyists for every Member of Congress. That is a lot. It is said now 
there are three pharma lobbyists for every Member of Congress, three--
three of them, pharma lobbyists--for each one of us. They have got the 
lawyers. They have got the media campaigns. They have got the 
lobbyists. Then they are rich enough to do big campaigns donations on 
the official side; and then, of course, they have got the dark money.
  Oh, yeah. So the Court had this very interesting case called Citizens 
United. And in that case, they said: You know what, limits on 
individual donations can be capped because a candidate may experience 
corruption by knowing that a large amount of the money came from a few 
individuals with particular interests.
  It makes sense. You win your campaign because it was financed--well, 
who knows--let's say the car industry. So you are going to be pretty 
favorable toward that car industry. Maybe it was financed by the clean 
energy community. So you are going to be more favorable to solar and 
wind.
  Maybe it was financed by the fossil industries. You are going to be 
more sympathetic to keeping coal mines operating or massively subsidize 
the way they are now. So, yeah, the Court says, Yeah, we see your 
point. That is corrupting of good governments serving the people.
  They said: But if the donation is made to the friend of the 
candidate, somehow that will erase all of the corrupted influence 
because somehow the candidate will never notice that this

[[Page S7629]]

massive amount of money got them elected because it was given to the 
friend of the candidate to run a parallel campaign rather than the 
candidate.
  What a pile of bullshit that story is from the Supreme Court. Do you 
think any candidate who got massive funding from any of the big dark 
money groups doesn't know exactly where that money came from? And worse 
yet, it is almost universally used to slander the person that they 
don't want to win. And they put fancy names on it like ``The Next 
Generation'' or ``Happiness For America'' or something like that.
  They hide who they are sometimes. Other times, they don't hide who 
they are because they want everyone to know that the crypto industry 
put $40 million in a Ohio Senate race. They wanted everybody to know 
they did it. It sure made it a lot easier to get that crypto bill 
passed on the floor of the Senate earlier this year with people going, 
if I am up for election, I don't want to be having offended the crypto 
industry.
  So the Supreme Court made a totally fallacious argument to justify 
dark money. It is called dark money because, unlike our donations, our 
normal donations to a candidate, they have to be disclosed, and the 
reason they have to be is disclosed is because we passed a law saying 
they have to be disclosed because we want to make sure there is 
transparency.
  Back when McCain-Feingold was being debated, a lot of folks who 
opposed McCain-Feingold limits on donations say that is the wrong 
approach. What we need is to sunlight transparency. Well, that 
transparency is you make that donation, your recipient has to record 
your name, your address, your employment as part of registering that 
donation. I believe the line is $200. But dark money, no such 
requirement.
  Now, we tried to pass a transparency bill called the DISCLOSE Act led 
by the Senator from Rhode Island, Sheldon Whitehouse. And it basically 
said what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Disclosure is 
good for ordinary Americans who can contribute a modest amount of money 
under a cap--a McCain-Feingold cap. And actually, it is a pretty high 
cap when it comes to people in my blue collar community--I mean, it is 
pretty high, but it is not millions. I think the cap is $7,000 now; 
$3,500 to primary, $3,500 in a general. But who in a blue collar 
community like the one I live in has $7,000 to give to a campaign?
  So it is still pretty high, but it is not the $40 million for sure 
that the crypto industry put into a Senate race in a single week 
because they didn't like the way that the incumbent Senator had led the 
Banking Committee and wanted certain things passed out of that Banking 
Committee that didn't get passed out.
  Talk about corrupting the American process of representing the 
people. Boy, that is a whopper right there. But that is where we are 
with the powerful having so much maldistribution of wealth that they 
can employ the lawyers, the lobbyists, the media campaigns.
  They can proceed to give large regular donations and massive dark 
money donations. All of that means there is no such thing as an equal 
playing field in America. All of that means the government operates 
more for the powerful than for the people. And then we have an 
amplification of that disparity by an authoritarian government that 
isn't even trying to address the fundamentals for the people, not even 
trying to address healthcare, not even trying to address housing or 
education, could care less about good-paying jobs. And that is where we 
are at now with the amplified authoritarian government by and for the 
powerful.

  (Mr. CURTIS assumed the Chair.)
  Welcome back to the Presiding Officer who has returned for another 
shift.
  So maybe I should start another chapter of the book. This chapter 
addresses the guardrails of democracy. And again, these chapters are 
taken from ``How Democracies Die.'' Two professors wrote this book in 
2018. They studied how democracies die all around the world, what are 
the warning signs of authoritarian power, how is it exercised, how does 
it grow, how is the effort for a democracy made to filter the 
candidates so you actually end up with someone head of the executive 
branch who has the qualities of character and the capabilities 
appropriate to the office, and how do you lose that as we have now? And 
hopefully how you repair it.
  This chapter, Chapter 5: The Guardrails of Democracy.

       For generations, Americans have retained great faith in 
     their Constitution, as the centerpiece of a belief that the 
     United States was a chosen nation, providentially guided, a 
     beacon of hope and possibility to the world. Although this 
     larger vision may be fading, trust in the Constitution 
     remains high. A 1999 survey found that 85 percent of 
     Americans believed the Constitution was the major reason 
     ``America had been successful during this past century.'' 
     Indeed, our constitutional system of checks and balances was 
     designed to prevent leaders from concentrating and abusing 
     power, and for most of American history, it has succeeded. 
     President Abraham Lincoln's concentration of power during the 
     Civil War was reversed by the Supreme Court after the war 
     ended. President Richard Nixon's illegal wiretapping, exposed 
     after the 1972 Watergate break-in, triggered a high-profile 
     congressional investigation and bipartisan pressure for a 
     special prosecutor that eventually forced his resignation in 
     the face of certain impeachment. In these and other 
     instances, our political institutions served as crucial 
     bulwarks against authoritarian tendencies.
       But are constitutional safeguards, by themselves, enough to 
     secure a democracy? We believe the answer is no. Even well-
     designed constitutions sometimes fail. Germany's 1919 Weimar 
     constitution was designed by some of the country's greatest 
     legal minds. Its long-standing and highly regarded 
     Rechtsstaat (``rule of law'') was considered by many as 
     sufficient to prevent government abuse. But both the 
     constitution and the Rechtsstaat collapsed rapidly in the 
     face of Adolf Hitler's usurpation of power in 1933.
       Or consider the experience of postcolonial Latin America. 
     Many of the region's newly independent republics modeled 
     themselves directly on the United States, adopting U.S.-style 
     presidentialism, bicameral legislatures, supreme courts, and 
     in some cases, electoral colleges and federal systems. Some 
     wrote constitutions that were near-replicas of the U.S. 
     Constitution. Yet almost all the region's embryonic republics 
     plunged into civil war and dictatorship. For example, 
     Argentina's 1853 constitution closely resembled ours: Two-
     thirds of its text was taken directly from the U.S. 
     Constitution. But these constitutional arrangements did 
     little to prevent fraudulent elections in the late nineteenth 
     century, military coups in 1930 and 1943, and Peron's 
     populist autocracy.
       Likewise, the Philippines' 1935 constitution has been 
     described as a ``faithful copy of the U.S. Constitution.'' 
     Drafted under U.S. colonial tutelage and approved by the U.S. 
     Congress, the charter ``provided a textbook example of 
     liberal democracy,'' with a separation of powers, a bill of 
     rights, and a two-term limit in the presidency. But President 
     Ferdinand Marcos, who was loath to step down when his second 
     term ended, dispensed with it rather easily after declaring 
     martial law in 1972.

  You know, I was thinking about folks who came to my townhalls this 
year. I had 36 townhalls, one in each county. I do it every year. I 
have done more than 600. That is a lot of opportunity for people to 
give feedback, but the feedback I got this year included people asking 
the question: Will Trump try to serve a third term? He has talked about 
it. He has joked about it. And for the first few months of this year, I 
was somewhat dismissive that our democracy could ever be so fragile.
  And I still feel it is an enormous stretch, but folks have pointed 
out that the Constitution doesn't ban a person from serving a third 
term.
  No. It bans a person from running for a third term, not serving a 
third term. We had a vacancy when Dianne Feinstein passed away. She sat 
right next to me, here at this desk. And the very capable woman who was 
appointed by the Governor of California to serve in Feinstein's seat--
well, she didn't live in California, is my understanding. But the rule 
was that she had to live in California to run, and she wasn't running, 
she was appointed, and so that distinction actually has some basis in 
actions that have occurred.
  So now maybe I have you all a little more worried that there is 
something to the possibility, because it has been pointed out that the 
President might run for Vice President. If the President steps down, 
they are now serving a third term--not a likely scenario that I think 
anyone would support. It still seems an enormous stretch. But so much 
else that seemed an enormous stretch is happening right now.
  But then people posed a different question in my townhalls. They 
said: We have seen the President evoke emergency powers or just grab 
authorities that the law doesn't give the President. So what is to 
prevent the President from invoking emergency powers, saying there is a 
crisis, and delaying the next election, maybe arguing that

[[Page S7630]]

the voting machines are not yet properly free of some virus that has 
infected them or arguing that the vote can't go forward because the 
President has put out an edict about vote-by-mail?
  And States are still using vote-by-mail.
  Again, I think it is an enormous stretch and unlikely, but I will say 
that we damn well better be on our guard because we didn't expect to 
have a President who would attack due process and ignore it, and we 
have him. We didn't expect to have a President who would blackmail law 
firms, and we have him. We didn't expect to have a President who would 
use licenses and merger power to try to control what networks put on 
TV, but we have him. We didn't expect to have a President who would 
weaponize the Justice Department to go after a list of his public 
enemies that he has identified as his public enemies. We didn't expect 
to have a President who would try to get the court decisions to enable 
him to deploy troops whenever he wants against public dissent in the 
United States of America, and yet we have him.
  So I say to you: Ring the alarm bells because all of those things are 
worthy of ringing them loud and hard, but in addition, don't assume 
that even though all of those bridges have been crossed, that somehow, 
the President won't cross the next bridge. Be aware and worried about 
the possibility of the use of an emergency in order to expand 
authoritarian power. Be aware and concerned about a manufactured crisis 
to expand authoritarian power.
  That is the position we are in now in the United States of America--
authoritarianism in complete control of the Nation, with a rubberstamp 
Congress, a Court that is delivering more and more power to the 
Executive, and an Executive who has a well-planned strategy--thanks to 
Project 2025--to turn our country from a government by and for the 
people into a government by and for the richest and most powerful 
people in the land.
  Turning back to the book, it continues. So, yes, I am still awake.
  So they asked the question:

       But are constitutional safeguards, by themselves, enough to 
     secure a democracy?

  They said:

       We believe the answer is no. Even well-designed 
     constitutions sometimes fail.

  And they lay out how the Weimar constitution--well-designed--lapsed 
rapidly in the face of Adolph Hitler's power grab in 1933.
  Then they continue:

       Or consider the experience of postcolonial Latin America. 
     Many of the region's newly independent republics modeled 
     themselves directly on the United States, adopting U.S.-style 
     presidentialism, bicameral legislatures, supreme courts, and 
     in some cases, electoral colleges and federal systems. Some 
     wrote constitutions that were near-replicas of the U.S. 
     Constitution. Yet almost all the region's embryonic republics 
     plunged into civil war and dictatorship. For example, 
     Argentina's 1853 constitution closely resembled ours: Two-
     thirds of its text was taken directly from the U.S. 
     Constitution. But these constitutional arrangements did 
     little to prevent fraudulent elections in the late nineteenth 
     century, military coups in 1930 and 1943, and Peron's 
     populist autocracy.

  The Philippines constitution--``a faithful copy of the U.S. 
Constitution,'' but it was dispensed with rather easily after 
declaring--he dispensed with it rather easily after declaring martial 
law in 1972.

       If constitutional rules were enough, then figures such as 
     Peron, Marcos, or Brazil's Getulio Vargas--all of whom took 
     office under U.S.-style constitutions that, on paper, 
     contained an impressive array of checks and balances--
     would have been one- or two-term presidents rather than 
     notorious autocrats.
       Even well-designed constitutions cannot, by themselves, 
     guarantee democracy. For one, constitutions are always 
     incomplete. Like any set of rules, they have countless gaps 
     and ambiguities. No operating manual, no matter how detailed, 
     can anticipate all possible contingencies or prescribe how to 
     behave under all possible circumstances.
       Constitutional rules are also always subject to competing 
     interpretations. What, exactly, does ``advice and consent'' 
     entail when it comes to the U.S. Senate's role in appointing 
     Supreme Court justices? What sort of threshold for 
     impeachment does the phrase ``crimes and misdemeanors'' 
     establish? Americans have debated these and other 
     constitutional questions for centuries. If constitutional 
     powers are open to multiple readings, they can be used in 
     ways that their creators didn't anticipate.

  These words for ``advice and consent'' were not laid out clearly. We 
had a responsibility--the idea was that we had to agree to consent to a 
nomination, but how was that to be done? So really the early practices 
that were adopted became the precedents and guided us until we changed 
those practices.
  We had a major change this year. Except when done by unanimous 
consent, nominations have been done by a single vote on each person. So 
then you can't put a bad nominee in with a batch of good ones and 
somehow get them approved.
  But this year, this body engaged in what is known as the nuclear 
option and proceeded to change the rule in order to do large groups of 
nominees in a single vote. So is that still advice and consent? Well, 
not if you believe that it applied to each individual because each 
individual isn't being voted on. But there is ambiguity, as these 
authors say. There is uncertainty. And each thing depends upon kind of 
the good faith and the principle involved, and if that good faith isn't 
there, if that kind of matrix of social understandings that affirm the 
rule is missing, then the words themselves, well, won't carry the same 
value in preserving our freedom, our checks and balances.
  Returning to the script here of the book:

       Finally, the written words of a constitution may be 
     followed to the letter in ways that undermine the spirit of 
     the law. One of the most disruptive forms of labor protests 
     is a ``work to rule'' campaign, in which workers do exactly 
     what is asked of them in their contracts or job descriptions 
     but nothing more. In other words, they follow the written 
     rules to the letter. Almost invariably, the workplace ceases 
     to function.
       Because of the gaps and ambiguities inherent in all legal 
     systems, we cannot rely on constitutions alone to safeguard 
     democracy against would-be authoritarians. ``God has never 
     endowed any statesman or philosopher, or any body of them,'' 
     wrote former U.S. president Benjamin Harrison, ``with wisdom 
     enough to frame a system of government that everybody could 
     go off and leave.''
       That includes our own political system. The U.S. 
     Constitution is, by most accounts, a brilliant document. But 
     the original Constitution--only four pages long--can be 
     interpreted in many different, and even contradictory, ways. 
     We have, for example, few constitutional safeguards against 
     filling nominally independent agencies (such as the FBI) with 
     loyalists. According to constitutional scholars Aziz Huq and 
     Tom Ginsburg, only the ``thin tissue of convention'' prevents 
     American presidents from capturing the referees and deploying 
     them against opponents.

  This book was written in 2018. I haven't met these authors, but I 
would like to now because at that time, they didn't anticipate that 
what they were seeing and worried about in 2018 would come back in such 
full force and would begin with the very start of the administration 
that they would fire all the inspectors general, which is exactly what 
they are warning about here. ``Capturing the referees.'' Who are the 
referees? Well, one set of referees are inspectors general who don't 
answer to the head of an Agency, are supposed to provide us with 
oversight of what is going on in that Agency.
  In a way, they are more accountable to Congress than they are to the 
President. But the Executive fired them. And for the most part, the 
court has shrugged its shoulders and said: Oh well. Go ahead.

       Huq and Ginsburg recently warned that ``the constitutional 
     and legal safeguards of [American] democracy . . . would 
     prove to be fairly easy to manipulate in the face of a truly 
     antidemocratic leader.''
       If the constitution written in Philadelphia in 1787 is not 
     what secured American democracy for so long, then what did? 
     Many factors mattered, including our nation's immense wealth, 
     a large middle class, and a vibrant civil society. But we 
     believe much of the answer also lies in the development of 
     strong democratic norms. All successful democracies rely on 
     informal rules that, though not found in the constitution or 
     any laws, are widely known and respected. In the case of 
     American democracy, this has been vital.

  I was thinking about how the norms have changed from time to time in 
America. Just to provide a couple of examples, the early Senate wanted 
to get in and get its work done so that people could go back to their 
farms, plant their crops, harvest their crops. There was no time to be 
fooling around. Jefferson laid out a manual for the operation of the 
Senate, and he talked about how comments needed to be direct and not 
superfluous and on point, so that everybody could get their thoughts 
into the conversation and then you could vote.
  You could go onto the next topic.
  And a second convention was that the Presiding Officer--by the 
Constitution, the Vice President of the United

[[Page S7631]]

States--sat right up there in the dais. Well, we don't have a Vice 
President sitting in the dais tonight, but the understanding was the 
Vice President had the responsibility, under the Constitution, to make 
the Senate operate, much as the way when I was Speaker of the Oregon 
House, it was my job to be at the dais and keep things moving and make 
them operate and solve problems when they came up.
  Thomas Jefferson played that role when he was Vice President, and he 
wrote a manual about how we should behave here.
  But that idea that things should be succinct and to the point started 
to face a serious assault by the pressures of the 1830s. You had in the 
South the tobacco, cotton, agricultural economy. You had in the North a 
manufacturing economy. And those two economies thought different things 
would help them succeed. And one of the issues that became highly 
controversial was tariffs. Why tariffs in the 1830s? Well, because the 
North wanted to protect its manufacturing base.
  Stretch out this cord a little more so I am tethered at a slightly 
longer distance. It turns out, if you give a really long speech, maybe 
it is a good idea to move around quite a bit during that period.
  So in the 1830s, you have this tension, and the North wants these 
tariffs to protect its manufacturing economy. The South is concerned 
about retaliatory tariffs against its tobacco and its cotton. So the 
South called these tariffs the ``Tariffs of Abominations.'' That is a 
pretty fierce phrase that shows how deeply they were concerned about 
this legislation.
  And Calhoun, who had been Vice President and then left that to run 
and come back to this body as a U.S. Senator, was really the spear-
header of the philosophy that you could have States that could nullify 
a Federal law if they didn't like it.
  Now, this idea wasn't completely a kooky idea. We were, in the 
beginning, an assembly of States, and there were alternative visions of 
whether we were primarily a group of States working together or were we 
one Nation.
  And under the idea of nullification, States were retaining far more 
power, and the Federal laws were suggestions, and they could nullify 
them if they wanted.
  Now, this came to a test over tariffs because, ultimately, Calhoun 
organized and encouraged South Carolina to write a bill that nullified 
tariff law.
  Wow. OK. So Jackson, who was President--well, Jackson was a slave 
owner, I think born in Virginia but representing Tennessee or coming 
from Tennessee for most of his career. He said: Hell no, you can't 
nullify laws, South Carolina.
  And he came to Congress, and he got a declaration of war against 
South Carolina. And South Carolina backed down, and they undid their 
nullification law, and that was the end of nullification.
  So here is a southern economy, based on tobacco and cotton and slave 
labor. And how are they going to try to stop the laws that they really 
don't want? And they hit upon a strategy of continuously raising new 
motions on the law. And every time there was a new motion, well, under 
the Senate rules, each person could speak to it twice. So by doing 
motion after motion--maybe a motion returning to committee, maybe a 
motion to adjourn, maybe a motion to do this amendment or to do that 
amendment--well, it enabled continuous talking about the bill.
  And this is the root of the word ``filibuster,'' because whereas the 
social contract had been that the Jefferson vision of speaking 
succinctly and to the main point so everybody could get their thoughts 
in and then you could vote, it was replaced by a new convention of 
speaking slowly, at length, on motion after motion, to basically make 
it impossible to get to a final vote.
  So the rules on the page for the Senate were the same, but the 
conventions around them changed dramatically. And the advocates for 
this talk-a-bill-to-death strategy were considered pirates.
  Pirates, you envision them operating outside of the law, boarding the 
ship, creating chaos and dysfunction. And the word ``filibuster'' means 
piracy. It is a word essentially translated from Dutch, 
``freebooter''--freebooter, filibusters. I think it was the kind of 
Caribbean slang version of freebooter or pirate. And so the pirates 
became the norm.
  And we are still haunted and challenged by that vision of bills being 
talked to death, of not being able to get to a final vote on bills. And 
that means, in a fast-changing world, the Senate can't function very 
quickly. It means that large, powerful interests that have lobbyists 
and lawyers and can fund massive amounts of dark money in elections and 
lots of regular donations, collectively, they can get the minority to 
block a bill from ever being completed by never providing the 60 votes 
needed to complete the bill. The bill will be continuously considered 
and never resolved.
  So that is the challenge that still is one we are struggling with 
here in this system.
  So as they were noting:

       [T]he ``thin tissue of convention'' prevents American 
     presidents from capturing the referees and deploying them 
     against opponents. Likewise, the Constitution is virtually 
     silent on the president's authority to act unilaterally, via 
     decrees or executive orders, and it does not define the 
     limits of executive power during crises. Thus, Huq and 
     Ginsburg recently warned that ``the constitutional and legal 
     safeguards of [American] democracy . . . would prove to be 
     fairly easy to manipulate in the face of a truly 
     antidemocratic leader.''

  And that is where we are at right now, and that is why I am ringing 
the alarm bells. It is why 7 million people turned out for the No Kings 
rally on Saturday. Let's ring the bells inside this building, and let's 
ring them outside this building because our Constitution is under the 
greatest threat since the Civil War. And it is our job as elected 
leaders, in partnership with the groundswell of engaged American 
citizenry, to save it. That is our responsibility: to save our country 
from the authoritarian takeover we are in at this moment.

       If the Constitution written . . . in 1787 is not what 
     secured American democracy--

  As I noted, I read this paragraph before--

     what did?

  Well, the middle class was helpful. Vibrant civil society was 
helpful, and then norms.

       All successful democracies rely on informal rules that, 
     though not found in the constitution or any laws, are widely 
     known and respected. In the case of American democracy, this 
     has been vital.
       As in all facets of society, ranging from family life to 
     the operation of businesses and universities, unwritten rules 
     loom large. . . . To understand how they work, think of the 
     example of a pickup basketball game. Street basketball is not 
     governed by rules set up by the NBA, [the] NCAA, or any other 
     league. And there are no referees to enforce such rules. Only 
     shared understandings about what is, and what is not, 
     acceptable--
       Only shared understandings about what is, and what is not, 
     acceptable prevent such games from descending into chaos. The 
     unwritten rules of a half-court game of pickup basketball are 
     familiar to anyone who has played it. Here are some of the 
     basics:
       Scoring is by ones, not by twos as in regular basketball . 
     . . the winning team must win by two points.
       The team that makes a basket keeps the ball (``make it, 
     take it''). The scoring team takes the ball to the top of the 
     key and, to ensure that the defending team is ready, 
     ``checks'' it by passing it to the nearest opposing player.
       The player who starts with the ball cannot shoot; he or she 
     must pass it in.
       Players call their own fouls but with restraint; only 
     egregious fouls are legitimate (``no blood, no foul''). But 
     when fouls are called, the calls must be respected.
       Democracy, of course, is not street basketball. Democracies 
     do have written rules (constitutions) and referees (the 
     courts). But these work best, and survive longest, in 
     countries where written constitutions are reinforced by their 
     own unwritten rules of the game. These rules or norms serve 
     as the soft guardrails of democracy, preventing day-to-day 
     political competition from devolving into a no-holds-barred 
     conflict.
       Norms are more than personal dispositions. They do not 
     simply rely on political leaders' good character, but rather 
     are shared codes of conduct that become common knowledge 
     within a particular community or society--accepted, 
     respected, and enforced by its members. Because they are 
     unwritten, they are often hard to see, especially when 
     they're functioning well. This can fool us into thinking they 
     are unnecessary. But nothing could be further from the truth. 
     Like oxygen or clean water, a norm's importance is quickly 
     revealed by its absence. When norms are strong, violations 
     trigger expressions of disapproval, ranging from head-shaking 
     and ridicule to public criticism and outright ostracism. And 
     politicians who violate them can expect to pay a price.
       Unwritten rules are everywhere in American politics, 
     ranging from the operations of

[[Page S7632]]

     the Senate and the Electoral College to the format of 
     presidential press conferences. But two norms stand out as 
     fundamental to a functioning democracy: mutual toleration and 
     institutional forbearance.

  And the chapter goes on to talk about these two key norms of mutual 
tolerance and institutional forbearance and notes that, essentially, 
when we become two parties treating each other like enemies, we have 
wandered way outside that framework that makes democracy function.
  I was struck by a chart that I saw years ago that described what the 
political spectrums look like back in the 1970s. Since I was first here 
in 1976, it was like if this is the bell curve for the Democrats and 
bell curve for the Republicans. They crossed over a tremendous amount. 
But that is not the way our country functions now. Now, those two 
curves are essentially far apart. There is this massive chasm between 
the Democratic range of views and Republican range of views.
  This chasm is partly the result of cable television. Cable television 
meant that things were not broadcast over the air, and somewhere along 
the line, I believe during the Reagan administration, we lost the 
fairness doctrine, which basically said you can't use your broadcast 
news in a partisan fashion.
  Well, that is gone. And each cable news world has its own audience. 
So if you go to a city in my State and in most States, it is not very 
likely they are watching FOX News, to be simple, to be plain. It is 
more likely they are watching CNN or MSNBC. If you go to rural Oregon, 
the reverse is true. They are probably not watching CNN, MSNBC--more 
likely FOX News or some other competitor in that range of the spectrum.
  And since there is no fairness doctrine and since viewership is 
increased when people's emotions are activated, these channels do a lot 
to be as basically fierce about the dysfunction of the other party as 
possible. And any best action is viewed in ``our best intentions,'' 
``your worst.'' So the division is augmented by cable television and 
reinforced by social media. That is the chasm we face right now. And 
what the authors are saying is once we fall into this world where we 
are split in this fashion, well, democracy is in trouble.
  I would say, I concur with that observation.
  They go on about mutual tolerance in that respect, but then also 
about forbearance:

       Forbearance means ``patient self-control; restraint and 
     tolerance,'' or ``the action of restraining from exercising a 
     legal right.'' For our purposes . . . [it] can be thought of 
     as avoiding actions that, while respecting the letter of the 
     law, obviously violates its spirit. Where norms of 
     forbearance are strong, politicians do not use their 
     institutional prerogatives to the hilt, even if technically 
     legal to do so, for such action could imperil the existing 
     system.

  Well, these are the challenges that we face here and, more broadly, 
our entire Nation faces as we have been split into teams.
  One of the things that particularly strikes me is a survey that was 
done a few years ago that said, in the past, parents' biggest concern 
was their children would marry into a different religion. And now, 
parents' concern is their children will marry into a different 
political party. That is how fierce the separation has become between 
Democrats and Republicans in our country.
  I am here tonight to ring the alarm bells, to say we are deep into 
authoritarian control in our Nation and that we have an obligation. For 
hundreds of years, our forefathers and foremothers fought and died to 
preserve this vision of freedom, to preserve this constitutional 
framework.
  And in 9 simple months, more has been done to unravel, to crush it 
than we could ever have imagined. Take more than 3 more years of this, 
and the ability to escape this authoritarian framework, this style, is 
incredibly unlikely. That is why it is important to ring the alarm 
bells now, to weigh in now, to have the No Kings march now as we did 
this last weekend, to remind us all of the responsibilities we have to 
save the vision of our Constitution.
  This isn't a ``you can just kind of relax and maybe save it a couple 
of years from now.'' No, it will be too entrenched. That is the 
message. That is why we need to ring the alarm bells.
  Between each chapter, I am looking at the different strategy in which 
Trump is waging war on our Constitution and is expanding 
his authoritarian power. We looked at his attack on the press. We 
looked at his attack on free speech. We looked at his attack on due 
process. We looked at his attack on law firms.

  Well, now, we will look at the attack on universities. Trump and his 
team have tried to use the power of the State to reshape policies at 
universities by launching investigations of their practices and by 
freezing millions or billions in their Federal grants. Some of those 
universities include ones readily recognizable across the country--
Brown University, Columbia University, Cornell, Duke, Harvard, 
Northwestern, Penn, Princeton, UCLA--dozens of other schools are under 
scrutiny.
  Harvard is one of Trump's biggest targets, with roughly $9 billion at 
stake. Let me read you this reporting about Trump's attacks on 
universities that was written just last month, September 5. The article 
is titled ``Trump Has Targeted Universities Like Harvard, Cornell, 
Columbia. Why?'' Written by Alan Blinder:

       The Trump administration is exerting extraordinary 
     influence over American universities by threatening to cut 
     them off in funding and, in some cases, students.
       President Trump and his allies have focused their attacks 
     on elite universities, which they say are bastions of 
     antisemitism and ideological indoctrination. A handful of 
     schools--Brown, Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania--
     have made deals with the White House. Some have agreed to pay 
     millions of dollars to restore research funds and end federal 
     investigations.

  Wow, another case of the President's team extorting action by an 
institution, in this case, universities.

       Harvard has fought back in court, even as it has negotiated 
     with the White House, while others have exclusively pursued 
     quiet talks with the government . . .
       But as universities contend with Washington's demands, the 
     long-term result could remake higher education across the 
     country. Billions in funds for research have been frozen, 
     while administration officials have also tried to prevent 
     universities from enrolling international students.

  So freeze their research funds and then attack the ability to enroll 
students who pay full tuition, two ways of attacking the ability of the 
university to make the books balance.

       The higher education industry has acknowledged shortcomings 
     and failures, but the university leaders have also warned 
     that the federal government is trying to stamp out academic 
     freedom, a cornerstone of the American education system.
       Since taking power in January, the Trump administration has 
     said it would end and limit federal money to a number of 
     universities, including Brown, Columbia, Cornell, Duke, 
     Harvard, Northwestern, Penn, Princeton and the University of 
     California, Los Angeles.
       Dozens of other schools are also under scrutiny, largely by 
     the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights, and 
     are aware that some of their Federal funding is imperiled.
       But much of the focus is on 10 schools that a Trump 
     administration task force, which says it is devoted to 
     rooting out antisemitism, identified for particular attention 
     . . .
       The University of Virginia also drew the ire of the 
     administration, which demanded the resignation of the 
     school's president to resolve a Justice Department inquiry to 
     diversity, equity and inclusion.

  Oh, my goodness, Trump's obsession with diversity, equity, and 
inclusion--he has an obsession with his fight for inequality of 
opportunity.
  I was raised to believe that everyone should have a chance to 
thrive--everyone should--and that everyone has something to contribute. 
Well, everyone having something to contribute, that is diversity. 
People bring different life experiences, different cultural 
backgrounds, different ways of observing the world. And by sharing 
those, we make the society stronger. The strands are woven together. 
They result in more than the individuals by themselves. Diversity is a 
strength.
  Equity. What is equity? It is carved above the Supreme Court: ``Equal 
Justice Under Law.'' Why is it that Trump hates ``Equal Justice Under 
the Law?'' Equity.
  Inclusion. Inclusion means an end to bigotry that locks out people 
because of the color of their skin or their family background or the 
country they come from. The end of bigotry in order to get people 
opportunity to thrive--positive thing, end of bigotry.
  So here we have Trump turning the value of everyone having something 
to offer, every equal justice under the

[[Page S7633]]

law, and of ending bigotry into a negative. I don't buy it, not for a 
second, this attack on diversity, equity, and inclusion--an attack on 
equal justice, an attack on opportunity for all.
  But there are all these schools getting rid of their programs 
dedicated to these important values of opportunity for all.

       The Trump administration announced three significant deals 
     in July.
       First, Penn agreed to implement certain policies around 
     transgender people in athletics and to apologize, in effect, 
     for the trans athlete Lia Thomas's participation on its 
     women's swim team several years ago. The agreement included 
     no financial penalties.
       Columbia, which faced accusations [it had] tolerated 
     antisemitism on campus, later agreed to a suite of policy 
     changes, as well as a $200 million fine to the U.S. 
     government. Brown University cut a similar deal, though its 
     $50 million payout was going to be directed toward state 
     work force development organizations, not the federal 
     government.
       Brown and Columbia secured specific provisions intended to 
     limit the Trump administration's involvement in academic 
     matters.

  The next section of this essay is titled, ``What is happening with 
Harvard?''

       The Trump administration's biggest target has been Harvard, 
     the country's oldest and richest university. The university 
     has roughly $9 billion at stake in its fight with the federal 
     government.
       The dispute erupted after Harvard rejected Trump 
     administration proposals, including one for the use of an 
     outsider to audit ``programs and departments that most fuel 
     antisemitic harassment or reflect ideological capture.'' The 
     government also wanted Harvard to curb the power of its 
     faculty and report international students who commit 
     misconduct.

  The Trump administration wants a report on ideological capture? Well, 
how about it starts by doing a report on itself and its ideology of an 
authoritarian takeover that is destroying our Constitution? Now, that 
would be a report worth doing right there.

       The Trump administration almost immediately began cutting 
     off billions in funds. Officials have since said they would 
     direct federal agencies to end all of their remaining 
     contracts with the school. The government has also told the 
     university not to expect grant money in the future.
       Harvard sued the administration over the cuts. In 
     September, a federal judge in Boston broadly ruled in 
     Harvard's favor, though the administration immediately 
     pledged to appeal . . . It was not clear when, or whether, 
     the federal money would flow again.
       But the administration's onslaught goes beyond research 
     funding. The university is confronting an array of 
     investigations, some of which Harvard officials fear could 
     become full-blown criminal inquiries in the coming months. 
     Mr. Trump has also threatened Harvard's tax-exempt status.

  So we saw the President use power over mergers and license to try to 
compel the networks as to what programming they could have, and here we 
are seeing using the power over the tax-exempt status to try to compel 
what the university does. So it is using these different powers of the 
administration, in effect, to extort concessions that interfere with 
the proper independent functioning of these organizations.
  I don't want the Federal Government telling universities what they 
can teach. I don't want the Federal Government using research grants as 
a weapon against our universities or using the ability to allow 
students to--foreign students to attend--because of tuition or, in this 
case, threatening tax-exempt status.

       [Recently] his administration has also tried repeatedly to 
     bar the university from enrolling international students. A 
     federal judge in Boston has blocked those efforts.
       In June, Harvard and the White House began discussing the 
     possibility of a settlement. Even as the talks unfolded, 
     though, the administration kept hammering at Harvard with 
     subpoenas, accusations of civil rights violations and a 
     subsequent challenge to its accreditation.
       Harvard has signaled that it might be willing to spend $500 
     million to settle with the White House.

  Well, it is working, right? Major institutions--proud, independent 
institutions--that know their role in terms of research that 
contributes to all fields in America and to the prosperity of America 
are feeling quite compelled that they can't endure this collective 
attack by the administration.
  We here, in this Chamber, should be passing laws that say, ``You 
can't do this,'' and protect academic freedom. Academic freedom is also 
about the students' freedom. But we are not, and that is a shame.

       The administration has frequently claimed that the targeted 
     schools harbor antisemitism.

  It goes on to address that issue at some length.

       Many conservatives say their views have been marginalized 
     in lecture halls . . . They have said they want universities 
     to emphasize academic programs that will lead students to 
     jobs that are essential to the economy.

  In other words, our universities--our private universities--are going 
to be an extension of the philosophy of the government, and if that 
happens to sound appealing to you now because you broadly share Trump's 
perspectives, would you like it so much with a different President 
telling the universities what to do, including conservative 
universities, based on a more liberal set of ideas about the world? I 
would suspect not.
  The situation gets even worse. On October 2, the New York Times 
reported the White House sent letters to universities, urging them to 
``pledge support for President Trump's political agenda to help ensure 
access to research funds.''
  To his political agenda? Can we not all agree that this is a massive 
abuse of government power?
  Let me read you the reporting: ``Trump Administration Asks Colleges 
to Sign `Compact' to Get Funding Preference.''

       Demands sent to nine top schools included pledging to 
     freeze tuition for five years and to commit to strict 
     definitions of gender.
       The White House on Wednesday sent letters to nine of the 
     nation's top public and private universities, urging campus 
     leaders to pledge support for President Trump's political 
     agenda to help ensure access to federal research funds.

  Pledge support--let me repeat that--to Trump's political agenda to 
ensure access to Federal research funds.

       The letters came attached to a 10-page ``compact'' that 
     serves as a sort of priority statement for the 
     administration's educational goals--the most comprehensive 
     accounting to date of what Mr. Trump aims to achieve from 
     an unparalleled, monthslong pressure campaign on academia.
       The compact would require colleges to freeze tuition for 
     five years, cap the enrollment of international students and 
     commit to strict definitions of gender. Among other steps, 
     universities would also be required to change the governance 
     structures to prohibit anything that would ``punish, belittle 
     and even spark violence against conservative ideas.''
       Colleges that sign the agreement would receive ``multiple 
     positive benefits,'' according to a letter included with the 
     compact signed by Education Secretary Linda McMahon; [and 
     signed by] Vince Haley, the director of the White House 
     Domestic Policy Council; and [by] May Mailman, the White 
     House's senior adviser for special projects.
       The Trump administration gave nine universities a set of 
     terms to follow for better access to federal terms. At least 
     one said it wanted to sign up, but some students wanted the 
     college officials to say no.
       Colleges that agree would get priority access to federal 
     funds and looser restraints on overhead costs. Signed 
     compacts would also serve as assurance to the government that 
     schools are complying with civil rights laws. Federal civil 
     rights investigations have been used to halt much of the 
     research funding the administration has blocked so far this 
     year.

  So it is kind of completely captured by this notion that you don't 
get research funds unless you reshape your views and your actions to 
accentuate Trump's political agenda. Well, that is how far things have 
gone off track. The President wants to dictate how our universities 
teach and what they teach, and they want the universities to promote 
his political agenda.
  The letters were sent to a number of these universities, and there 
are a number of comments.

       ``The University of Texas system is honored that our 
     flagship--the University of Texas at Austin--has been named 
     as one of only nine institutions in the U.S. selected by the 
     Trump administration for potential funding advantages under 
     its new Compact for Academic Excellence in Higher 
     Education,'' Kevin P. Eltife, the chairman of the University 
     of Texas Board of Regents, said in a statement on Thursday. 
     ``We enthusiastically look forward to engaging with 
     university officials and reviewing the compact immediately.''
       The other eight schools declined to comment, did not 
     immediately or said they were still studying the compact.
       But the letters also prompted concern about the precedent 
     of signing on to such agreements.

  Well, they should be concerned, any time a government in a free 
society tells the universities what they can teach and that they have 
to promote the President's political agenda, that is a massive red line 
that has been crossed. I hope all nine say: Absolutely no.

[[Page S7634]]

  But I will tell you we saw, with the previous threats, universities 
cut deals because, when millions and millions of funds are being held 
up by the government, that is an effective strategy of blackmail that 
forces university presidents to say: I have got a responsibility to 
keep this place functioning. We have a lot of folks who are involved in 
the research, and we can't send them all home. The interruption will 
damage the enormous amount of work that has already been done.
  I mean, the pressures are intense. That is a terrible place 
universities are when the power of the U.S. Government is mobilized to 
oppress them.
  On October 10, an article notes about MIT that they rejected a 
special funding offer from the Trump administration.

       M.I.T. became the first university to reject an agreement 
     that would trade support for the Trump administration's 
     higher education agenda in exchange for favorable treatment.
       The proposal, called the ``Compact for Academic Excellence 
     in Higher Education,'' was sent to nine universities and 
     would require colleges to cap international student 
     enrollment, freeze tuition for five years, adhere to 
     definitions of gender and prohibit anything that would 
     ``belittle'' conservative ideas.
       In a letter on Friday to the Trump administration, M.I.T.'s 
     president, Sally Kornbluth, wrote that the university has 
     already freely met or exceeded many of the standards outlined 
     in the proposal, but that she disagrees with other 
     requirements it demands, including those that would restrict 
     free expression.
       ``Fundamentally, the premise of the document is 
     inconsistent with our core belief that scientific funding 
     should be based on scientific merit alone,'' Dr. Kornbluth 
     wrote.
       A White House spokeswoman, Liz Huston, said in a statement 
     that ``any university that refuses this once-in-a-lifetime 
     opportunity to transform higher education isn't serving its 
     students or their parents--they're bowing to radical, left-
     wing bureaucrats.
       ``The best science can't thrive in institutions that have 
     abandoned merit, free inquiry, and the pursuit of truth,'' 
     she added. ``President Trump encourages universities to join 
     us in restoring academic excellence and common sense 
     policies.''

  But the administration is not asking for a free inquiry and the 
pursuit of truth. They are asking the university to promote Trump's 
political agenda.

       The idea of the compacts has been deeply unpopular among 
     faculty members and free speech advocates, who view them as 
     yet another political intrusion into the affairs of academia. 
     They argue that the Trump administration is threatening the 
     independence of American higher education by cutting hundreds 
     of millions of dollars in research funding to force top 
     universities to adopt its agenda.

  Of course, that is exactly what is happening.

       The compact has complicated negotiations between the Trump 
     administration and individual schools, including Harvard, who 
     worry it is a sign that even if they reach a deal with the 
     administration, the government will come back and ask for 
     more concessions.

  Two of the universities that received this invitation to this compact 
were ones that had already reached deals with the Trump administration, 
and so that is what is driving the concern that there is just going to 
be more.
  Well, this is wrong. Our tax dollars are at work for research because 
research takes our Nation forward, makes it more prosperous, allows an 
opportunity for people to utilize to maximum effect those wonderful 
brain cells they have been granted and, in the course, find 
innovations, inventions, and valuable ideas that become valuable to an 
entire society.
  Universities are supposed to serve all Americans, not just those who 
agree with the President. They are supposed to be places where ideas 
are robustly debated, not places where the things they present are 
dictated by the government.
  If you want that, go to China. China has that. If you want to live in 
a country that controls what its universities teach and to have to 
adopt the government authoritarian line, go to China. That is where you 
will find that in abundance if that is what you love, if you love this 
idea of a government dictating what our universities teach.
  I offer a sincere compliment to Princeton president Christopher 
Eisgruber, who has called out Trump's actions as ``the greatest threat 
to American universities since the Red Scare of the 1950s.'' That is 
what I call standing up for academic freedom.
  Now, under our program of it is 12 midnight somewhere, we have 
reached the last location of the official States of the United States 
where Hawaii has arrived--where midnight has arrived in the State of 
Hawaii.
  So we had four time zones in the continental United States, another 
time zone in Alaska, and now we are in Hawaii, some 6 hours after 
midnight first arrived here on the east coast of the United States of 
America.
  As midnight has arrived at each of our various time zones that affect 
the United States, I have been reading ``Paul Revere's Ride'' by Henry 
Wadsworth Longfellow because that poem was about ringing the alarm 
bell, that the British were attacking. In this case, it wasn't actually 
ringing the alarm bell; it was putting lanterns in the church belfry, 
and then folks could see these lanterns--specifically, the person was 
Paul Revere. When he saw the lantern, he rode through town after town 
alerting people to the attack by the British.
  There is a parallel in a sense that right now, Americans are ringing 
the alarm bells about the authoritarian takeover of our country. There 
is nothing normal, there is nothing legal, there is nothing 
constitutional about this authoritarian takeover--quite the opposite. 
It is shredding our Constitution, demolishing our separation of powers, 
and destroying the checks and balances. That is the warning we all need 
to hear and respond to, just as the communities that Paul Revere rode 
through responded and went out to fight the British.
  (Mr. BARRASSO assumed the Chair.)

       LISTEN, my children, and you shall hear
       Of the midnight ride of Paul Revere,
       On the eighteenth of April, in Seventy-five;
       Hardly a man is now alive
       Who remembers that famous day and year.
       He said to his friend, ``If the British march
       By land or sea from the town to-night,
       Hang a lantern aloft in the belfry arch
       Of the North Church tower as a signal light,--
       One, if by land, and two, if by sea;
       And I on the opposite shore will be,
       Ready to ride and spread the alarm
       Through every Middlesex village and farm,
       For the country folk to be up and to arm.''
       Then he said, ``Good night!'' and with muffled oar
       Silently rowed to the Charlestown shore,
       Just as the moon rose over the bay,
       Where swinging wide at her moorings lay
       The Somerset, British man-of-war;
       A phantom ship, with each mast and spar
       Across the moon like a prison bar,
       And a huge black hulk, that was magnified
       By its own reflection in the tide.
       Meanwhile, his friend, through alley and street,
       Wanders and watches with eager ears,
       Till in the silence around him he hears
       The muster of men at the barrack door,
       The sound of arms, and the tramp of feet,
       And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
       Marching down to their boats on the shore.
       Then he climbed the tower of the Old North Church,
       By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
       To the belfry-chamber overhead,
       And startled the pigeons from their perch
       On the sombre rafters, that round him made
       Masses and moving shapes of shade,--
       By the trembling ladder, steep and tall,
       To the highest window in the wall,
       Where he paused to listen and look down
       A moment on the roofs of the town,
       And the moonlight flowing over all.
       Beneath, in the churchyard, lay the dead,
       In their night-encampment on the hill,
       Wrapped in silence so deep and still
       That he could hear, like a sentinel's tread,
       The watchful night-wind, as it went
       Creeping along from tent to tent,
       And seeming to whisper, ``All is well!''
       A moment only he feels the spell
       Of the place and the hour, and the secret dread
       Of the lonely belfry and the dead;
       For suddenly all his thoughts are bent
       On a shadowy something far away,
       Where the river widens to meet the bay,--
       A line of black that bends and floats
       On the rising tide, like a bridge of boats.
       Meanwhile, impatient to mount and ride,
       Booted and spurred, with a heavy stride
       On the opposite shore walked Paul Revere.
       Now he patted his horse's side,
       Now gazed at the landscape far and near,
       Then, impetuous, stamped the earth,
       And turned and tightened his saddle-girth;
       But mostly he watched with eager search
       The belfry-tower of the Old North Church,
       As it rose above the graves on the hill,
       Lonely and spectral and sombre and still.
       And lo! as he looks, on the belfry's height
       A glimmer, and then a gleam of light!
       He springs to the saddle, the bridle he turns,
       But lingers and gazes, till full on his sight
       A second lamp in the belfry burns!
       A hurry of hoofs in a village street,
       A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
       And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
       Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet:

[[Page S7635]]

       That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
       The fate of a nation was riding that night;
       And the spark struck out by that steed, in his flight,
       Kindled the land into flame with its heat.
       He has left the village and mounted the steep,
       And beneath him, tranquil and broad and deep,
       Is the Mystic, meeting the ocean tides;
       And under the alders that skirt its edge,
       Now soft on the sand, now loud on the ledge,
       Is heard the tramp of his steed as he rides.
       It was twelve by the village clock,
       When he crossed the bridge into Medford town.
       He heard the crowing of the cock,
       And the barking of the farmer's dog,
       And felt the damp of the river fog,
       That rises after the sun goes down.
       It was one by the village clock,
       When he galloped into Lexington.
       He saw the gilded weathercock
       Swim in the moonlight as he passed,
       And the meeting-house windows, blank and bare,
       Gaze at him with a spectral glare,
       As if they already stood aghast
       At the bloody work they would look upon.
       It was two by the village clock,
       When he came to the bridge in Concord town.
       He heard the bleating of the flock,
       And the twitter of birds among the trees,
       And felt the breath of the morning breeze
       Blowing over the meadows brown.
       And one was safe and asleep in his bed
       Who at the bridge would be first to fall,
       Who that day would be lying dead,
       Pierced by a British musket-ball.
       You know the rest. In the books you have read,
       How the British Regulars fired and fled,--
       How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
       From behind each fence and farm-yard wall,
       Chasing the red-coats down the lane,
       Then crossing the fields to emerge again
       Under the trees at the turn of the road,
       And only pausing to fire and load.
       So through the night rode Paul Revere;
       And so through the night went his cry of alarm
       To every Middlesex village and farm,--
       A cry of defiance and not of fear,
       A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
       And a word that shall echo forevermore!
       For, borne on the night-wind of the Past,
       Through all our history, to the last,
       In the hour of darkness and peril and need,
       The people will waken and listen to hear
       The hurrying hoof-beats of that steed,
       And the midnight message of Paul Revere.

  The midnight message of Paul Revere to be alerted, to be warned that 
the British are coming and that they are an enormous threat to the 
Colonies.
  I am here tonight--or should I say this morning--to ring the alarm 
bells that there is a full authoritarian assault on our constitutional 
values, our separation of powers, and a full assault on our liberties. 
It is an assault absolutely on due process, on free speech, on free 
press, on free assembly. It is the weaponization of the Department of 
Justice to go after people on a political enemies list the President 
has compiled. It is the effort to mobilize the military to go after 
peaceful protesters and to create violent interactions that would 
justify even more authoritarian power. It is an attack on universities. 
It is an attack on law firms.
  Now we turn to the use of violence. An authoritarian President, 
emboldened by a rubberstamp Congress, emboldened by a deferential 
Supreme Court, sent military troops against American citizens who were 
peacefully protesting. This is un-American. It is a fundamental 
violation of the purpose of our military.
  The military exists to defend us from foreign powers, not to be a 
tool in a President's hand to attack people who disagree with his point 
of view. That happens in countries that don't have a President; that 
happens in countries that have a King.
  Under our Constitution, we don't have a King here in America. Our 
whole Constitution is that we are not governed by and for a King but 
governed by and for the people. And we certainly don't believe that the 
man at the top or the woman at the top of the executive branch should 
be using the military against their own citizens.
  By law, federalizing the National Guard is quite limited. It can only 
be done if it is done in partnership with the Governor or if there is 
an invasion or if there is a rebellion.
  At the time the laws were written--passed right here in this 
Chamber--they well understood what these terms meant: an invasion of 
military force on our border, threatening to cross and attack our 
Nation. That is an invasion. A rebellion: a large, well-organized, 
well-armed group trying to overturn the Government of the United States 
of America.

  The last time we saw something that might have qualified as a 
rebellion was when President Trump organized a mob to attack the 
Capitol to prevent the votes from being counted from the electoral 
college. They were large, they were well-organized, they were somewhat 
armed, and they were certainly striving to overthrow the government by 
preventing the counting of electoral ballots.
  But compare that to protesters peacefully holding signs of concern 
about the policies of this President or the actions of one of his 
Agencies. Isn't that freedom of speech? Isn't that freedom of assembly? 
It goes to the core of who we are as Americans. Government doesn't tell 
us what to think. We get to say what we want. We get to say it when we 
want to.
  Sure, there are some restrictions. You don't yell ``fire'' in a 
crowded theater and cause people to stampede. But, essentially, it is 
the freedom to express your views, and you can express them in ways the 
government doesn't like, in places the government doesn't like. You can 
express them in satire in ways the government doesn't like because we 
are Americans and we treasure our freedom.
  Well, obviously, there is nothing approaching an invasion or a 
rebellion in the city of Portland. Senator Wyden and I were outside of 
ICE a couple of weekends ago. I saw three women holding a sign that had 
a flower on it--nothing particularly threatening.
  But there have been lots of other protesters at other moments--
protesting, though, with joy and whimsy: a group called Paws for Peace 
who were getting together with puppies and dogs. I don't think a bunch 
of folks holding their beloved dogs constitutes a well-organized, well-
armed group trying to overthrow the government. Then there is a group 
called Pastries and Pajamas. They are handing out pastries while 
dressed in pajamas, encouraging people to be engaged in peaceful 
protesting. They may disagree with the administration, but making their 
voice heard is as American as apple pie--or, in this case, apple 
pastry.
  But Trump decided he wanted to create a riot in Portland. Why does he 
want to provoke a riot? Because if he can incite violence, he feels he 
can justify putting the military into our cities, getting the courts to 
say: That is OK.
  Being able to use the military against your own citizens--that is a 
powerful tool to an authoritarian, but it is an extraordinary risk to 
our Republic, an extraordinary risk to government by and for the 
people, and not just in Portland but in L.A. or in DC or in Chicago.
  What the instructions appear to be to his Federal agents is to 
provoke violence by attacking peaceful protesters.
  The Oregonian, the major newspaper of our State, did a report in 
which they said their staff witnessed the Federal agents attacking 
peaceful protesters. What really struck me about this is that normally, 
a newspaper story is detached. It is like: A protester said that 
Federal agents came out and attacked someone who was doing nothing but 
peacefully standing there. Well, someone said this or someone alleged 
this. But in this case, the newspaper article was ``Our staff witnessed 
Federal agents attacking a peaceful protester.'' No, it was not simply 
reporting what someone said; it was what the reporters themselves 
witnessed.
  Let me read you this reporting from the Oregonian about how Federal 
agents attacked peaceful protesters in Oregon from October 3. It is 
titled ``Federal officer blasts chemical spray into vocal but 
nonviolent Portland protester, video shows,'' by Jonathan Bach.

       A federal police officer walked up to a 19-year-old 
     protester and blasted chemical spray directly in her face at 
     Thursday night's protest outside the U.S. Immigration and 
     Customs Enforcement building in Portland.
       The protester, who gave only her first name, Leilani, had 
     been in front of the ICE building when federal agents with 
     shields ordered protesters to move away from the entrance to 
     let a car exit the garage.
       She complied but was hurling curse words and insults at the 
     two officers in front of her when a third agent wearing a gas 
     mask approached her. Within 10 seconds, the officer

[[Page S7636]]

     directed a canister at the 19-year-old's face and doused her 
     with chemical spray.

  Now, this video is just shocking. I haven't seen anybody watch this 
video who doesn't take a great gasp when they see this agent pull up 
the pepper spray straight into this big cone into her face.
  Shouldn't that disturb every one of us in this Chamber, to see a 
peaceful protester attacked in that fashion by Federal agents?
  You know, I believe that it is important for all of our Federal 
agents to have unique identifiers on their uniform. It is fine if it is 
a number; it doesn't have to be a name. But what we know from around 
the world is that when you have unidentified agents have no identifier, 
they feel quite comfortable doing things like walking up and spraying 
pepper spray directly in the protester's face because there is no 
accountability for their attack to the protesters because no one knows 
who they are. This is especially amplified when they wear masks.
  If there is a symbol of fascism that maybe is above all others, it is 
the unmarked, masked Federal agent grabbing people, throwing them into 
unmarked vans, and whisking them away to who-knows-where.
  So we had a vote in this Chamber saying that each Federal agent 
should have a unique identifier--well, in part to discourage them from 
doing outrageous attacks on protesters or other outrageous acts and 
partly to identify them if they did do something that was outrageous so 
there is some accountability.
  Accountability is part of the trust relationship in government by and 
for the people. If you live in a land with an authoritarian King, you 
don't want accountability. The King doesn't want anyone to allege 
anything about anyone. But when the government is by and for the 
people, accountability matters. But it didn't exist in this case.

       Within 10 seconds, the officer directed a canister at the 
     19-year-old's face and doused her with chemical spray.
       The interaction illustrates how federal law enforcement 
     officers use aggressive tactics against protesters who yell 
     and needle officers but don't appear to present clear 
     physical threats. That was the case even before Thursday's 
     protest, when fights broke out between protesters and 
     counterprotesters, leading to three arrests by Portland 
     police.
       A reporter from The Oregonian/OregonLive witnessed the 
     immediate aftermath of the chemical blast, when protesters 
     acting as onsite medics rendered aid to the 19-year-old and 
     another protester who was also hit with chemical spray. A 
     nearby Portland Police Bureau officer then called for 
     paramedics.
       The Department of Homeland Security did not immediately 
     respond to a request for comment Friday on its tactics.
       The Oregonian/OregonLive--

  That is their online name--

     has witnessed other uses of force by federal police against 
     nonviolent protesters outside the South Portland building. To 
     be sure, not all protesters at the ICE building since June 
     have been peaceful. Federal and local police have arrested 
     dozens of people at the building on allegations of assaulting 
     officers and destroying government property, many of them at 
     the outset of the protests in early summer.
       Mayor Keith Wilson called for an investigation after the 
     newsroom published video in September of Homeland Security 
     officers seen repeatedly shoving, spraying and hitting 
     protesters.

  So, as this article points out, if you go back several months, there 
was some back-and-forth between folks who were protesting and the 
Federal agents, and the police took care of it. They were arrested.
  I am not just sure exactly what is meant by destroying government 
property. It may have been graffiti. Maybe it was something else. But 
not that I have heard that there was any significant property 
destroyed. But that was months ago, and it was handled by local police. 
That is a normal--not great. I prefer all protesting to be absolutely 
nonviolent.
  But what we have seen in the time that Trump has been sending these 
additional agents--that has been a time when virtually no one has been 
arrested because nobody has been acting out. They have been not playing 
the game Trump wants to play. They have not been taking the bait. They 
have been protesting with joy and with whimsy. It is very hard to argue 
that there is anything the local police can't handle when there aren't 
even any arrests because people are handing out pastries and bringing 
their puppy dogs down.
  Then there is a report by Oregon Public Broadcasting. Oregon Public 
Broadcasting has been down covering demonstrations. They said that 
Federal agents asked the protesters to move back several blocks and the 
protesters did. There was no conflict between the protesters and the 
agents. Protesters were asked to move back, and they followed 
instructions.
  Behind this line of Federal agents were videographers, professional 
videographers. What are they doing there? What is their role? They were 
waiting to take pictures when the Federal agents created a fake riot.
  So after moving people back several blocks with absolutely no 
conflict, the officers got in a line across the street. The 
videographers are behind them, and then, on command, the officers throw 
down the flash-bangs, which erupt and sound like gunfire and lights 
flashing from them, they fire the pepper balls, and they release the 
teargas canisters, so there is smoke, and there is the sound of 
gunfire. The videographers are hungrily taping it all so they can get 
this fake riot and present it as if there was something real--a riot--
going on.
  I really don't know of any other time the government has deliberately 
faked a riot, but they did on this occasion. This is like the ``Wag the 
Dog'' movie, where an entire war is faked--only in this case, it was 
just a riot. I say ``just a riot''--a riot trying to create the 
appearance of violence so they can convince a judge to let them 
federalize Oregon's National Guard or move in the National Guard from 
elsewhere, to mislead the courts and to mislead the American people. It 
is governing by gaslighting.
  This is the first time I know of in our history that a President 
staged a fake riot. It should never happen. Whose idea was this? I 
know; why don't we have a congressional hearing about it? Would any of 
my Republican colleagues get to the bottom of our government trying to 
fake a riot in order to increase their authoritarian power? Because I 
will partner with you in a microsecond to hold such a hearing.
  True-blooded patriots should be terrified the government is faking 
scenes to try to provide evidence to the courts or to the American 
people that something is going on that simply isn't going on.
  I think we have a poster here taken at KOIN 6 News. You see there was 
a woman--this woman--and she was talking to two officers, and they had 
asked her to get out of the way, and she had--all well and good.
  And then the third officer walks up and just sprays her straight in 
the face. Just, wow, I mean, if you saw it on the video, you would go: 
Oh, my goodness, unbelievable.
  I saw an interview of that woman later, and she said that it was 
extremely scary because she couldn't breathe.
  She falls to the ground. She said: I didn't know if I was going to be 
able to draw the next breath--or some expression like that about what 
it is like to have that just shot directly into your eyes, directly 
into your lungs.
  That type of deliberate provocation, wow, that is the Federal 
Government out of control--an authoritarian Federal Government trying 
to create reactions and violence in order to justify even more 
authoritarian power.
  And Portlanders are not taking the bait.
  Here is another example from Chicago. We have this pastor--this is 
cut in half; few seconds before, a few seconds after--a pastor in the 
traditional motion of praying, standing outside of a building by 
himself. He is obviously in a religious posture. He is wearing 
religious garb. There is no obvious resistance to any type of command. 
And he is shot--pow--right in the head. I believe that is a pepper ball 
shot, but I am not 100 percent sure. He reports that he was shot twice 
in the head and five times on the body.
  Federal agents attacking a praying pastor, posing no threat, in a 
posture of prayer--shot by Federal agents up on top of the building. 
Maybe if they had an identifier on their uniform, they wouldn't be so 
callous in attacking a peaceful protester.
  It is an extraordinarily dangerous moment--an authoritarian President 
proceeding to attack free speech, attack free press, weaponizing the 
Department of Justice, and use it against those who disagree with him, 
and then

[[Page S7637]]

seeking the court's permission to send the military into our cities to 
attack people who are peacefully protesting.
  And this reporting from Time magazine about the military-style ICE 
raid on a Chicago apartment building, during which ICE agents zip-tied 
the children:
  ``Military-Style'' ICE Raid On Chicago Apartment Building Shows 
Escalation in Trump's Crackdown.
  Time magazine, Rebecca Schneid, October 4:

       At around 1 a.m. on Tuesday morning, armed federal agents 
     rappelled from helicopters onto the roof of a five-story 
     residential apartment in the South Shore of Chicago. The 
     agents worked their way through the building, kicking down 
     doors and throwing flash bang grenades, rounding up adults 
     and screaming children alike, detaining them in zip-ties and 
     arresting dozens, according to witnesses and local reporting.
       [The raid] has also drawn outrage throughout Chicago and 
     the state of Illinois, with rights groups and lawmakers 
     claiming it represents a dramatic escalation in tactics used 
     by federal authorities in the pursuit of Trump's aggressive 
     immigration crackdown.
       Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker accused the federal agents of 
     separating children from their parents, zip-tying their 
     hands, and detaining them in ``dark vans'' for hours. Videos 
     of the raid show flash-bang grenades erupting on the street, 
     followed by residents of the building--children among them--
     being led to a parking lot across the street. Photos of the 
     aftermath show toys and shoes littering the apartment 
     hallways that were left in the chaos as people were pulled 
     from their beds by the operation that included FBI and 
     Homeland Security agents.
       Pritzker condemned the raid and said that he would work 
     with local law enforcement to hold the agents accountable.

  Well, that raid was designed to be a provocation to the community to 
try to generate a riot and use the violence to justify more 
authoritarian control. But in the process, it demonstrated 
inappropriate and disproportional military assault on Americans in 
their apartment buildings, in their homes.

       ICE's tactics in the city were also under the spotlight on 
     Friday, when Chicago Alderperson Jessie Fuentes was 
     handcuffed by federal immigration agents at a Chicago medical 
     center after questioning agents about their warrant to arrest 
     at the medical center.

  Chicago's Mayor Johnson called ICE's tactics ``abusive.''
  You don't win the hearts and minds of the people by turning the 
military on them. But if you want to be an authoritarian leader and you 
want to use the military, and our Founders were very, very concerned 
about that.
  The attacks were so violent that a judge stepped in. And CNN had this 
report, by Laura Sharman and Caroll Alvarado:

       A judge in Illinois has temporarily blocked federal agents 
     from using certain types of force and crowd-control measures 
     against protesters, after video of a pastor being repeatedly 
     shot by pepper balls during a demonstration outside at an ICE 
     facility near Chicago drew widespread outcry.
       The lawsuit alleges federal agents have shot, gassed, and 
     detained individuals who have been protesting outside the ICE 
     Detention Facility in Broadview for the last few weeks, 
     preventing them from ``exercising their First Amendment 
     rights.'' The suit also claims the tactics infringed 
     journalists' right to cover the protests.
       The 14-day order took effect Thursday and applies to all 
     DHS agents, including those with ICE and US Customs and 
     Border Protection, in the district which encompasses Chicago 
     and the Broadview ICE processing facility.
       The judge also laid out specific protections for 
     journalists covering the protests, blocking federal agents 
     from arresting members of the press unless there is 
     ``probable cause to believe that the individual has committed 
     a crime.''
       Reverend David Black of Chicago's First Presbyterian Church 
     ``stood in the street offering prayers'' and urging ICE 
     officers to repent, when he was repeatedly struck in the face 
     by masked agents standing on top of the ICE facility, 
     according to the lawsuit and video taken during the protest.
       Black was ``visibly attired in clerical garb'' when ``ICE 
     snipers fired,'' the lawsuit said. ``Moments later he was 
     doused with chemical spray that ICE agents directed at his 
     face.''
       Video obtained by CNN shows the pastor near the building 
     with his arms outstretched when a cloud of smoke erupts from 
     an explosion by his head, and he drops to the ground. Other 
     protesters rushed to his aid and surrounded him. Another 
     video shared with CNN shows masked agents pushing Black as he 
     walks back and is then pepper sprayed in the face from close 
     range.
       Black told CNN's Erin's Burnett a large group of federal 
     officers then ``rushed out of the gate and began to shove 
     us,'' describing their behavior was ``indiscriminate'' and 
     ``vicious.''
       The pastor insisted he and other protesters received ``no 
     warning'' and claimed he could hear the agents laughing as 
     they fired shots from the roof, calling it ``deeply 
     disturbing.''

  Yes, a man of God praying in front of a building, attacked by masked 
ICE agents. This is the picture of Trump's tyranny against the American 
people.
  Unbelievably, Speaker   Mike Johnson doesn't seem to be too bothered 
by these violent attacks. He said:

       I've not seen them cross the line yet.

  We have seen images out of Chicago with Federal agents shooting faith 
leaders with pepper balls, the reporter said.
  Where is the limit for you on what is acceptable conduct by Federal 
law enforcement and when is it incumbent on Congress to amend oversight 
on Federal law enforcement?
  ``I've not seen them cross the line yet,'' Johnson replied, saying 
there were some committees with jurisdiction over Federal law 
enforcement. ``It has not risen to that level.''
  Well, where is the line, Speaker Johnson? Was the line crossed when 
the President abandoned due process and threw students out of the 
country for alleged comments on policy in the Middle East? Was the line 
crossed when the President proceeded to use the licenses and the power 
over mergers to tell broadcast media what they can put on the air?
  Was the line crossed when a person was stopped on the street who had 
legal residence in the United States and sent to a prison in El 
Salvador where the only way out is a coffin? Was that crossing the line 
with no due process? Was the line crossed when the President used the 
power over research grants and rules over foreign students who pay 
healthy tuitions in order to try to force the universities to become 
agents of the State and teach what the President wants them to teach? 
Was that crossing the line?
  I ask Speaker Johnson if there is no line crossed when the President 
develops an enemies list and proceeds to turn the full power of the 
Justice Department to try to put that person into jail--is that not a 
line crossed? It is certainly not equal justice under law.
  So many lines have been crossed, so many times. Attacking peaceful 
protesters, conducting a fake riot in an effort to deceive the court or 
deceive the American people that there was a riot when there was none.
  The district judge in Oregon who adjudicated the order by Trump to 
federalize the Oregon National Guard said there is nothing close to 
rebellion. There is nothing close to an invasion. So the standard is 
not met. The standard in the law that allows you to federalize the 
National Guard.
  So then Trump said: I am going to send the Federalized force from 
California and Texas to Oregon. They have already been federalized.
  The same judge said: Same standard applies. Nothing close to 
rebellion. Nothing close to invasion. The standard has not been set.
  So she put on a temporary restraining order on both efforts. This is 
a fundamental issue in the United States of America--that the military 
not being used against American citizens.
  There is a standard in the law.
  So, Supreme Court, wake up. Do your job in the framework of the 
Constitution and the laws of this land. Quit inventing new ways to 
create an authoritarian state.
  Why am I so concerned that our Supreme Court has gone so far off 
track?
  Well, last year, they found invisible ink in our Constitution. That 
is one reason to be concerned.
  Maybe you can find it too. Why don't you take a look? Maybe you can 
show it to me. Maybe the Founders really put an extra clause in there 
that, you know, only appears when you warm it with a hot air dryer--
though hot air dryers did not exist when the Constitution was written.
  They had a case, Trump v. United States of America. The case stemmed 
from the first Trump administration. And in that case, the question 
was: Is the President above the law? Is the President immune from any 
potential criminal prosecution for actions in office?
  And I thought, well, absolutely not. Our Founders were terrified that 
the President would be a King. Kings are above the law.
  Kings are the law, but Presidents are not the law. And, yes, of 
course, they are accountable. There is nothing in article II, the 
section of the Constitution that addresses the executive

[[Page S7638]]

branch, that says: Well, the President, in order to make sure he 
doesn't have to worry too much, is immune from any prosecution for any 
crimes he might commit while acting on behalf of the government or 
acting in an official government act.
  Yes, try to find that clause in the Constitution. Yes, I am pretty 
confident, not there. In fact, the Founders were the exact opposite. So 
those originalists on the Supreme Court, they are as bogus as a $3 
bill. They know how terrified the Founders were about the possibility 
of a President exercising authoritarian power. That is why they 
provided checks and balances.
  While Congress writes the laws, Congress decides what programs are 
funded and how much they are funded. Congress decides if a person is 
suitable to an appointment at a high level in the executive branch. 
That is the separation of powers.
  And I don't know if you might be able to find for me the early quotes 
that were in the introduction material, but I might read those again 
because they seem to be very relevant in this case.
  But here we have the question going to the originalists on the 
Supreme Court. Of course they are going to vote 9 to 0, both the 
Justices who have been appointed by blue Presidents and Justices 
appointed by red Presidents. It won't matter because it is just so 
absolutely clear, and there is no clause in the Constitution that says 
the President is above the law.
  But this Court, they decided to make the President above the law with 
their ruling. Not in the Constitution. They just decided to invent a 
standard, and their justification was: Oh, it is a stressful job, and 
we don't want the President to worry about whether they are committing 
a crime. So, essentially, they said: You are free. Commit any crime you 
want as long as you give a governmental justification. And then, with 
pardon power, everyone else in the executive branch is above the law 
too.
  So there we have it. The Supreme Court has managed to completely 
unravel the accountability that the Founders were so determined to 
provide.
  If they wanted the President to be immune from prosecution, they 
could have put that in the Constitution. If anyone else along the line 
had said: Hey, that is such a great idea. They could have proposed an 
amendment to the Constitution, and we could have voted on that.
  Well, you know, if you have people of high character that you have 
enormous trust in, you might say: Well, that won't be too much damage. 
But what if the person is not of high character? What if the person is 
an authoritarian who already is demonstrating massive determination to 
break the law left and right?
  So there it is. The Supreme Court proceeded to say that the President 
is above the law. And now the President is acting like he is above the 
law. The Supreme Court has said he is, can't get in trouble for 
anything he does. People who work for him can't get in trouble as long 
as they stay on his good side because he can pardon them.
  So we are in big trouble. But now a new case will go to the Supreme 
Court, and they might decide it this week by the shadow docket. And 
that case will be based on this question of whether the President, 
having failed to establish that there is either a rebellion or an 
invasion, can the President, nevertheless, federalize the National 
Guard against the wishes of the Governor?
  I am afraid the Court will say, yes, even though the law clearly sets 
a standard, and the standard was not met. They will say: Well, yes, but 
the President says the standard was met, so therefore it is met.
  Under that type of situation, you have swept all the standards out of 
the way. If you are saying, I don't know, in a construction code that 
you are supposed to have stairs that are a certain width, and the 
stairs are not that width, but the contractor says, ``Yes, they are,'' 
is the Court supposed to go, ``Well, the contractor said they are,'' 
even though it is not there? ``Oh, gosh, they look twice as steep as 
allowed, but the contractor says they are the right measurements, so no 
big deal.''
  Well, it is a big deal, especially when it comes to deploying the 
military against American citizens who are protesting peacefully. That 
is a very big deal, indeed.
  So I invite all 100 Senators here, 99 Senators, to stand with me, or 
100 Senators to stand together to say: We will not accept attacks on 
due process. We will not accept attacks on freedom of speech. We will 
not accept attacks on freedom of the press.
  I am quite confident that if a President said to FOX News: We are 
going to block your merger request and maybe suspend your license 
unless you put up the programming we want, there would be a whole lot 
of Senators down here--my colleagues across the aisle--saying: That is 
outrageous. But shouldn't they be equally outraged regardless of 
whether that broadcast network is on the left or right? Aren't we 
standing for a principle here in the Senate of the United States of 
America?
  We have seen 10 months of this President making our country sicker 
and poorer, 10 months of personal corruption, selling access to himself 
through his crypto enterprises. I went out to protest on the street 
when he held a dinner for what I believe the final tally was, 230 
people. He held a contest. He said the more money you give me over the 
next couple of months by buying my cryptocurrency, the better chance 
you have of being invited to a special dinner of 230 people at my golf 
club.
  Well, so people around the world said: This is our chance to go see 
the President by buying enough of his cryptocurrency. These dollars 
going into his pocket, we get access to him. The President, selling 
access to 230 people, no vetting, just straight-out corrupt sale of 
access.
  You know, we had a vote here in the Chamber on all of us being banned 
from engaging in this type of corruption. I believe every Democrat 
voted yes, ban all of us from this type of crypto corruption. But 
virtually every single colleague across the aisle said: We want crypto 
corruption to continue to be allowed and voted against the bill or 
against the amendment.

  That is a sad commentary on the Senate of the United States of 
America.
  Ten months of slashing healthcare for families to fund tax giveaways 
for billionaires, 10 months of cutting nutrition for children to fund 
tax giveaways for billionaires. A runup of $30 trillion additional in 
national debt over the next 30 years to fund tax giveaways for 
billionaires. It is a ``families lose, billionaires win'' vision, and 
it is not a good vision for our Republic. In fact, it is not a vision 
that comes from a republic; it is a vision that comes from an 
authoritarian government that said this is what they want and an 
acquiescent Congress that proceeded to provide it.
  If we were actually a republic pursuing government by and for the 
people, then we would be doing the opposite. We would be passing 
legislation for families to thrive, not slashing their healthcare and 
their nutrition benefits. And we certainly would be asking the affluent 
to pay their fair share, rather than giving them trillions of dollars 
in additional tax breaks.
  The big ugly betrayal of a bill has a lot in common with the 
President's authoritarian actions in this Nation. The authoritarian 
actions are an attack on due process, on free speech and free press and 
weaponization of the Department of Justice and certainly the effort to 
send the military in against peaceful protestors.
  But if that effort involves, essentially, a government by and for the 
billionaires, then you see the connection to the big ugly betrayal of a 
bill because the policy agenda passed here was also all about 
billionaires win and families lose.
  We should be 100 strong here in a vision for freedom, saying hell no 
to authoritarian oppression.
  I have a letter here published in the Washington Post by Paul Bardack 
and Patrick Nichols, cofounders of the State and Local Human Rights 
Center.
  October 2, 2025.

       President Donald Trump, while speaking to our nation's 
     generals and admirals on Tuesday, noted his desire to use 
     dangerous cities ``as training grounds for our military.'' 
     The Oct. 1 editorial ``U.S. cities aren't meant to be 
     military training grounds'' argued against such an approach. 
     So, too, would the founders of our nation.
       When the U.S. Constitution was ratified in 1787, urban 
     crime was already a well-known issue. As early as the 1750s, 
     New York was already regarded as the most crime-ridden city

[[Page S7639]]

     in the colonies, and a contemporary observer noted that, at 
     the time the founders convened in Philadelphia, ``the jails 
     were full.''
       Nonetheless, the Constitution's framers rejected a federal 
     police in their conception of our republic. Rather, except in 
     the most exigent circumstances, states and localities were to 
     police their own populace. As Alexander Hamilton wrote in 
     Federalist No. 17 in 1789: ``There is one transcendent 
     advantage belonging to the province of the State governments 
     . . . I mean the ordinary administration of criminal and 
     civil justice.''
       Certainly, the Constitution gives Congress the power of 
     ``calling forth the Militia'' (what we today refer to as the 
     National Guard). Title 10 of the U.S. Code allows the 
     president to bring the Guard into federal service when the 
     nation is invaded, in danger of invasion or during a 
     rebellion. And the Insurrection Act of 1807 grants the 
     president the power to deploy troops domestically to suppress 
     an insurrection, domestic violence or conspiracy that 
     obstructs law enforcement.
       But the president's and Congress's power to do so are not 
     open-ended. Both Title 10 and the Insurrection Act set a high 
     bar for federalizing the guard; engaging in routine law 
     enforcement is illegal and unacceptable. And to further drive 
     home the point, the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 prohibits the 
     use of federal military personnel to enforce domestic 
     policies.

  (Mr. HAGERTY assumed the Chair.)

       For nearly 240 years, in times of peace and war, presidents 
     and Congresses have honored the vision of our nation's 
     founders. Trump should reverse course and do the same.

  The writers are cofounders of the State and Local Human Rights 
Center.
  This brings us to Chapter 7, titled ``The Unraveling.'' As I was 
commenting on the Founders' grave concern about the use of the 
military, I quoted Hamilton, but I also wanted to quote James Madison 
at the Constitutional Convention. He warned that ``A standing military 
force, with an overgrown Executive will not long be safe companions to 
liberty. The means of defense against foreign danger have been always 
the instruments of tyranny at home.''
  In other words, an Executive who is ambitious is highly tempted to 
use the army, a standing army, against the citizens of the country and 
thus tyranny, ``instruments of tyranny at home.''
  We are trying to understand why the line has been so clear that you 
have to meet a high bar of a rebellion or an insurrection or invasion 
in order to use the American military domestically. That should explain 
it. That vibe of concern about it, instead being used by an 
authoritarian to basically engage in tyranny, not the protection of 
rights, but the abolition and crushing of rights of the American 
people.
  This is Chapter 7:

       On the afternoon of Saturday, February 13, 2016, a San 
     Antonio newspaper reported that Supreme Court Justice Antonin 
     Scalia died in his sleep while on a hunting trip in Texas. 
     Social media erupted. Within minutes, a former Republican 
     staffer and founder of the conservative legal publication The 
     Federalist tweeted, ``If Scalia has actually passed away, the 
     Senate must refuse to confirm any justices in 2016 and leave 
     the nomination to the next president.'' Shortly afterward, 
     the communications director for Republican [Senator Lee] 
     tweeted, ``What is less than zero? The chances of Obama 
     successfully appointing a Supreme Court Justice to replace 
     Scalia.'' By early evening, Senate Majority Leader Mitch 
     McConnell issued a statement sending his condolences to the 
     Scalia family but also declaring, ``This vacancy should not 
     be filled until we have a new president.''
       On March 16, 2016, President Barack Obama nominated 
     appellate judge Merrick Garland to fill Scalia's seat. No one 
     doubted that Garland was a qualified candidate, and by all 
     accounts he was an ideological moderate. But for the first 
     time in American history, the U.S. Senate refused to even 
     consider an elected president's nominee for the Supreme 
     Court. As we have seen, the Senate has always used 
     forbearance in exercising its advice and consent in the 
     selection of Supreme Court justices: Since 1866, every time a 
     president has moved to fill a Supreme Court vacancy prior to 
     the election of his successor, he had been allowed to do so.

  So this was the first time. This is the first time a U.S. Supreme 
Court vacant seat has been stolen from one President and delivered to 
the next.

       But the world had changed by 2016. Now, in a radical 
     departure from historical precedent Senate Republicans denied 
     the president's authority to nominate new justice. It was an 
     extraordinary instance of norm breaking. Within a year, a 
     Republican was in the White House and Senate Republicans got 
     their wish: a conservative justice nominee, Neil Gorsuch, 
     whom they quickly approved. The GOP had trampled on a basic 
     democratic norm--in effect, stealing a Supreme Court seat--
     and gotten away with it.

  This particular passage brings back memories for me because the last 
time that I stood on this floor and talked through the night was the 
night before Gorsuch was confirmed. And I said, if we proceed in this 
fashion, it is an injury to the Constitution for which there is no 
remedy because, if Democrats in the future do exactly the same thing, 
then they will be establishing the norm of each partisan party 
proceeding to block any Supreme Court's appointment by President of the 
other party.
  That is not our responsibility; that is not our charge. Our charge is 
to decide if a person is suited. And for the first time in U.S. 
history, this Chamber said there will be no debate and no vote on the 
nominee that President Obama had put forward. We were not proceeding to 
exercise our appropriate constitutional responsibility to weigh in on 
whether the nominee was indeed appropriate.
  I remember one conservative Senator from Utah said, if only Obama 
would nominate Merrick Garland, then we could confirm him because that 
would be a reasonable nominee. Then Obama did nominate Merrick Garland, 
and yet, even that moderate was rejected for the possibility of being 
considered.
  Now, it is not the case that the Senate has routinely confirmed 
nominees to the Supreme Court of the United States of America. In fact, 
quite the opposite. They have rejected quite a good share of the 
nominees over a couple hundred years. But they always debated, and they 
always voted.
  Returning to the chapter at hand:

       The traditions underpinning America's democratic 
     institutions are unraveling, opening up a disconcerting gap 
     between how our political system works and long-standing 
     expectations about how it ought to work. As our soft 
     guardrails have weakened, we have grown increasingly 
     vulnerable to antidemocratic leaders.
       Donald Trump, a serial norm breaker, is widely (and 
     correctly) criticized for assaulting America's democratic 
     norms. But the problem did not begin with Trump. The process 
     of norm erosion started decades ago--long before Trump 
     descended an escalator to announce his presidential 
     candidacy.
       In a 1978 congressional race in northwestern Georgia, a 
     young Newt Gingrich made his third bid for office in a 
     district outside Atlanta. After two previous failed runs as a 
     self-identified liberal Republican, he finally won--this time 
     as a conservative, capturing a district that hadn't been in 
     Republican hands in 130 years. Gingrich's bespectacled 
     academic look (he had been a history professor at a local 
     university), his chirpy speech, and his thick mop of hair and 
     bushy sideburns belied a ruthlessness that would help 
     transform American politics.
       In June of his 1978 campaign, Gingrich had met with a group 
     of College Republicans at an Atlanta Airport Holiday Inn, 
     wooing them with a blunter, more cutthroat version of 
     politics than they were accustomed to. He found a hungry 
     audience. Gingrich warned the young Republicans to stop using 
     ``Boy Scout'' words, which would be great around the 
     campfire, but are lousy in politics. He continued:
       You're fighting a war. It is a war for power . . . This 
     party does not need another generation of cautious, prudent, 
     careful, bland, irrelevant, quasi-leaders . . . What we 
     really need are people who are willing to stand up in a slug-
     fest . . . What's the primary purpose of a political leader? 
     . . . To build a majority.
       When Gingrich arrived in Washington in 1979, his vision of 
     politics as warfare was at odds with that of Republican 
     leadership. House Minority Leader Bob Michel, an amiable 
     figure who carpooled home to Illinois for congressional 
     recesses with his Democratic colleague Dan Rostenkowski, was 
     committed to abiding by established norms of civility and 
     bipartisan cooperation. Gingrich rejected this approach as 
     too ``soft.'' Winning a Republican majority, Gingrich 
     believed, would require playing a harder form of politics.
       Backed by a small but growing group of loyalists, Gingrich 
     launched an insurgency aimed at instilling a more combative 
     approach in the party. Taking advantage of a new media 
     technology, C-SPAN, Gingrich ``used adjectives like rocks,'' 
     deliberately employing over-the-top rhetoric. He described 
     Congress as ``corrupt'' and ``sick.'' He questioned his 
     Democratic rivals' patriotism. He compared them to Mussolini 
     and accused them of trying to ``destroy our country.'' 
     According to former Georgia state Democratic Party leader 
     Steve Anthony, ``the things that came out of Gingrich's mouth 
     . . . we had never [heard] that before from either side. 
     Gingrich went so far over the top with the shock factor 
     rendered the opposition frozen for a few years.''
       Through a new political action committee, GOPAC, Gingrich 
     and his allies worked to spread these tactics across the 
     party. GOPAC produced more than two thousand training 
     audiotapes, distributed each month to get the recruits of 
     Gingrich's ``Republican Revolution'' on the same rhetorical 
     page. Gingrich's former press secretary Tony Blankley 
     compared this tactic of audiotape

[[Page S7640]]

     distribution to one used by Ayatollah Khomeini on his route 
     to power in Iran. In the early 1990s, Gingrich and his team 
     distributed memos to Republican candidates instructing them 
     to use certain negative words to describe Democrats, 
     including pathetic, sick, bizarre, betray, antiflag, 
     antifamily, and traitors. It was the beginning of a seismic 
     shift in American politics.
       Even as Gingrich ascended the Republican leadership 
     structure--becoming minority whip in 1989 and Speaker of the 
     House in 1995--he refused to abandon his hard-line rhetoric. 
     And rather than repelling the party, he pulled it to him. By 
     the time he became Speaker, Gingrich was a role model to a 
     new generations of Republican legislators, many of them 
     elected in the 1994 landslide that gave the GOP its first 
     House majority in forty years. The Senate was likewise 
     transformed by the arrival of ``Gingrich Senators,'' whose 
     ideology, aversion to compromise, and willingness to obstruct 
     legislation helped speed the end of the body's traditional 
     ``folkways.''

  Well, this kind of brings us up to the current time that I am well 
too aware of. I don't really want to read through all the details of 
this particular period. Let me just make a few observations about it.
  I was told that when I came to DC as a Senator, I would see very 
different Senate from the one I witnessed as an intern--an enormous 
difference between 1976 and the Senate I witnessed working for Congress 
in the 1980s and coming back here in 2009 to take office. A huge piece 
of that was certainly the deep animosity between the parties and the 
determination of the minority really running both ways to paralyze the 
majority.

  The Gingrich strategy was, Don't try to get a few amendments into the 
bills that the other side has. It just makes them look good because 
they are getting stuff done, and it doesn't create a case that shows 
they should be out of power and that you should be in power. So, 
instead, obstruct, obstruct, obstruct. Then make the case that they 
didn't do the job well; therefore, elect us.
  This was powerfully successful. The leader of the Senate said: 
Gingrich gives obstruction a good name.
  But here in the Senate, the opportunity to obstruct is so much larger 
than in the House. We have nominations that take up a significant 
amount of time. So, by drawing out those votes, you can eat up a lot of 
time. In fact, that strategy employed by Democrats led to a nuclear 
option a couple weeks ago, in which, for the first time, we were doing 
blocks of nominees in a single vote. It had been done previously but 
only with unanimous consent; whereby, every Senator had looked at the 
list and said that none of them were objectionable. Now that list would 
include fully objectionable individuals who, by their quality of 
character or by experience, are totally unsuited to the posts to which 
they have been nominated, but they are just going to be floated in.
  To me, it is a terrible abdication of the advice and consent clause 
of the Constitution and is, therefore, one more check and balance that 
has been profoundly eroded, but it was triggered by all-out 
obstruction--slowing down the process--by the Democratic minority just 
as the Republican minority had done in previous Senates.
  In addition, policy bills require 60 votes in the Senate to close 
debate. Now, this is an artifice that stems from a transition that 
began in the 1830s. That transition was southern Democrats giving up on 
the ability to have States nullify bills they didn't like. They decided 
that the only way that was left for them was to stop bills from ever 
getting passed in the first place and, therefore, talk them to death, 
keep giving speeches on the bills, and then make a new motion. ``I 
would like to refer the bill to committee'' or to adjourn or to do this 
amendment or that amendment--each motion allowing two more speeches for 
each Senator under the original rule for the Senate; thereby, enabling 
the talking to go on infinitely and wrapping that ability to talk 
infinitely in the First Amendment, making it a glorious feature of the 
U.S. Senate.
  It is a complete reversal of Jefferson's guidance in the early 
Senate, which was embodied in his book of conduct for the Senate: to 
speak directly; to engage in no superfluous talk and proceed, 
therefore, to get to the nut of the question; to hear everyone; to make 
a decision and move on.
  This was the opposite. This was glorified obstruction. This term that 
came to describe this ability to do endless speeches and glorify 
obstruction was the word ``piracy,'' utilizing the Dutch word 
``vrijbuiter,'' which in Caribbean slang was ``filibustero.'' Thus, the 
pirates have taken over the Senate. So here we are with obstruction 
being routine by the minority of the majority to make the case they 
can't govern, get out of the way.
  Of course, it is reinforced emphatically by the different cable 
television channels that proceed to say: Our time, our side, our 
viewpoint is glorious and righteous, and their viewpoint is misguided 
and/or evil. Each side says that, which drives the two parties further 
apart, with social media proceeding to launch in on top of all of that, 
kind of cementing the differences.
  If that is not enough, then money in campaigns used for slander 
attacks by dark money groups sometimes reveals who they are--and often 
don't--but almost all of the money goes to slander attacks, more than 
half. What did I see? I saw that 70 or 80 percent is factually 
incorrect. It is just making up attacks on people and putting it out 
there because it works. When people hear horrific accusations against 
someone, it does, in fact, make them less likely to vote for that 
person because they don't have the time and effort or the ability to 
figure out what is true and what is not true. So lies work. Negative 
advertisements work.
  If you have been on the receiving end of such ads--and probably just 
about everyone here has--that also hardens the opposition between the 
parties.
  So there we are, caught in this cycle of obstruction. As I mentioned 
many hours ago, this strategy was really symbolized to me by a memo 
that I received in, I believe, April of 2009, written by Frank Luntz, a 
consultant who helped the Republican Party refine its pitch.
  It said, in essence, whatever Democrats propose to improve 
healthcare, we will attack it and call it a government takeover. He 
went on to elaborate. They had done focus groups, and in these focus 
groups, they had proposed different phrases, and the one that got the 
biggest negative response was ``government takeover.'' So, regardless 
of whether a policy had any element of a government takeover, that was 
the term that was going to be used.
  I came down to the floor here, in one of my first speeches, and said: 
This is scary. This is inappropriate. Have we really come to the point 
wherein the goal of, basically, nearly half the Senators is simply to 
obstruct and to misrepresent a policy because they don't want anything 
to be improved? They don't want the healthcare system to be improved? 
They just want to make sure that nothing good is done so they can kick 
out the majority party, and they can become the majority party.
  The answer in the end, basically, in the 17 years I have been here, 
is that that is, yes, pretty much the answer; that for both sides, 
their top goal is to get back in the majority so they can do good 
things; but when they are in the majority, they are obstructed by the 
minority and the cycle continues and the frustrations continue. And the 
ineffectiveness of the Senate in addressing a rapidly changing world--
well, that proceeds to feed cynicism about whether our model of 
government is up to the task.

  So fixing this system to work better is a step in the direction of 
addressing better policies in this rapidly evolving economy and new 
technologies, and by so doing, affirming to folks that our system 
works; that we shouldn't desire or seek out an authoritarian strategy 
for the future. Yet here we are, with that authoritarian strategy in 
full gear being deeply embraced--deeply embraced, certainly, by the 
President but also by the leadership tied to the President's party.
  That part I would so like to see changed. Let's find a way to take 
ourselves out of this cycle of paralysis and animosity and actually 
say: So what are the ways that we can make the healthcare system work 
better? Let's get it done regardless of who is in the majority. That 
would be a huge improvement that America would like to see.
  Well, I am going to fast-forward to the next section, but I think I 
have summed up the challenges that have been raised but not all of 
them. One of the pieces is the spread of this use of

[[Page S7641]]

the filibuster into every crevice of our congressional operations.
  Before 1965, this process of talking bills to death was basically 
done on the final passage of policy bills. It wasn't done on 
amendments; it wasn't done on motions to proceed to bills; it wasn't 
done on nominations, not because it couldn't be done but because the 
norms of the Senate were that you should not use this obstruction 
except on policy bills of great consequence that you passionately 
oppose, and, essentially, the bills that were the target of filibusters 
were civil rights bills.
  Southern Democrats, who were determined to block civil rights from 
being restored--my party until my party changed. The Republican Party 
was founded as an anti-slavery party. So it was more supportive of 
ensuring civil rights for all Americans, but southern Democrats wanted 
to block the ability of southern Black Americans from being able to 
register to vote. So the filibuster was used mostly on civil rights 
issues, including issues regarding lynching and registration and voting 
and so forth.
  After 1965, it was hard to say: Well, hey, this lost some of its 
racist taint. Barack Obama called it the Jim Crow relic because that is 
what it was used mostly for, was the oppression of civil rights, but it 
lost some of its taint after 1965. It started to be used gradually and 
more rapidly until you basically couldn't sneeze here without facing a 
new version of the filibuster.
  Now, the old version was you talked a bill to death with new motions, 
new speeches, and never allowing it to get to a final vote, but then 
that changed dramatically when we had a battle in 1917 over arming 
commercial ships. That battle was because Woodrow Wilson wanted to arm 
them, but a small group of Senators said: You know, if you arm 
commercial ships, that means we are going to be using arms against 
German submarines or German ships that are threatening ours, which 
means we will be in war. There has been no declaration of war, so this 
is an overstep of Presidential power, and we should not do this.
  That view was held passionately by a few but was the clear minority 
position. It is a small group that felt so strongly about it, but they 
used the filibuster up to the transition of government in 1917. That 
transition then occurred in March, not in January as it does now.
  La Follette of Wyoming was leading the opposition, and he wanted so 
badly to speak in the final moments up to 12 noon when the government 
was going to change over because of the transition between 
Presidencies. He got so frustrated that he took one of these brass urns 
that are relics themselves--they are basically spittoons for people to 
spit their tobacco into back when tobacco was allowed to be chewed here 
on the floor of the Senate. He took one of those urns, and he threw it 
across the well of the Senate. That is how frustrated he was. The well 
of the Senate is this space in front of me right now that curves around 
and has tables in it. It is hard to imagine somebody grabbing one of 
those spittoons and tossing it across the well in frustration, but that 
is how much he wanted to give the final speech to kill this bill.
  But Wilson, President Wilson, immediately and effectively vilified 
what La Follette was doing. He referred to a small band of men--and had 
some nice, fancy language in it--obstructing the entire will of the 
Nation as embodied in this great institution and how this institution 
could not go forward to address the issues that it was facing unless it 
restored its ability, which led immediately, upon reconstitution the 
next couple of days, to a new rule that said you could close debate if 
a supermajority of the Senate calls for it to be closed. So no longer 
could a small band of willful men bring this great Senate to a 
standstill.
  That ability--or that requirement to close debate then led to: Well, 
OK. Great. If we get a group of--well, once we had 100 Senators, 41 
Senators--initially, it was a smaller group. You needed two-thirds of 
the Senate in order to close debate, so you basically needed 34 
Senators who would agree to obstruct in order to keep the debate going, 
and that changed later on to a lower number.
  But the point is that you now had this rule that tempted people to 
hold out the ability to close debate until they got their way, so it 
added to kind of a level of paralysis. It provided a solution to a 
small group, but it provided a temptation to a larger group to obstruct 
the ability of the Senate to go forward. Then when that same power was 
taken up by the parties, it became quite a tool for the minority to 
wield against the majority.
  But, again, until 1965, it was basically rarely used on anything 
except civil rights, but then it started to be used on amendments and 
motions to proceed. Because it was designed to be used rarely, it was 
therefore designed to take up a lot of time. You have to file a 
petition to close debate at the desk. You have to wait an intervening 
day in order to vote. After you vote to close debate, you still have to 
allow another 100 hours of debate. That was later lowered to 30 hours 
of debate. But when this is done routinely, it just absolutely eats up 
the Senate's time, and the Senate can't function.
  So this chapter, ``The Unraveling,'' is kind of saying how we got 
into this big mess of mutual assured obstruction of the minority 
against the majority and the challenge that we have to get out of that 
cycle of deliberate obstruction if we are going to be able to meet the 
challenge of addressing the issues in a fast-changing society.
  Let's talk about another big challenge, and that is the weaponization 
of the Justice Department. When Donald Trump was campaigning for 
President in 2023, he told his followers:

       I am your retribution.

  Retribution is exactly what we have seen since he returned to the 
White House. One recent example has been the indictment of Trump's 
former National Security Advisor John Bolton.
  Bolton wrote in his memoir that Trump is ``stunningly uninformed'' 
and easily manipulated by foreign leaders--well, not something that 
sure made Trump happy, to have John Bolton say that.
  After working for Trump, Bolton said:

       I don't think he is fit for office. I don't think he has 
     the competence to carry out the job.

  Bolton was just one of the many Trump critics who is now in Trump's 
crosshairs.
  New York Magazine published a piece in April about these fears titled 
``Trump Threatens to Imprison Critics--and Bondi Might Do It.'' It is 
written by Elie Honig, April 11 of this year.

       Donald Trump's presidential payback tour rages on, and now 
     it's personal. It's one thing to target multibillion-dollar 
     law firms, universities, and media outlets for organizational 
     retribution; those efforts, aimed at stifling and punishing 
     any criticism or dissent, are reprehensible in their own 
     right. But now Trump is going after individual private 
     citizens, using the might of the executive branch to 
     potentially throw his detractors in prison.
       In a pair of official proclamations--rendered no less 
     unhinged by the use of official fonts and White House 
     letterhead--Trump identifies two targets who worked in the 
     federal government during his first tenure and dared to speak 
     out publicly against him. First: Chris Krebs, who led the 
     Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency from 2018 to 
     2020 and made headlines when he publicly contradicted Trump's 
     false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. 
     For this act of heretical truth-telling, Trump labels Krebs 
     ``a significant bad-faith actor''--whatever the hell that 
     means--who poses grave ``risks'' to the American public.
       And then there's Miles Taylor, a former Department of 
     Homeland Security official who publicly criticized the 
     president in an anonymous book and various media appearances. 
     Taylor, like Krebs, purportedly poses ``risks'' to the United 
     States, is a ``bad-faith actor'' (though apparently not a 
     significant one like Krebs), and ``stoked dissension'' with 
     his public commentary.
       Are you scared? Don't you fear the ``risks'' posed by these 
     two monsters?
       True to the form he has displayed when going after 
     disfavored law firms, Trump hits below the belt. The 
     president ordered security clearances stripped not only from 
     Krebs and Taylor but also from everyone who works with them 
     (Krebs at a private cybersecurity firm, Taylor at the 
     University of Pennsylvania). He's punishing his targets--plus 
     their employers and colleagues, First Amendment freedom of 
     association be darned.

  Those comments are not mine. I am just reading the text here.

       It gets worse. In a separate set of orders, Trump directed 
     the attorney general to open criminal investigations of Krebs 
     and Taylor. Notably absent from the orders is any plausible 
     notion that either might have committed a federal crime. This 
     hardly needs to be said, but it's not a federal crime to be a 
     ``bad-faith actor,'' [it is not a federal crime]

[[Page S7642]]

     to ``stoke dissension,'' or even to be a ``wise guy,'' as 
     Trump called Krebs from the Oval Office.
       The next move is Pam Bondi's--and we know how this will go.
       Any reasonable, ethical attorney general would follow the 
     bedrock principle that a prosecutor must have 
     ``predication''--

  A ``fancy word''--``fancy word'' in quotes--

     some kernel of fact on which to believe a crime might have 
     been committed--[in order] to open a criminal investigation. 
     The bar is low, but it serves the vital purpose of preventing 
     precisely the baseless retributive inquests that Trump has 
     now ordered up. In observance of this foundational precept, 
     even Bill Barr--the subject of sharp criticism in my first 
     book, Hatchet Man--generally ignored Trump's public pleas for 
     the arrests of Barack Obama, Joe Biden, and others. Like the 
     exhausted parent of an unruly toddler, Barr would mostly sit 
     back and let the tantrum pass.
       Don't count on Bondi taking the same course of passive 
     resistance to the president. She has already shown her true 
     colors, and they're whatever shade Trump pleases. . . . 
     [D]espite the distinct possibility of criminality by top 
     administration officials around the Signal scandal, the AG 
     refused even to investigate. Instead, she decreed--after zero 
     inquiry, with zero evidence--that information about military 
     attack plans was somehow not classified, and that nobody had 
     acted recklessly. Case closed; no inquiry needed.
       Even if the DoJ investigates but concludes it cannot bring 
     a criminal charge, the threat to Krebs and Taylor is real. 
     Any criminal inquiry takes an enormous toll on its subject; 
     subpoenas fly, friends and colleagues get pulled into the 
     grand jury, phones get seized and searched, legal costs 
     mount, professional reputations suffer, personal ties fray. 
     Ask anyone who has been investigated by the Justice 
     Department but not indicted. They'll tell you it's a 
     nightmare.
       Trump has long made a habit of threatening his opponents 
     with criminal prosecution through social-media posts and 
     spontaneous outbursts from the lectern. Until now, it was 
     mostly bluster, a public form of scream therapy for the 
     capricious commander-in-chief. But now it's in writing, from 
     the president to the attorney general, who typically jumps to 
     attention to serve whatever suits the boss, prosecutorial 
     standards be darned. Trump's dark fantasies are coming to 
     life.

  Most of us haven't heard of these individuals: Miles Taylor, a 
Homeland Security official who criticized the President in a book; 
Krebs, who led the Cybersecurity Agency for 2 years and simply 
contradicted Trump's false claim that the Presidential election was 
stolen. Are those people to go after? They are not influential in the 
broader sense of being widely read, well known. But taking and 
launching a criminal investigation out on them when you have no 
evidence of a crime? You are just going on a--well, on a witch hunt. 
Ah, the term that Trump loves to use so much when there is actual 
evidence, but now, here, there is no evidence. He is just going to make 
those folks miserable--miserable--and maybe break the bank for them 
because they will have to spend all their money--might have to spend 
all their money, their resources, their sayings, on lawyers.
  That is a pretty brutal use of the power of the Federal Government, 
and it not only hurts those it is directed against directly, it sends a 
message to everyone else--a message which says: You mess with me, you 
criticize me, you might be the next person that I tell the Attorney 
General to launch an aggressive criminal investigation against even if 
I have no evidence you have done anything wrong.
  That was in April. In September, the New York Times published a piece 
titled ``Trump Demands That Bondi Move `Now' to Prosecute Foes''--
September 20, so basically a month ago.
  He said--or, really, I guess the term is ``demanded'' that his 
Attorney General move quickly to prosecute figures he considers his 
enemies--the latest blow to the Justice Department's tradition of 
independence.
       ``We can't delay any longer, it's killing our reputation 
     and credibility,'' Mr. Trump wrote in a social media post 
     addressed to ``Pam,'' meaning Attorney General Pam Bondi. 
     ``They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 times!), OVER 
     NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!!''
       Mr. Trump named James B. Comey, the former FBI director; 
     Senator Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California; and Letitia 
     James, the New York attorney general, saying he was reading 
     about how they were ``all guilty as hell, but nothing is 
     going to be done.''
       Asked later by reporters about his message for Ms. Bondi, 
     Mr. Trump said, ``They have to act. They have to act fast.''
       Even for a president who has shattered the traditional 
     norms of maintaining distance from the Justice Department, 
     Mr. Trump's unabashedly public and explicit orders to Ms. 
     Bondi were an extraordinary breach of prosecutorial protocols 
     that reach back to the days following the Watergate scandal.
       His demands came a day after he ousted the federal 
     prosecutor who failed to charge two of the adversaries he 
     most reviles, Ms. James and Mr. Comey, showing how far Mr. 
     Trump has gone in exerting personal control over the Justice 
     Department and breaching the longstanding norm about keeping 
     politics at a distance from law enforcement.

  It goes back to those words above the Supreme Court: ``Equal Justice 
Under Law.'' You are not targeted because the government doesn't like 
what you say. You are not targeted because you insult the President. 
No. No. You are targeted because there is evidence that you did 
something wrong, and like anyone else who did something wrong, you are 
investigated, but not because you are on the President's enemies list.
  That is the weaponization of the Justice Department that is so 
concerning. It is a feature of the authoritarian state: Use the power 
of government to go after individuals, causing them to flee the 
country, causing them to reverse their statements, causing them to 
spend vast sums on attorneys fighting the allegations, maybe destroy 
their career.
  And this little bit that we read about, how in one instance the 
Federal Government took the security clearances not just away from the 
two men but the people they worked with--well, nobody is going to hire 
you if you are going to kind of create a problem for the entire group 
to have their security clearances.
  So it is a collective punishment: other innocent people brought into 
the attack strategy, all aimed at suppressing dissent, all aimed at 
undermining opponents and encouraging people not to say what they 
think.
  I used to say one of the great things about America is that you can 
stand up and criticize the most powerful man in the country--as long as 
you have your facts straight--and you get to do it because we have free 
speech. You get to express what you believe. You aren't in a country 
where you get disappeared or where you get targeted. But now I can't 
say that because we are in a country where you do get targeted because 
the President is targeting people because of what they say about him or 
because they have played a role in the past.
  This is fabulously out of sync with freedom in our country--freedom 
of speech, freedom to air your views--which makes for a much healthier 
country, to have honesty in what we are observing so that people can 
act according to the insights that are produced.

       In a different social media post later on Saturday--

  I am returning to the text here--

     Mr. Trump defended Ms. Bondi, saying she was doing a ``GREAT 
     job,'' but that she needed a ``tough prosecutor'' in the 
     Eastern District of Virginia, where Erik S. Siebert, was 
     abruptly forced from his post atop the U.S. attorney's office 
     on Friday. Mr. Trump said he would nominate Lindsey Halligan, 
     a special assistant to the president who was on his personal 
     legal team, to fill the role.
       Ms. Halligan, who spent much of her career as an insurance 
     lawyer, has never been a prosecutor.
       Mr. Siebert's exit deepened troubling questions that have 
     arisen in recent months about the politicization of the 
     Justice Department's supposedly self-governing satellite 
     offices.
       But it also raised a blunter and more immediate issue: 
     Which of the nation's U.S. attorneys might be next?
       Beyond their efforts to push out Mr. Siebert, whose 
     inquiries into Ms. James and Mr. Comey effectively fizzled 
     out, administration officials have also ramped up pressure 
     against Kelly O. Hayes, the U.S. attorney in Maryland, 
     according to three people familiar with the matter.
       Ms. Hayes, a career prosecutor who has spent more than a 
     decade in that office, is leading inquiries into two other 
     vocal critics of Mr. Trump: Mr. Schiff, who has been accused 
     of mortgage fraud by Mr. Trump's allies; and John R. Bolton, 
     Mr. Trump's former national security adviser, who is facing 
     scrutiny over allegations of mishandling classified 
     information.
       Recently, Ms. Hayes told associates that she was under no 
     illusions of the pressure she would face if she refused to 
     bring a case she believed to be unsupported by evidence, as 
     Mr. Siebert did, according to people with knowledge of those 
     conversations. And while she signed off last month on asking 
     for a warrant to search Mr. Bolton's home in Bethesda, Md., 
     she has indicated that she would not bring charges against 
     Mr. Schiff unless her team discovered evidence to support 
     them.
       Mr. Trump's campaign against U.S. attorneys, who oversee 
     offices in 93 federal districts across the country, is an 
     extension,

[[Page S7643]]

     even an escalation, of the early purge that his top political 
     appointees carried out at the Justice Department headquarters 
     and the FBI against those who worked on the criminal cases 
     brought against him before he returned to power.

  In other words, you investigated me because there was evidence of a 
crime. I am coming after you now--retribution. And in other cases, it 
is you disagreed with me and said the 2020 election was, in fact, 
valid. I am coming after you and your officemates on top of that.

  This is a dictator. This is not a President. This is a dictator. This 
is a tyrant, a man who is proceeding to wipe out due process, to attack 
free speech, to attack freedom of the press, to weaponize the Justice 
Department, to seek to send the military in to attack peaceful 
protesters and have that military available in the future to suppress 
dissent--a man who, in the weaponization of the Justice Department, is 
operating on the mode of ``anyone who played a key role in the 
government when they investigated me, I will go after them; anyone who 
disagrees with what I say, I will go after them. Everyone beware of 
what you say.''
  President Trump, why don't you pick on me? I am criticizing you all 
through the night.
  It is important to understand that when you criticize the President, 
you are at risk of being targeted. That is tyranny. That is not 
freedom. And together, Democrats and Republicans should respond and say 
this is 100 percent unacceptable. Democrats and Republicans together 
should take the case to the President and say: You know about how you 
are stealing the power of the purse? Not going to happen anymore.
  We have proposed a clause that would be in any continuing resolution 
that would say whatever has been agreed to in a bipartisan fashion can 
only be undone in a bipartisan fashion. So if something is adopted in a 
standard appropriations bill that has a 60-vote requirement, it would 
take 60 votes to undo it. We proposed that because that way we are 
honoring the deal struck between the two parties. That is basically to 
stop the strategies of the President stealing the power of the purse 
and canceling programs after the fact.
  That is a reasonable request: to honor the constitutional power 
invested in Congress. And I will keep raising that question, keep 
inviting my colleagues across the aisle: Let's join together, Democrats 
and Republicans together, to save our Republic.
  This is not the vision of the Nation that I think any single Member 
of this body believed in when they were elected, a vision in which the 
rights of Americans are compromised, where freedom of speech is no 
longer existent because you can be criminally prosecuted on a whim by 
the President when there is no evidence of a crime.
  Continuing with this article:

       But his latest demand for the prosecution of his foes also 
     underscores how his desire for retribution against those who 
     pursued him after his first term remains as intense as ever, 
     and how he appears to feel less constrained by political and 
     legal norms in imposing payback.
       Given that these prosecutors' offices are where federal 
     cases are filed on a day-to-day basis, the move strikes at 
     the nuts-and-bolts foundations of the criminal justice 
     system. It seems intended both to create a frictionless path 
     for prosecutions of those who have run afoul of Mr. Trump, 
     and perhaps to provide the White House with a tool it could 
     use to set aside or slow cases it would like to see 
     disappear.
       White House interference in the work of U.S. attorneys was 
     once considered such a taboo that former Attorney General 
     Alberto R. Gonzales, who served under President George W. 
     Bush, resigned in scandal after the Justice Department fired 
     nine U.S. attorneys in 2006 for what were perceived to be 
     political reasons.
       But Trump's reaction to Mr. Siebert's ouster could not have 
     been more different.
       Several people, including Ms. Bondi and Todd Blanche, the 
     deputy attorney general and the president's former defense 
     lawyer, lobbied hard to keep Mr. Siebert in place, arguing 
     that he had been an efficient and cooperative partner on 
     immigration and crime enforcement in Washington's southern 
     suburbs.
       But Mr. Trump responded to repeated entreaties by saying, 
     ``I don't care,'' according to a person with knowledge of the 
     matter. His position seemed to be that he had been warned 
     several times during his first term about firing U.S. 
     attorneys, given that it could have put him in jeopardy, and 
     he ended up being investigated after leaving office anyhow, 
     the person said.

  Well, this article goes on to provide additional detail, but it says, 
nearer its end:

       Since returning to office, Mr. Trump and his allies have 
     often sought to justify their attacks on U.S. attorneys by 
     claiming that the justice system under President Joseph R. 
     Biden Jr. had been weaponized against his predecessor.
       Still, there is no evidence that federal law enforcement 
     officials in the Biden administration were strong-armed into 
     bringing or dropping prosecutions for what were overtly 
     political reasons. Nor were there any high-profile 
     resignations by U.S. attorneys under Mr. Biden that were 
     similar to Mr. Siebert's resignation on Friday.

  (Mrs. MOODY assumed the Chair.)
  So the attorneys followed the facts--what they are supposed to do--
without encouragement or influence from the President, under Biden, and 
now they are being instructed--as opposed to no influence and no 
instruction, they are being instructed who to go after.
  So much has gone on that it is hard to track it. In these various 
categories, we have talked about that even in the weaponization of the 
Justice Department, some of the cases are against individuals that the 
President has on his enemies list; others are after career employees 
who aren't doing exactly what the President wants to pursue those 
criminal investigations against people on the target list.
  Then we have more going on. The Department of Justice fired attorneys 
and other staff who were involved in the January 6 investigations and 
prosecutions.
  So we have the criminal prosecutions of people on Trump's enemies 
list, we have the firing of attorneys in the prosecutor's office, and 
now we have the firing of attorneys and staff who were involved in the 
January 6 investigations.
  More than a dozen FBI agents were fired because during 2020, they had 
kneeled with protestors in the wake of George Floyd's murder, and Trump 
publicly called for investigations into other political enemies, as we 
have seen.
  The Comey indictment has received a particularly significant amount 
of attention. The Brennan Center provided some input on this:

       The power of the prosecutor is tremendous, impacting the 
     life and liberty of those whose conduct brings them within 
     the criminal justice system. Prosecutors decide who gets 
     charged and what crimes they get charged with. They make 
     influential recommendations about sentencing. That's why it's 
     essential for prosecution to stay independent of politics. 
     Justice demands that prosecutors make decisions based solely 
     on the facts and the law, and without fear or favor. No one 
     can be above the law or unfairly subjected to it.
       New federal prosecutors learn about former attorney general 
     and Supreme Court justice Robert Jackson's views, which, 
     although stated in 1940, resonate powerfully today:
       [The prosecutor's] discretion is tremendous. He can have 
     citizens investigated and, if he is that kind of person, he 
     can have this done to the tune of public statements and 
     veiled or unveiled intimations. . . . The prosecutor can 
     order arrests, present cases to the grand jury in secret 
     session, and on the basis of his one-sided presentation of 
     the facts, can cause the citizen to be indicted and held for 
     trial. . . . While the prosecutor at his best is one of the 
     most beneficent forces in our society, when he acts from 
     malice or other base motives, he is one of the worst.
       There were echoes of Jackson's warning last week when the 
     Justice Department indicted one of the president's political 
     opponents. Lindsey Halligan, President Trump's former 
     personal lawyer and newly installed U.S. attorney in the 
     Eastern District of Virginia, went to the grand jury, 
     apparently alone, to indict former FBI Director James Comey 
     for allegedly lying to Congress and obstructing a 
     congressional investigation.
       Trump turned to Halligan after her predecessor--Erik 
     Siebert, an experienced career prosecutor whom Trump himself 
     had tapped to lead the office--declined to prosecute Comey 
     due to insufficient evidence.

  So a seasoned prosecutor, a career prosecutor whom Trump himself had 
tapped to lead the office, said there was insufficient evidence to 
prosecute Comey and declined to do so.

       But there is credible reporting that prosecutors in the 
     office had serious concerns about the case. That prompted 
     Trump to put out a Truth Social post that read [more] like a 
     text message to Attorney General Pam Bondi than something you 
     would expect to see from the president on social media.
       Pam: I have reviewed our 30 statements and posts saying, 
     that, essentially, ``same old stories last time, all talk, no 
     action. Nothing is being done. What about Comey? What about 
     Adam ``Shifty'' Schiff, [what about] Letitia??? They are all 
     guilty as hell. Nothing is going to be done. Then we almost

[[Page S7644]]

     put in a Democrat supported U.S. Attorney, in Virginia, with 
     a really bad Republican past. A WOKE RINO, who was never 
     going to do his job. That's why two of the worst Dem[ocrat] 
     Senators PUSHED him so hard. He even lied to media and said 
     he quit, and that we had no case. No, I fired him, and there 
     is a GREAT CASE, and many lawyers, and legal pundits, say so. 
     Lindsay Halligan is a really good lawyer, and likes you, a 
     lot. We can't delay any longer, it's killing our reputation 
     and credibility. They impeached me twice, and indicted me (5 
     times!), OVER NOTHING. JUSTICE MUST BE SERVED, NOW!!! 
     President DJT.

  This level of Presidential interference and prosecutorial decision 
making contradicts everything our country has done in the post-
Watergate era to protect against corruption of the justice system.
  So fired FBI agents, directing the Attorney General publicly to go 
after folks that he doesn't like, going after attorneys who don't 
prosecute in a fashion--there is a lot. A lot. Article after article.
  This one I actually make an additional element I wasn't so familiar 
with.

       In late September, President Trump signed an executive 
     order purporting to designate ``Antifa'' as a ``domestic 
     terrorist organization.'' A few days later, he issued 
     National Security Presidential Memorandum 7 (NSPM-7) on 
     Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political 
     Violence. This analysis evaluates the claims made in these 
     documents and their potential damaging effects, drawing on 
     the Brennan Center's decade of work on the government's 
     framework for responding to terrorism, both foreign and 
     domestic.
       Both the order and the memo are ungrounded in fact and law. 
     Acting on them would violate free speech rights, potentially 
     threatening any person or group holding any one of a broad 
     array of disfavored views with investigation and prosecution.

  So this is another weapon--another aspect of the weaponization of the 
Justice Department. If you think that there is a philosophy you don't 
like--and in this case, antifa is more philosophy than organization. 
Calling it a domestic terrorist organization puts individuals and their 
free speech at great risk.
  The memo from the Brennan Center goes on to note all the details 
about how this doesn't stand up to take any--to being basically used to 
suppress domestic dissent, free speech, by labeling a domestic group a 
terrorist organization.

       Building on its framing of the threat from anti-fascism as 
     a wide-ranging conspiracy and domestic terrorism, NSPM 
     directs government agencies to go after ``all participants in 
     these criminal and terroristic conspiracies--including the 
     organized structures, networks, entities, organizations, 
     funding sources, and predicate actions behind them.
       The memorandum directs Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTFs) 
     to ``coordinate and supervise a comprehensive national 
     strategy to investigate, prosecute, and disrupt entities and 
     individuals engaged in acts of political violence and 
     intimidation designed to suppress lawful political activity 
     or obstruct the rule of law.''

  Of course, whenever there is criminal activity, hell yes, enforce the 
law, but if you are putting a major label on a group because of their 
viewpoints, that is something entirely different. So that certainly 
deserves close examination as another facet.
  This one--a little more complicated and not feeling like the total 
framework is completed as to how this is intended to be used or acted 
on and how it will affect those who might have anti-fascist views, but 
it certainly appears like it is a strategy to take folks you disagree 
with and label them a terrorist threat when there could be absolutely 
no such threat at all.
  Finally, let me read a message from the organization Justice 
Connection, a group of former career employees from the Department of 
Justice who left DOJ either voluntarily or involuntarily because of 
actions in the Trump administration. ``Urgent Message from Recent DOJ 
Alumni Decrying Attacks on Justice Department.'' It is a two-page 
letter.
  Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that the Justice Connection 
letter be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

              [From the Justice Connection, Oct. 6, 2025]

   Urgent Message From Recent DOJ Alumni Decrying Attacks on Justice 
                               Department

       We are 292 former career employees who proudly served our 
     country at the Department of Justice. From prosecutors, 
     special agents, and intelligence analysts to immigration 
     judges, grant managers, civil rights attorneys and more, we 
     all carried out our duties faithfully, regardless of who 
     occupied the White House. Until we no longer could.
       Each of us left the Department, either voluntarily or 
     involuntarily, because of actions taken by this 
     administration.
       Our fidelity to the Constitution and our dedication to our 
     country did not end when our jobs did. Now that we've left 
     the Department, we believe it's our duty to sound the alarm 
     about this administration's degradation of DOJ's vital work, 
     and its assault on the public servants who do it.
       It is incumbent on all of us to fight for the Justice 
     Department before it's too late.
       DOJ's mission is to ``to uphold the rule of law, to keep 
     our country safe, and to protect civil rights.'' It's failing 
     on all three fronts:
       The Justice Department cannot uphold the rule of law when 
     it carries out the President's retribution campaign and 
     protects his allies; violates court orders and evades due 
     process requirements; directs attorneys to violate their 
     ethical responsibilities; and fires its employees without 
     notice or cause in violation of civil service laws.
       It also cannot keep our country safe when it ousts FBI 
     employees, prosecutors, national security experts, and ATF 
     officials; shutters offices that prevent community violence 
     and dismantle drug trafficking operations; purges the 
     attorneys who enforce laws that protect the environment; and 
     shifts highly trained special agents away from 
     counterintelligence and counterterrorism.
       And it cannot protect civil rights when it drives out 75% 
     of attorneys from the Civil Rights Division and refuses to 
     enforce the nation's civil rights laws as Congress intended, 
     using them instead as a cudgel against marginalized groups.
       The administration is taking a sledgehammer to other 
     longstanding work the Department has done to protect 
     communities and the rule of law, too, Its plans to eliminate 
     the Tax Division which saves the country billions of dollars 
     by pursuing tax evaders, will leave us poorer. Gutting the 
     Public Integrity Section and FBI public corruption squads has 
     paved the way for government graft. Cancelling hundreds of 
     millions of dollars in grants has left at-risk communities 
     less protected and crime victims less supported. The list 
     could go on.
       As for its treatment of its employees, the current 
     leadership's behavior has been appalling. This 
     administration's lies about the ``deep state'' and 
     exaggerations about government inefficiency have eroded the 
     respect our country once held for public servants. And 
     demonizing, firing, demoting, involuntarily transferring, and 
     directing employees to violate their ethical duties has 
     already caused an exodus of over 5,000 of us--draining the 
     Department of priceless institutional knowledge and 
     expertise, and impairing its historical success in recruiting 
     top talent. We may feel the effects of this for generations.
       The Justice Department's backbone has always been its 
     career workforce, and those who were part of it are best 
     positioned to explain why the current leaders' actions are 
     catastrophic for the nation.
       We call on these leaders to reverse course--to remember the 
     oath we all took to uphold the Constitution--and adhere to 
     the legal guardrails and institutional norms on which our 
     justice system relies.
       We call on our fellow alumni to join us in sounding the 
     alarm, and in mobilizing to support our colleagues still 
     there. They deserve respect and gratitude, neither of which 
     they're getting from this administration.
       We call on Congress to exercise its oversight 
     responsibilities far more vigorously. Members in both 
     chambers and on both sides of the aisle must provide a 
     meaningful check on the abuses we're witnessing.
       And we call on all Americans--whose safety, prosperity, and 
     rights depend on a strong DOJ to speak out against its 
     destruction.
       Our democracy is only as strong as the rule of law, and the 
     rule of law can't survive without the principal institution 
     that enforces it.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Urgent message:

       We are 292 former career employees who proudly served our 
     country at the Department of Justice. From prosecutors, 
     special agents, and intelligence analysts to immigration 
     judges, grant managers, civil rights attorneys, and more, we 
     all carried out our duties faithfully, regardless of who 
     occupied the White House. Until we no longer could.
       Each of us left the Department, either voluntarily or 
     involuntarily, because of actions taken by this 
     administration.
       Our fidelity to the Constitution and our dedication to our 
     country did not end when our jobs did. Now that we've left 
     the Department, we believe it is our duty to sound the alarm 
     about this administration's degradation of DOJ's vital work, 
     and its assault on the public servants who do it.
       It is incumbent on all of us to fight for the Justice 
     Department before it's too late.
       DOJ's mission is to ``uphold the rule of law, to keep our 
     country safe, and to protect civil rights.'' It's failing on 
     all three fronts.

  Madam President, I see a colleague has arrived on the floor, and I am 
happy to interrupt the reading of this letter. But because of your own 
background, I suspect you might possibly have some questions related to 
some of these miscarriages of justice.
  I see my colleague from Minnesota is on the floor, and I would 
welcome a question if she has one.

[[Page S7645]]

  

  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. Will the Senator from Oregon yield?
  I have one question, and it is about just the Justice Department. We 
just got the shocking news yesterday--every single day, something 
happens--that once again, the President is treating the Justice 
Department as his own personal law firm. He has now asked for--and this 
might have been while the Senator from Oregon was speaking--the 
President has now requested $230 million back from the taxpayers of 
this country, off of their backs, to line his own pockets--or he says 
now to give to a charity of his choice. And to me, this is just another 
example of how he keeps considering the Justice Department as it should 
be--not as the people's lawyer but as his own lawyers. In fact, he has 
installed his own lawyers there.
  He has done everything from deciding to pardon George Santos and 
pardon his friends to prosecute his so-called enemies, including firing 
career prosecutors to allow him to install a White House aide to go 
after his enemies.
  And so one of my obsessions with having watched this from the 
Judiciary Committee is just how that can be justice. And I think it 
does tie in with everything else that is happening.
  You know, he is focusing on getting $230 million that he doesn't 
deserve back into his pocket, instead of helping the American people 
get healthcare. He is focused on helping his pals and his friends and 
going after his enemies, instead of doing the work for the American 
people that he was elected to do.
  So I would just like to have my colleague from Oregon answer a 
question about how he sees this Justice Department fraud and what is 
happening over there as related to how the President isn't doing 
anything for regular people and, instead, he is helping his pals.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Well, I thank so much my colleague and friend from 
Minnesota and the expertise you bring on the Justice Department. As a 
lawyer, you have the background, and you serve on the committee that 
has this jurisdiction. And I, as a nonlawyer, can tell you, I am just 
absolutely shocked and stunned. I have thought that the norms that we 
have in America are norms that make a great deal of sense because they 
have a value associated with them, and that value is the fair 
administration of justice without prejudice, the fair administration 
without targeting political enemies.
  I think, oh, I read about the targeting of political enemies that 
happened in some country far away, where a president who didn't share 
the values that we have here in the United States of America went after 
their political enemies by falsely pursuing them in a criminal sense. 
But then I realized, no, that is happening right here in the United 
States of America.
  And you made reference to a situation that I believe I may have heard 
about--I may have this wrong--in which the President is actually suing 
the government and then instructing his Department of Justice to settle 
the suit, thereby transferring money into the President's pocket and 
out of the government.
  I mean, are you kidding me?
  A President of the United States: I will file a suit against the 
government, and then I will tell the Justice Department to pay it off 
and put that money in my pocket.
  I mean, I was stunned by reading that new version. There is no limit 
to the self-serving.
  I must say, in that case, it is money, but when the President has an 
enemies list and when the President instructs Pam Bondi, the Attorney 
General, to go and find something on that person in order to make their 
life miserable, this is absolutely horrific because it is not just 
about targeting that person, which is bad enough, it is about 
suppressing dissent or enforcing loyalty--suppressing dissent by anyone 
else and saying to everybody else: You better do exactly what I say. I 
can issue a pardon if you do what I say. And, it is illegal, but I can 
issue a subpoena and prosecute you if you violate it--well, if you fail 
to do exactly what I want.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. And will the Senator from Oregon yield for a question?
  Mr. MERKLEY. I would love to yield for another question.
  Ms. KLOBUCHAR. So when you look at how this all started, I think 
about all of these people who have stood up--and you are standing up 
today. I think about career prosecutors in the Justice Department who 
have basically said: No, I am not going to do the bidding of the 
President, whether I was appointed during a Republican Presidency or a 
Democratic Presidency, whether I personally vote Republican or vote 
Democrat. I have a job to do, and that is to follow the laws of the 
United States.
  And I think the real first indication of this, where people realize 
just how off the cliff this was going, was when, in fact, there was 
pressure put on career prosecutors in New York to dismiss these charges 
that had been the result of a long investigation involving Mayor Eric 
Adams.
  And what I remember from that time was that Danielle Sassoon, who was 
a very, very well-respected, conservative prosecutor, someone that came 
up through the Federalist Society, who had clerked for conservative 
Justices, she decided to resign rather than do their bidding, because 
she felt that it wasn't consistent with the law, that it was against 
the law.
  And then, another career prosecutor named Hagan Scotten, who was a 
decorated veteran, who had clerked for then-Judge Kavanaugh and Justice 
Roberts, he said when asked to file a motion in that case: You may find 
a fool or a coward to file that motion, but it won't be me.
  And those words always echo in my mind.
  I say to the Senator from Oregon as he stands up today, of these 
people through these last months, whether it is standing to march with 
their kids on their hips, whether it is to stand up, as so many of us 
have done in this Chamber to fight for healthcare, whether it is people 
who, like the statistician at the Labor Department, simply doing her 
job, willing to stand up and give the facts of what the job numbers 
were--and then the President didn't like it and had her fired, which I 
always thought was ironic when it is about job numbers, and then you 
lose another job.
  But, in any case, he just fired her.
  Or going after Governors at the Federal Reserve or deciding which 
States he is going to take funding from--in my home State of Minnesota, 
as I know you have experienced in Oregon, he cut a bunch of energy 
projects. And I looked at the list, and I thought: Wait a minute. These 
are all great projects. So many of them were major, major projects with 
private companies to provide energy in neighboring States like North 
Dakota and South Dakota.
  I kind of looked at the list and saw all the funding, because the 
company was based in Minnesota, but all the funding was for the 
surrounding red States. And I just thought: Oops, I guess they didn't 
mean to put this on the list.
  All of that combines, as you look at what is happening with the 
Justice Department, right now, with a President that has basically 
decided that there are no norms. And so the only norm left is this 
body, because the House has decided they are not coming back right now. 
They are waiting for these Epstein files that they hope will just go 
away, but it appears they will never go away. They won't even seat a 
newly-elected Member of Congress from Arizona because they are so 
afraid of these Epstein files.
  So while that is going on and they basically decided to just stay 
home and hang out and not come to work every day, this is the 
functioning Chamber, as close as it can come, that is supposed to be 
dealing with the matters before the country. And the matter before the 
country right now is what is happening with our healthcare system on 
November 1. These premiums are going to be doubling in so many States.
  You look at some of the States that actually Donald Trump won, like 
Florida, with millions and millions of people on these plans. You look 
at Texas. And 75 percent of the people on these plans live in States 
that Donald Trump won.
  So while all that is going on, the President goes to his go-to, and 
his go-to is messing around with the justice system. He literally 
pardoned someone, as in George Santos, who claimed to be, what--a 
world-class volleyball player, producer of the Spiderman movie, and was 
actually simply a fraudster that the entire Republican leadership of 
the House of Representatives booted out of the House of 
Representatives?

[[Page S7646]]

  The President says: Oh, I am going to bring this guy back, too, 
because every single day, it is that strong-arm technique. He doesn't 
care if it leads to more violence, doesn't care if it violates the oath 
of these lawyers in the Justice Department, doesn't care if people get 
fired.
  What does matter? What does appear to matter is making news that day. 
What does appear to matter is dominating the news that day--not our 
country, not the rule of law.
  But the one thing I can say, and I ask this of my friend, the Senator 
from Oregon, because the President seems to think this: But does, in 
fact, Trump trump the Constitution? Isn't it a fact that our laws and 
our Constitution, which has withstood--withstood--wars, withstood the 
Great Depression, withstood Watergate, withstood all these things--why? 
Because people stood up as the Senator from Oregon is doing today.
  Judges stood up, as we are seeing across the country.
  There are Trump-appointed judges that have made decisions time and 
time again, contrary to this administration, because it is against the 
rule of law. We saw that in a tariff case with those tariffs that are 
burdening the small businesses in our State. We saw a Trump-appointed 
judge, a Reagan-appointed judge, and an Obama-appointed judge that 
stood together and said the tariffs are illegal.
  So this is happening, judges are standing up. Our constituents are 
standing up, as we saw over this last weekend--millions and millions of 
people standing up, in what was the biggest peaceful protest in the 
history of this country.
  And, yes, Congress needs to stand up, and that is what the Senator 
from Oregon is doing today--standing up and saying: This is not normal. 
This is not normal to have a Justice Department that is doing what they 
are doing. So I do ask the Senator from Oregon, despite him not being a 
lawyer, to talk about the fact that Donald Trump cannot trump the 
Constitution of the United States.
  Mr. MERKLEY. I thank so much the question my colleague from Minnesota 
has laid out--in fact, at least eight or so topics that I am going to 
enjoy addressing. But your final point, does Trump trump the 
Constitution? Do we have Kings, if you will, in the United States of 
America?
  And the answer is, under the Constitution, obviously not.
  And I so appreciate the name of Saturday's demonstration--7 million 
people demonstrating at some 2,700 sites across America, saying, ``no 
Kings,'' and many versions of the most creative possible statistics 
laid out, pictures laid out in that process.
  But you are absolutely right--your question. There are no Kings under 
our Constitution. But the President, in all of these things that I have 
laid out through the course of the night--the attack on the rule of 
law, the continuous effort to suppress free speech and free press, the 
attack on due process, attack on the law firms, attack on the 
universities, the use of violence, and the weaponizing of the DOJ--all 
of it is the way a King acts.
  So, in fact, we are in the middle of an authoritarian takeover. It is 
not down the street. It is not around the corner. It is here right now.
  And speaking of being here right now, I see my minority leader is on 
the floor, from New York, and I will welcome a question if he has one.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Well, first, thank you. And I do have a question for 
you. I want to commend you for your fortitude and your strength on a 
subject that is so important to the future of this country--not only 
for our generation but for our grandchildren. We need a democracy.
  And my question is this: In many authoritarian regimes there are many 
characteristics, and we see a lot of this happening in Hungary, in 
fact, with Orban. Orban has had his friends take over the media. Orban 
has used the prosecutorial authorities as a weapon, as Trump has turned 
our whole Justice Department into an attack dog to go after his enemies 
and help his friends.
  And we see this in so many other countries. Now there are many people 
in the United States that say it can't happen here, and our roots of 
democracy are stronger and deeper, certainly, than Hungary's, but the 
danger is real.
  And could my friend--and I respect what he has done all night. Could 
my friend just elaborate on the question: It is different here, but why 
can we not be complacent when we have seen what happens in other 
countries like Hungary, like Turkey, and, of course, in even more 
severe dictatorships?
  When people say it won't happen here, why should we--even though we 
are different, why should Americans from every political corner--
Democrat, Republican, liberal, conservative--be fighting this 
authoritarian rise in this country, led by Donald Trump, who, as you 
said, wants to be King?
  Mr. MERKLEY. I so appreciate the question from the minority leader 
from New York. One of the things that I certainly felt was: This can't 
happen here. Our institutions are too old. We have 200 years of 
practice. We have features that have helped reinforce our 
constitutional framework. We have a solid middle class. We have a good 
education system. We have deep traditions in the House and Senate. We 
have norms that reinforce our constitutional understandings.
  Yet it turns out that my confidence that authoritarianism cannot take 
hold in America is wrong.
  One of the things I have done over the course of the night is that I 
read multiple chapters and commentary from two professors who looked at 
countries all the world, including Hungary--
  Mr. SCHUMER. Right.
  Mr. MERKLEY.--and they said: Here is how it happened. They said: We 
used to think about the end of a democracy as being something done with 
men with guns.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Right.
  Mr. MERKLEY. They burned down the Presidential palace. They shot the 
President. Maybe they killed his family. They tore up the Constitution, 
and they said: Here is the new deal.
  But now that rarely happens in comparison to the new version in which 
democracies are put into the grave, and that new version is by elected 
individuals who start to erode the separation of powers.
  If you think about it that way, you just really need three things to 
become an authoritarian state. You need a Congress that says ``Our role 
is to just back up and do what the President says''--a rubberstamp 
Congress. In large part, we have that right now. I can't tell you how 
many times colleagues have said: I can't take that position because it 
would upset the President even though I am not happy about the 
situation.
  So there is that. Then you need a court that confirms or conveys more 
power to the President, and we have seen court decision after court 
decision that has conveyed more power, like Trump vs. United States, 
saying the President is above the law.
  You combine the President being above the law, as long as it is 
shielded by an active government, and pardon power, and now the whole 
executive branch feels, well, we are all above the law.
  Then the President comes into office and just starts ignoring one law 
after another. I think a real early one that got a lot of attention was 
the firing of inspectors general. And, of course, the law says you have 
to fire them for cause, and the law says you have to give 30 days' 
notice, but the President did neither. In the end, he didn't really get 
the courts to say: You can't do that.
  Then Trump says, you know what, I am just going to start establishing 
tariffs around the world.
  Well, tariffs are not a power delegated to the President. The very 
first bill the U.S. Senate ever worked on was a tariff bill. They spent 
3 weeks assigning a tariff to different things--a keg of nails, a 
barrel of molasses, and so on and so forth.
  So this collective factor brings us to the third element that creates 
the authoritarian state, which is a President who wants to defy the 
law, create a space in which the laws do not apply. So suddenly the 
checks and balances are gone.
  And it is not the authoritarianism that we need to fear a year from 
now; it is here at this very moment.
  Mr. SCHUMER. Right.
  Mr. MERKLEY. So this is why we should all--if we had any doubts a 
year ago, we should all now be going: Oh my God. We are not immune from 
the same

[[Page S7647]]

strategy that has been pursued with the same authoritarian playbook in 
country after country after country.
  Mr. SCHUMER. I thank my colleague for that really right-on-the-money 
exposition on this.
  I would like to ask one more question related to the first. Supine 
Congress. Our Republican colleagues seem to just do whatever Trump 
wants, and we hear lots of mumbling and grumbling: We don't like it. 
But I hear from some of them saying to me: It wouldn't make a 
difference if I spoke up.
  Does my colleague from Oregon agree with them that it wouldn't make a 
difference? If Republicans--whether it is the leadership in the House 
or Senate or a large number or even a decent number of Members--spoke 
up against the kind of authoritarian direction that Trump is taking, 
does my colleague think it wouldn't make a difference, as they say, or 
does he think it would?
  Mr. MERKLEY. Well, I believe it would make an astounding difference 
because when I come to the floor or any of my Democratic colleagues 
come to the floor and say: Look at this attack on due process. This is 
just wrong. Look at this effort to tell universities what to teach. 
This is just wrong. Look at the attack on law firms. They have been 
essentially blackmailed into $1 billion of free legal help for groups 
that Trump wants. That is wrong. Look at the effort to ship people out 
of this country because of what they say on foreign policy.
  Those are violations of free speech and due process, and we say it is 
just wrong, but in essence, we are speaking within a communication 
bubble that exists around our urban communities, and there is a 
different communication bubble that exists around our rural 
communities.
  We have driven into this situation through cable news, where people 
in my State who live in cities watch one version of the world on cable, 
and they see a different version if they are in rural areas watching a 
different cable, and that is reinforced by social media.
  So when a colleague across the aisle speaks up, now a whole new 
audience is hearing about what is going on in our country, and it has 
the act of integrity because it is not coming from across the aisle. It 
can't be dismissed as a partisan comment. It is clearly a comment of 
principle.
  So when you have both a comment that is absolutely principled and a 
comment that reaches into a different media sphere, now you start to 
have an enormous impact, and others will have courage to follow.
  Because I have heard from my colleagues about some of these pieces 
that they are worried about but are not speaking up on--one person 
steps forward, maybe takes the hit from some of the rightwing 
commentators, and maybe actually gains some respect from others who 
say: No, that is for sure the truth.
  Mr. SCHUMER. I thank my colleague. I do.
  I thank my colleague from Minnesota for her excellent back-and-forth 
with the Senator from Oregon.
  Thank you for doing this.
  I yield the floor.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you very much to my colleague from New York for 
those two questions.
  One of the questions that my colleague from Minnesota asked about was 
mentioning $230 million in compensation that Trump is trying to get out 
of the government. So I found the story about that and wanted to fill 
folks in on what that is.

       President Trump is demanding that the Justice Department 
     pay him about $230 million--

  That is a lot of money. For folks in my neighborhood, $1 million 
seems like an unfathomable sum, and here, we are talking about $230 
million, a quarter of a billion dollars--

     in compensation for the federal investigations into him, 
     according to people familiar with the matter,--

  This is an article by Devlin Barrett and Tyler Pager on October 21, 
2025, so hot off the press, if you will--

     who added that any settlement might ultimately be approved by 
     senior department officials who defended him or those in his 
     orbit.

  So you have the President suing his own government, and he has the 
Justice Department in which there are people who were on his defense 
team now working who would be the ones to ultimately approve a 
settlement.
  This article goes on to say:

       The situation has no parallel in American history, as Mr. 
     Trump, a presidential candidate, was pursued by Federal law 
     enforcement and eventually won the election, taking over the 
     very government that must now review his claims. It is also 
     the starkest example yet of potential ethical conflicts 
     created by installing the president's former lawyers atop the 
     Justice Department.

  Lawyers get to play both sides. They were on his team that brought 
the lawsuits, and now they are on the team for the Justice Department 
that would agree to pay him.
  Well, obviously that is an unacceptable conflict of interest, and in 
any ordinary world, you expect anyone associated with this case to say: 
Absolutely not. My integrity will be profoundly compromised if I come 
anywhere near this.
  But that type of integrity and that type of clarity about the 
importance of avoiding conflicts of interest so that fairness is 
embodied--I mean, I don't think there is a fair way for this to be 
adjudicated by his own administration: suing the government and then 
asking them to pay you by people who work for him. Is there any way to 
resolve that conflict of interest? I can't imagine it. The only way I 
can imagine it is to say that this issue will be addressed in the next 
administration by people in the Department of Justice who did not ever 
work in the past or in the present for Mr. Trump.

       [He] submitted complaints through an administrative claim 
     process that often is the precursor to lawsuits.

  But, essentially, that is the issue with the President suing his own 
government and then asking the folks who work for him to settle it and 
hand him $230 million. Wow. Can you imagine if President Biden had sued 
the Department of Justice and asked them to settle the case and give 
him $200 million? I mean, there would be--every single Senator across 
the aisle would be down here saying: Are you kidding me? That is the 
clearest ethical compromise ever created in the history of our country. 
How can that possibly be done? It cannot be done. We must pass a bill. 
We must condemn this conflict. It is a rip-off of the American people 
for $230 million. No way, no how.
  Well, that is exactly what we should hear regardless of which aisle 
you sit by. Whether you sit to the left of the center aisle or to the 
right of the center aisle, that is exactly the outrage over gross 
corruption.
  This isn't the only--this is not, by the way, the worst corruption. 
It may be--no, it is not the worst. The worst was the President asking 
people, after he was in office, to buy his crypto coin and say he was 
doing a contest and the roughly 230 people who bought the most of his 
coins over a set period, those folks would get a special dinner at his 
golf club--special access to him. So over a period of several weeks, a 
competition was held, the winners were announced, and then the dinner 
was held. And President Trump profited, personally, fabulously from 
that corrupt activity.
  Essentially, there are two types of crypto coins--or more than that, 
but one of them is called a stablecoin. In a stablecoin, you are 
essentially saying: I will give you a dollar, and you give me a dollar 
stablecoin, dollar denominated, and I can use that cryptocurrency in 
ways I can't use an actual dollar. Meanwhile, you get to keep the 
dollar I gave you to buy the crypto coin. You get to invest it.
  So if, for example, someone buys a million dollars of those coins and 
holds them for a year, well, then the President's company gets the 
interest on that million dollars however they invest it. There are 
restrictions--or at least there are supposed to be restrictions--on how 
you invest it to make sure that it maintains its value, so, 
essentially, it is probably invested in very safe bonds. But still, 
hey, 4 percent on a million dollars--well, let's see. Ten percent would 
be 100,000, so we are talking about $40,000--$40,000. Well, what if you 
buy a billion dollars now of those coins? Now we are talking about the 
President and his company getting not $40,000 but $40 million.
  I mean, it is a direct sale of access to the President for money in 
his pocket or his company's pocket. And that is simply outrageous.

  But then there is another coin that is kind of a token. What can you 
do with

[[Page S7648]]

this token? The answer is not much. You are just giving your dollars to 
buy the token, and the President or his company keeps that money 
forever. So that is even a more direct, instead of just getting the 
interest off the money that he holds until the coins are redeemed. In 
this case, he is keeping the money forever, selling you a useless 
token. He keeps the money. It is basically like saying: Hand over your 
wallet, and I will take cash out of it. Thank you very much.
  It is as close to a straight bribe as anything you can imagine.
  We had a vote here on the Senate floor saying that none of us in the 
Congress or in the high levels of the government would be allowed to 
participate in this type of a system where a new Senator can come in 
here and, oh, he or she will offer a new coin, and somebody will say: 
Yes, I will take 10,000 of those. It is like handing you $10,000. It is 
a bribe.
  And, unfortunately, for reasons I don't understand, my colleagues 
across the aisle voted it down. They want to let this crypto corruption 
continue.
  Is there something wrong with the bill that needs to be adjusted? I 
am all ears. I am looking for a partner across the aisle to say this 
type of corruption is wrong, and I will join in partnership. Let's 
write the bill together. Let's go over the old bill together and fix it 
if it needs fixing. Let's find allies on both sides of the party.
  But so far, not a word from any of my colleagues, saying they want to 
actually address this crypto corruption that is much more corrupt an 
issue.
  My colleague from Minnesota had a list of other issues that I wrote 
down somewhere. Let me see if I can find the piece of paper I wrote 
them on. She had so many good ideas for me to address. Maybe I will 
find it, maybe I won't. Given that I am not finding it right away--here 
it is.
  She asked about the $230 million scheme. I have now shared the answer 
to that.
  She also noted that isn't it insane to be firing people at random, 
like the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics because the President 
didn't like the employment numbers?
  Yes. Yes, it is crazy and damaging because now nobody trusts the new 
numbers. Are the new numbers accurate? They are afraid to put out 
probably the right numbers because if they look bad, they are going to 
get fired. Or maybe they will bend the assumptions a little bit here 
and there and add them up to get an extra half percent or percent of 
employment, mislead us about where the economy is headed.
  So, yes, it is deeply damaging. So many people depend on the many 
statistics compiled by the Bureau of Labor to understand what is 
happening in our economy and whether to make investments.
  My colleague from Minnesota also mentioned the canceling of energy 
projects across the country. Those energy projects--I think it was $8 
billion in energy projects all across Democratic States--this is 
another form of corrupt activity by the President. A President is 
supposed to be President of the entire Nation, not the President of the 
Republican Party; and, therefore, striving to have success built in 
every part of the country, regardless of whether they are blue or red 
Senators or blue or red Members of Congress. But the canceled energy 
projects were targeted at blue States.
  Here is the thing. Those projects produce energy, in general, at a 
lower cost than fossils. By doing so, by producing electricity that 
often is in the realm of 2 cents per kilowatt hour, it lowers the cost 
of electricity. But what do we see actually happening across the 
country? We see the utility costs going up.
  So canceling these projects is driving up the cost of electricity for 
people in State after State after State. This is why we often refer to 
the fact that in his first 10 months, Trump has made the Nation sicker 
and poorer--sicker because of his attack on healthcare and some of the 
not-so-helpful evaluations coming out of the Health and Human Services 
office but also poorer because he is driving up costs. He wants folks 
to use expensive, dirty energy rather than cheaper, cleaner energy that 
derives primarily from solar powers and wind. Sure there is some 
geothermal in there, maybe hydro in there, but the new energy is 
primarily in the realm of solar and wind, both of them hovering around 
that 2 to 3 cents per kilowatt hour. I am pretty sure nobody here pays 
a bill at a utility company as low as 2 or 3 cents.
  If lower cost energy could be generated--I think the retail rate in 
my utility that serves my house is still around 12 or 14 cents. I would 
love them to buy 2-cent energy and lower the cost to me and everyone 
else. But the President killed these projects, often midstride, putting 
people out of employment, putting investments at risk, putting our 
planet at risk.
  If he wants to continue to use carbon energy--carbon energy, very 
simply, heats up the atmosphere, a nice little warm blanket around the 
globe. We see it in so many different ways in my home State.
  Not only is the fossil energy more expensive and dirtier in terms of 
breathing the air, it is also overheating the planet with carbon 
dioxide and leaked methane. Methane can be many multiples more powerful 
trapping heat than carbon dioxide. Both of these fossil fuel products--
one from combustion and one primarily from leakage of methane--provide 
significant damage.
  We see the stronger storms that come down like the one in Texas. You 
can't track any one storm and say it was, specifically, about climate 
when there are a lot more storms with a lot more energy that have a lot 
more energy in the atmosphere because the atmosphere is a lot warmer. 
And so, in general, the number and ferocity of the storms is tied to 
our burning of fossil fuels. Here is a President canceling $8 billion 
of clean, low-cost energy projects in order to force people to keep 
using more and more carbon, higher cost, higher polluting, and planet-
damaging fossil fuels.

  I am particularly struck that this is happening at a time that in the 
information revolution, you have big, big new demands on electricity. 
You have data centers and counties like them because they are big, 
expensive, and they provide property taxes. But they consume enormous 
amounts of energy. In so doing, that means the local utility has to go 
buy more energy on the grid, which is more expensive than the energy 
you already have driving up the cost for everybody served by the 
utility.
  Some States started to say: No, if you build a data center or you do 
crypto mining or you do AI processing, you need to pay the fair cost of 
your activities and pay a higher rate for that electricity than the 
homeowners so the homeowners don't get shaken down to subsidize these 
activities.
  Another point that my colleague from Minnesota made was the impact on 
small business of what is going on. Yesterday, I had folks from small 
businesses who were touring Capitol Hill, holding meetings from Oregon. 
There were lots of folks from all corners of the country coming in to 
say: We are troubled. We have a couple of major problems.
  One of those major problems they listed is the tariffs because how 
can you plan for the future when tariffs go up and down? How do you 
know what country to buy your products or won't buy your products? How 
can you make a decision to build a factory under the circumstances?
  Sure, if there is a high tariff put on your competitor, if you happen 
to have a factory for a while, you can make a lot more to meet domestic 
demands, and maybe that comes out all right. If it is permanent, you 
want to build a factory--no, those decisions are not happening when the 
tariffs are fluctuating.
  What the President is doing is taking power not delegated to the 
President. There is no law that gives the President the power to adjust 
tariffs. It is being adjudicated. The courts are slow--in fact, I think 
very slow when you think of the fact he has been doing tariffs on his 
own with no authority to do it for a very long time now in his 
Presidency.
  The second thing small businesses said was the Republican bill that 
doubles the price of insurance on the exchange is absolutely horrific 
for small businesses because, in general, small businesses buy their 
insurance on the healthcare exchange. They aren't large enough to 
strike their own independent deal and get good rates, so they buy on 
the exchange. Without the same level of tax credits, their costs will, 
like

[[Page S7649]]

other Americans, be roughly doubled, a projected 114-percent increase. 
That is more than doubled.
  This is the phrase: ``Main Street is pain street'' because Main 
Street small businesses can no longer afford to buy insurance because 
of the bill that my colleagues across the aisle passed, a bill that 
Trump called the Big Beautiful Bill, but many of us called it the ``Big 
Ugly Betrayal'' because it hurt families by helping billionaires; 
doubling the cost of insurance on the exchange, on average, to give tax 
breaks to billionaires; attacking Social Security, which in combination 
with the changes to the exchange will put 15 million people out of 
insurance. That is a lot of pain.
  And we know just how damaging it is when people go out without 
insurance because we have been there before. We know they don't go to 
the doctor when they get sick. They don't go to the doctor until they 
get really sick, and then they go to the emergency room. And by then, a 
modest illness can become a major illness. A small tumor can become a 
life-threatening tumor or a tumor that may be an untreatable, 
metastasized cancer that is a death sentence.
  And then we have the fact that without insurance, they can't pay the 
bill. So there is less revenue for the clinic and less revenue for the 
hospital. And so now, the clinic and the hospital are going to have to 
cut back their programs, which affects the availability of healthcare 
for everyone in the community. Maybe it is the maternity ward that goes 
because those are very expensive. And that means that instead of going 
to the hospital in your town in rural Oregon, maybe you have to drive 
70 miles to get to another hospital.
  Do you want to do that if your baby is coming in January or February, 
and you might be in the middle of icy roads or snow drifts? No, I don't 
think so.
  Do you want to have to drive 70 miles to get your prenatal exams and 
your prenatal classes that teach it a little bit about what to be 
prepared for? No.
  That is a real loss of quality healthcare to lose programs out of 
clinics and lose programs out of hospitals.
  The invitation is open to fix this. We have laid down a bill, a 
continuing resolution, that fixes it. I invite my colleagues to come 
and join us and vote for the bill or at least have your leadership come 
and sit down and negotiate over this bill.
  (Mr. TUBERVILLE assumed the Chair.)
  Maybe you have insights. Maybe we can find adjustments and do the 
right thing for America and fix this healthcare mess. I don't think 
that it is good policy to have created this mess. I certainly don't 
think it is good politics to have created this mess. So we will help 
you out of that hole. Let's fix this for the American people. Let's do 
the best and what is right for the American people.
  Certainly, one of the groups that will be very happy for us to 
address this is made up of businesses, the small businesses on Main 
Street. When those small businesses come in and say, ``Main Street is 
now Pain Street because of the tariffs and because of the attack on 
healthcare,'' you have got a whole lot of stalwart community members 
who are speaking truth to power. They are coming to us and saying: Here 
is the situation. Here is what I will have to pay. Here is how it is so 
much more.
  One of the entrepreneurs yesterday, a businessowner, said that he had 
four employees, I believe, whom he talked to--at least three of them--
and they all basically said they weren't going to buy insurance, not at 
this double the rate. They were going to take the risk, the gamble, 
that they would not get sick. Maybe they will be lucky. Like any other 
gamble, maybe the dice will roll in their favor. Maybe, next year, they 
will buy insurance, and maybe that will be the year that they need 
healthcare, and they will have insurance to pay for it.
  But we know that, when there is a whole group of folks who do not 
have insurance, a bunch of them are going to get sick. Then they are 
going to be really sick by the time they go to the doctor. Then they 
are going to be getting treated in the places with the most expensive 
care. Then they are not going to be able to pay the bills, so the 
revenues will suffer. Then, there we are, back in the situation where 
the clinics and hospitals are cutting their programs, which is 
affecting the availability of good healthcare everywhere in the 
community.
  I think those are the bulk points that my colleague asked questions 
about from Minnesota, so I am going to return now to reading this 
urgent message from recent Department of Justice alumni who are 
decrying the attacks on the Justice Department. Since it has been a 
while since I actually was in the middle of reading this letter, I 
think I will start from the top again in order to make it coherent.

       We are 292 former career employees who proudly served our 
     country at the Department of Justice. From prosecutors, 
     special agents, and intelligence analysts to immigration 
     judges, grant managers, civil rights attorneys and more, we 
     all carried out our duties faithfully, regardless of who 
     occupied the White House. Until we no longer could.
       Each of us left the Department, either voluntarily or 
     involuntarily, because of actions taken by this 
     administration.
       Our fidelity to the Constitution and our dedication to our 
     country did not end when our jobs did. Now that we've left 
     the Department, we believe it's our duty to sound the alarm 
     about this administration's degradation of the [Department of 
     Justice's] vital work, and its assault on the public servants 
     who do it.
       It is incumbent on all of us to fight for the Justice 
     Department before it's too late.

  Just as I have come to the floor after ringing the alarm bells of 
authoritarian control taking over America, here are these employees 
from the Department of Justice who, in this letter, are saying they are 
ringing the alarm bells before it is too late. Let's find out what they 
have to say.
  The next paragraph goes:

       DOJ's mission is to ``uphold the rule of law, to keep our 
     country safe, and to protect civil rights.'' It's failing on 
     all three fronts:
       The Justice Department cannot uphold the rule of law when 
     it carries out the President's retribution campaign and 
     protects his allies; violates court orders and evades due 
     process requirements; directs attorneys to violate their 
     ethical responsibilities; and fires its employees without 
     notice or cause in violation of civil service laws.
       It also cannot keep our country safe when it ousts FBI 
     employees, prosecutors, national security experts, and ATF 
     officials; shutters offices that prevent community violence 
     and dismantle[s] drug trafficking operations; purges the 
     attorneys who enforce laws that protect the environment; and 
     shifts highly trained special agents away from 
     counterintelligence and counterterrorism.

  Oh, I see. Thank you for the note.
  I see that my colleague from New Jersey is on the floor, and I would 
welcome a question if he has one.
  Mr. BOOKER. I appreciate it. I appreciate my colleague pausing for a 
question.
  I just want to first say, as I present my question to him, how 
grateful I am for his stamina and for his strength but, more 
importantly, for his insightful truths that he has been telling now for 
well over 14 hours.
  In many ways, we see a tradition in this body of being a deliberative 
body, but it seems now, more and more, that deliberation is giving way 
to what the Founders never imagined, which is that of simply conceding 
to anything that the President of the United States wants. We were born 
to check and balance the Presidency. We are the article I branch of 
government.
  As my colleague rings the alarm bell, it is clear to me that the 
alarm bell he is ringing is not a partisan alarm bell; it is not left 
or right. It is right or wrong. It is about asserting the article I 
branch of the Constitution's strength, its purpose, its constitutional 
intent. That is to provide oversight. That is to provide advice and 
consent. That is to provide the checks and balance that we need.
  For hours now, what I have been seeing is that my colleague Jeff 
Merkley has, time and time again, been laying plain facts that would 
not play no matter what party a person is from. The President is 
encroaching again and again and again on the constitutional 
prerogatives of the article I branch of government, and the result of 
this is that people are hurting.

  I really want to get my colleague's response to this. The fact is, 
right now, you have a President not going through Congress, not working 
with Congress but undermining congressional intent by gutting and 
cutting programs; by gutting and cutting Agencies; by gutting and 
cutting bipartisan-approved resources for our States in ways that 
threaten and undermine the well-being of Americans.
  We see him approve a tariff policy, not one that has gone through 
this

[[Page S7650]]

body--in fact, I would say not one that people in this body would even 
agree on that is hurting American farmers, that is driving them to 
their knees. They want trade, not aid. As a result of that tariff 
policy, it is not only hurting the bedrock people who put food on the 
table for Americans and people throughout this world, but it is hurting 
consumers by driving up grocery prices.
  What my colleague continues to point out is how these violations of 
our constitutional norms and traditions--the insult and injury done to 
our Constitution--have real-life impacts on the lives of Americans. It 
is making us poorer, and it is making us sicker in our lack of access 
to healthcare. We are seeing a time now when, if we do not ring the 
alarm bells, more and more Americans will be hurt by a President who is 
acting more like an authoritarian leader than a democratically elected 
Executive in the article II branch.
  This is not a left or a right moment. It is a right or a wrong 
moment. This is a moral moment in America.
  I love what Martin Luther King said. He said: The problem today is 
not the vitriolic words and violent actions of the bad people. It is 
the appalling silence and inaction of the good people.
  This is the time that my colleague, in doing this extraordinary step 
here for more than 14 hours--all through the night--is standing up and 
saying: Look, democracy has never been a spectator sport. If you love 
this country--if you love with deep devotion the ideals of patriotism 
more than a party--now is the time for all good people to stand up and 
call it out.
  So I want to know this from my colleague: With the urgency that we 
have in this moment with Americans seeing their energy costs go up; 
with Americans seeing their grocery costs going up; with Americans now 
seeing the reality of their healthcare costs going up by thousands and 
thousands of dollars for marginalized people; for folks who are 
struggling to provide for their children; for children with 
disabilities struggling to get the resources they need; with parents 
not knowing how they are going to meet the rent and pay for medical 
expenses or how they are going to be able to pay for the basic needs of 
their families, this is a time that if you believe in the cherished 
principles of our Nation, from patriotism to devotion to our national 
ideals, if you believe in the ideals of our Nation of love thy 
neighbor, and if you believe that we are one nation under God, this 
must be the time when more people stand up and speak out because the 
only thing necessary--the only thing necessary--for the triumph of 
tyranny is for a free people to remain silent.
  So I ask my colleague right now because there are people saying: What 
does it matter that a Senator is standing up? I ask my colleague right 
now to maybe say directly to the American people why you are taking 
this courageous stand tonight and what you hope they will take away 
because it is not about you or me; it is not about the 100 people here. 
We have seen this President back down before when the American people, 
in a chorus of conviction, stand up and say: No, no more.
  As Frederick Douglass said, the limits of tyranny are prescribed by 
the people who face the oppression.
  I ask my colleague: What is the message that you are trying to send 
with this courageous stand, with this incredible endurance, with this 
strong speech you are giving today?
  Mr. MERKLEY. To my colleague from New Jersey, the message that is 
most important is that the tyranny has already arrived. It is not down 
the street. It is not around the corner. It will not be encountered in 
the path tomorrow. It is here at this very moment. That tyranny comes 
in two forms. It is so important to our country.
  The first is the attack on freedom. Freedom is secured by due 
process. So, when an authoritarian President runs over due process, he 
threatens freedom for all of us. When an authoritarian President says, 
``I will dictate through research grant control what universities 
teach,'' he is stealing the academic freedom of our independent 
universities and really gutting the vision--the vision. People go to 
universities to explore ideas and to learn not to receive propaganda 
written by a government. If you want that version of the world, that is 
not freedom; that is found in tyrannical governments. That is found in 
China, not here at our universities in the United States of America.
  When he proceeds to say we are going to control law firms by suing 
them and taking away their security clearances and extorting them to 
put $1 billion of free law into causes the President wants, that is a 
form of tyranny against the free enterprise of law firms to have the 
clients they want and serve the people they want.
  I read an article sometime in the middle of the night that was about 
the profound impact on nonprofits that are out of favor with the 
President; therefore, they are not getting the legal help that they had 
in the past, and it affects their largely impoverished clients.
  So there is damage that ripples through the universe from these 
attacks on freedom, and now is the moment when we have seen the 
fundamental separation of powers disappear.
  Now, I thought of these robust branches of government--the executive, 
the Congress, the judiciary--each valiantly defending their role in 
order to preserve the checks and balances of this beautiful document we 
call our ``We the people'' Constitution.
  But what happens if the Congress is controlled by a party that says: 
Our goal is to do what the President tells us. Suddenly that check and 
balance of the President is gone.
  What if the Supreme Court says: We want to, regardless of what is 
written in the Constitution, hand more power to the President?
  They say: Do you know what? We will make the President above the 
law--which they did in a law case last year.
  Suddenly, you have the three elements that create tyranny in place of 
freedom or authoritarianism in place of a Republic. Those are a 
rubberstamp Congress, a deferential Court, and an aggressive 
authoritarian personality with a good plan. And he came in with a good 
plan called Project 2025, and the chief engineer on that Trumpian 
tyranny train is Russell Vought at OMB.
  So every essential element of the authoritarian takeover of the 
United States is here right now.
  Now, you mentioned a reverberation about how the President's policies 
are making people sicker and poorer. Here is the connection: When you 
have an authoritarian government, it basically operates to the power of 
the billionaires. So we saw it at the inauguration. We saw the 
billionaires standing behind the President. We saw Elon Musk standing 
behind the President. We saw Jeff Bezos standing behind the President. 
We saw Mark Zuckerberg standing behind the President. And when you do 
that, you are OK pursuing legislation that hurts families, while 
helping billionaires. That is the theme of what we have seen.
  Here is a picture of the billionaires lined up behind the President.
  We call sometimes the bill--his major policy bill--the ``Big Ugly 
Betrayal'' because he campaigned on helping ordinary people, but then 
on Inauguration Day, there are no ordinary people behind him. There are 
no champions for healthcare, no champions for housing, no champions for 
education, no champions for good-paying jobs and investment in 
infrastructure. No, those who are already at the very top of the money 
pyramid in the United States of America are there.
  So now you have the main bill, and the main bill, what does it do? 
Well, it savages healthcare to pay for tax breaks for billionaires. It 
savages child nutrition to pay for tax breaks for billionaires. So the 
authoritarian takeover of our government is also linked to this assault 
on the families.
  As you said, groceries are going up. The President is employing 
tariffs that drive up the cost of groceries. If he was looking to help 
families, he wouldn't choose to do tariffs that drive up the cost of 
groceries.
  In fact, the President doesn't even have authority under the law to 
do tariffs, to begin with, which he just took it because that is what 
authoritarians do until the courts stop him. And the courts, moving 
slowly, have not acted.
  You mentioned healthcare costs going up. Well, I don't know about 
what the new costs are in your State of New Jersey. In Oregon, the 
projection was a 68-percent increase in costs on

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the exchange. But nationwide, it is 114 percent on average, meaning, in 
Oregon, as much as we are shocked by 68 percent inflation in healthcare 
policies, well, nationally, it is more than doubling. So think of all 
the people who will be unable to acquire insurance.
  That is just a piece of the ``Big Ugly Betrayal Bill'' because then 
you get into the fact that they gutted Medicaid, the Oregon Health 
Plan. Seventy percent of the children in rural Oregon are on the Oregon 
Health Plan. Think of the devastation when 235,000 Oregonians are 
projected to lose healthcare. And what happens when they get sick and 
they don't go to the hospital because they don't have insurance? So 
then they get sicker. And when they do go to the hospitals, it is the 
emergency room, and maybe the modest health problem has become a major 
health problem. Maybe the diabetes that is easily controlled has become 
a foot amputation or an eye problem, an eyesight problem. Maybe the 
cancer has grown or spread around the body.
  So not only is an illness more expensive to treat, but the odds of 
recovery are worse, and it is being treated in the most expensive part 
of a hospital, the emergency room. And then because of no insurance to 
pay for it, the hospital or clinic gets less revenues, and then they 
have to shut down programs or shut down completely, and then we have 
less healthcare for everyone in the community.
  Then you mentioned utilities. I was just fielding a question from our 
colleague from Minnesota. She said: What about that $8 billion attack 
on energy projects in blue States--energy projects that would produce 
renewable energy that, often, at utility scale, is 2 cents per kilowatt 
hour?
  My bill in Oregon is fairly cheap compared to the Nation. I think it 
is 12 to 14 cents per kilowatt hour. I am guessing yours is a lot 
higher than that. So if that utility can buy energy at 2 cents per 
kilowatt hour, your bill is going to go down. But I am pretty sure your 
bill is going up because of the policies of this administration.
  If this administration was worried about families, they wouldn't have 
passed the ``Big Ugly Betrayal,'' which does so much damage to families 
in order to fund tax breaks for billionaires. They wouldn't be using 
tariffs in this manner, wouldn't be cutting low-cost utility projects 
that will lower the cost of energy.
  And, thus, here we are, 10 months of making Americans sicker and 
poorer.
  Mr. BOOKER. And of my colleague I would ask another question because 
you are making such a great point, and I really hope America hears 
this--that these policies, these constitutional principles that we are 
defending here, are not just arcane, idealistic things; they have a 
direct impact on our Nation.
  My colleague is making it plain. This is what should be animating 
everybody; it is that when you attack the healthcare of millions of 
Americans, it doesn't mean you are curing disease, and they are not 
going to have a demand for healthcare. The demand is still going to be 
there. And if they are not getting their healthcare reimbursed, if they 
are not getting preventive care, if they are not getting regular 
checkups, they are going to put more demand on our hospitals, which are 
going to make our hospitals have longer wait times in the emergency 
rooms, that are going to have our hospitals have less reimbursed care, 
and our hospitals are going to strain and buckle under that, thus, 
driving up the costs for everyone. You make it plain, and people should 
hear this.
  When the President lies to the American people and says he is about 
all-of-the-above energy costs, he is not. He is about advantaging 
certain energy over other energy, and it is actually the lower 
cost energy that he is attacking. Those projects are actually going to 
lower people's bills.

  So here he is raising the healthcare costs for everyone, hurting the 
hospitals that we all rely on, and driving up energy costs for everyone 
and giving an advantage to our competitors, like the Chinese, who are 
racing to energy projects in the renewable energy space.
  But it is even more than that, as my colleague knows. When you have 
boneheaded attacks on our Constitution, as opposed to going through 
Congress, where there is deliberation and debate, you are actually 
raising costs in other ways too.
  As my colleagues knows, Americans, right now, are seeing investments 
that we make that return for the taxpayer significant returns in 
science and research. We are a nation that has exploited industries, 
where the rest of the world is trying to catch up to us. We are the 
Nation that invented so many great things by funding research, basic 
research and technology.
  So when you attack universities, where they are now reporting less 
postdoc programs, less Ph.D. programs, less research going on in 
America, you are ceding the pathway to human endeavor. You are closing 
it off.
  As my colleague was saying, with attacks on universities, making them 
come and bend a knee, those universities are saying: No, I will not bow 
to you. You are not my King.
  And then that King--want-to-be King--cuts funding to our greatest 
research institutions--not in America but the greatest research 
institutions on the planet Earth, which have spawned new innovations 
from quantum computing to fission and fusion, to robotics, to medical 
sciences. When you cut off the resources to those things, you are 
starving the goose that has been laying the golden egg for human 
endeavor, for industries, and more.
  It has a cost when a President goes rogue and does what he wants to 
do. It has a cost not just to our liberty, when you make universities, 
when you make businesses, when you make law firms bow before you or be 
punished by you.
  It has a cost to our liberty, but it also has--as you were saying so 
plainly what most Americans are saying over and over again--it has a 
cost financially to American families who are right now struggling.
  As you have said, time and time again, over these last dozen-plus 
hours, Americans are hurting. Americans are afraid. Americans are 
worried that they are going to get a diagnosis from a doctor that is 
going to drive them to bankruptcy.
  Americans don't know how they can take care of a sick child and pay 
the rent, and this is directly being attacked by a President who is 
doing things that are driving up their energy costs, that are driving 
up their medical costs, that are driving up their grocery costs, and 
who is failing to make the investments that keep America ahead of the 
competition we are seeing in places like China.
  It is boneheaded. It is financially imprudent. It is hurting America, 
as well as our constitutional framework.
  The genius of our Founders in this great experiment that is now 250 
years old, which has put us at the top of all of humanity and 
innovation and human success, is now being jeopardized, after 250 
years, by a President who is claiming authorities that the Constitution 
and our Framers never intended to be in the executive.
  So God bless America. My colleague from Oregon is giving a master's 
class today--a master's class now for 14-plus hours, closing in on 15; 
a master's class in helping people understand not just constitutional 
principles but how all of us are invested in this Constitution, how all 
of us are invested in making sure that nobody steps outside of those 
constitutional authorities because when it does, we have seen what has 
happened when McCarthyism arose; we have seen what has happened when 
demagoguery trumps common sense, common cause, common purposes, and a 
shared devotion to that flag.
  So I ask my colleague right now, we haven't even had a year of this 
President, and we have watched things happen where this body has not 
even called an oversight hearing when our very national security was in 
jeopardy.
  When you have Americans at the highest level of our Defense 
Department using a commercial app with reporters on it to release 
classified information, we didn't hold one oversight hearing.
  When we took the extrajudicial step to blow up speed boats, there has 
been no oversight into that claimed attack on people who were allegedly 
smuggling drugs.
  We are constantly not doing our job, which is not a partisan one. It 
is to hold this President in check, that no one operates without 
accountability and without transparency because power is corrupting.

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  When you let someone do what they want to do, when they want to do 
it, without a check or a balance, it is corrupting. We know that 
because we have the most corrupt President, dollar for dollar of any 
President we have ever seen, through his crypto schemes, from him 
exchanging his authorities for compensation that makes him a richer 
man.
  Unchecked power leads to corruption. Our Founders knew it and 
designed this system thusly.
  So I ask my colleague now, that sense of urgency of a President who 
has been in office nearly 10 months, if my colleagues in this body do 
not start standing up and doing their jobs, holding hearings on his 
tariff policies, holding hearings on his agricultural policy, holding 
hearings on his healthcare policies--and I say that generously because 
they are not policies; they are not thoughtful; they don't reflect the 
wisdom on both sides of the aisle; they are hurting people. If we 
continue to let this President proceed unchecked, if we continue to let 
him flaunt the rules of our Constitution, if we continue with open eyes 
to let him do things that he is doing right now by ripping apart the 
White House, not going through any of the process whatsoever that is 
literally contrary to the laws of the people's House--not Donald 
Trump's House, the people's House--if we continue to let him go in this 
way without checks or balances, I ask my colleague, what are the 
consequences that you fear might happen in the next 10 months with this 
President, who wants to be an autocrat and is in the White House?
  Mr. MERKLEY. The consequences of the failure of oversight are 
enormous. This is not only checks and balances people often talk about. 
We talked about Congress having a responsibility to define which 
programs will be funded and how much and under what rules they will 
operate on, and the President has to execute those programs--therefore, 
separation of powers.
  By holding on to that responsibility, we serve as a check on the 
effort for an authoritarian to be the force that decides which programs 
are funded and how much they are funded at and how many rules or what 
the rules would be they operate under.
  We are seeing that transfer of power right now from the Congress to 
the President, because the President is deeply engaged in essentially 
the equivalent of a line-item veto by slow-walking funds, by freezing 
funds, by impounding funds, by slowly getting to the end of the year 
and then by filing a rescission request at the end of the year--
watching them magically evaporate when the last day of the fiscal year 
comes--this fancy term called a pocket rescission. Absolutely all of 
these are part of a line-item veto strategy and the President just 
implementing the programs willy-nilly, the way he wants, as opposed to 
following instructions from Congress.
  So in 9 months, we have seen not just an attack on the freedoms, we 
have seen not just an attack on the cost of living through utilities 
and through food and through healthcare going up and up and up, but we 
have also seen this fundamental collapse of oversight that you pointed 
to.
  If this much damage to the checks and balances can be done from 
January to October, if this much damage is being done to costs that 
Americans experience from January to October, and if this much damage 
can be done to American freedoms from January to October, then that 
next 10 months that is amplified because the administration is in full 
gear now.
  They are not diverting attention trying to get a Secretary of Defense 
confirmed. They are not diverting attention trying to get the head of 
the FBI confirmed--no. They are in full gear now with this set of 
instructions that flow from this plan, Project 2025, developed by our 
current Director of OMB, Russell Vought. And he is one capable 
individual who has a belief in the supremacy of the executive branch--
he calls it a unitary executive--and that the President should make the 
decisions about what is funded and how it is funded, that the President 
should make the decisions about the rules for those programs.
  That means the collective knowledge of these 100 Senators, bringing 
their diverse life experience, their diverse education, their diverse 
knowledge of different parts of the country--all of that diverse 
experience is tossed out. The diverse experience from our 400-plus 
Members of the House of Representatives is tossed out because, no, it 
is the President and his team saying that these programs with this 
amount of money under these rules. That is what the authoritarian rule 
is.
  One way we can exercise a check on it is through oversight, is by 
holding those hearings to investigate--and doing it in full partnership 
with our Republican colleagues. I mean, that should be a collective 
goal of us all together who believe in the vision of the Constitution, 
of this check and balance.
  Out of that information flows action items. When you oversee and see 
what is going on, then you get together and say: What is going wrong? 
Let's fix it.
  But you can't get to the point of saying ``Let's fix it'' if you have 
your eyes covered up, your hands over your ears, your head in the 
ground, and are saying: I don't want to look at the administration. I 
know a lot of bad shit is going on over there, but, man, that is the 
President of my party, and if I dig into that, he is going to be very 
upset.
  And we have seen how he is personally directing criminal 
investigations into people who have criticized him. There is concern by 
some of our colleagues--rightly so--that if they were the ones to speak 
up and say this is wrong, they will be next on the list, the enemies 
list.
  When you think about the fact that on that enemies list is even our 
own fellow Senator--like, these are people who he was unhappy with 
because they said that the 2020 election wasn't stolen, and so now he 
is going after them. In one case, he lifted the security clearances not 
just for the person who spoke up and said that President Trump is wrong 
about the election being stolen, but he took the security clearance 
from all of his coworkers--so a collective punishment strategy.
  This idea of weaponizing the Department of Justice, this intimidation 
of free speech, that really does affect people in this Chamber as well 
as outside this Chamber for fear of being targeted, and, indeed, one 
way they can be targeted is through their own folks back home.
  So when one of our Senators said ``This Big Beautiful Bill is a train 
wreck for healthcare, and I am not voting for it,'' within hours--
within hours--that colleague had been threatened with a primary and 
announced ``You can't threaten me with a primary because I won't run 
for election.''
  Everyone else looks at that and goes: That is the power that is being 
brought to bear to create a failure for there to be oversight, for 
there to be people speaking up, because I know that across the aisle, 
many people care about the vision of our Constitution and our 
responsibility to stay in that framework for our freedom, for our 
financial success far into the future, for the generations to come. I 
know they care about it, but right now, they are looking at a powerful 
Executive who can bring the world down on them.
  I am hoping somehow we will have a few courageous folks to be at the 
front of the line and say: I will take the hit. I will stand up and say 
what everyone else is saying privately--that this is outrageous--an 
outrageous attack on freedom, an outrageous attack on the structure of 
our Constitution, an outrageous increase in the costs for ordinary 
families; that the vision of ``families lose and billionaires win'' is 
wrong for the people that I represent in my home State, regardless of 
it being blue or red; that the idea that healthcare is being slashed 
for tax breaks for billionaires is wrong, that nutrition programs are 
being cut for tax breaks for billionaires is wrong.
  We need our colleagues to join us in this effort so it is not 
partisan--it is bipartisan--and we are standing up for the core 
principles on which our country was founded.
  I thank so much my colleague from New Jersey.
  I see my colleague has arrived, from Illinois.
  Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, through the Chair, I want to thank the 
Senator from Oregon for his leadership in bringing this issue before 
us.
  We have something in common. Both of our States are facing 
militarization from the Federal level of government. Not only in 
Chicago--the President argues that the city is unsafe. I watched

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this last Saturday as 100,000 people gathered for the No Kings rally 
and parade--a peaceful, nonviolent gathering of Americans expressing 
their constitutional feelings and right to express themselves in this 
Republic.

  I know that you are facing the same threat in the State of Oregon, 
and recent court decisions seem to suggest that there is more time in 
the courtroom ahead.
  I would just say to the Senator from Oregon, thank you for leading 
this conversation. There are so many aspects of this Presidency that 
you could address, and I would like you to address, if you will, this 
militarization issue.
  We have carefully crafted in our existing laws prohibition against 
the use of military force for law enforcement. It makes sense on its 
face because these men and women--as good as they are--in the National 
Guard units around our country are not trained primarily in law 
enforcement. Theirs is a much different type of training.
  Secondly, to overcome State and local sources of law enforcement is a 
major constitutional step, and yet this President has initiated it in 
my State of Illinois, in your State of Oregon, and in the State of 
California.
  Would you address this aspect of your comments this morning.
  Mr. MERKLEY. My colleague from Illinois, I so appreciate the 
question, and certainly you feel it very personally when the target of 
the President's militarization or the sending of the military into our 
States is your own State. And you see it with very clear eyes because 
you go and visit and witness, and you understand what is going on.
  I know, in my State, I went down and I saw these three women 
protesting outside of the ICE building. They had a sign; I think it had 
a flower on it. And since that time, what has developed is a 
demonstration of joy and whimsy--joy and whimsy. What I mean by that is 
I mean the protesters understood that Trump was trying to start a fight 
and then a riot and then have that riot be a justification for 
federalizing the National Guard.
  So we have many steps in this process. The first is, he said: I want 
to federalize the Oregon National Guard. And the Oregon attorney 
general appealed it, and the district judge proceeded to say: Wow. The 
administration's description of what is going on is untethered to the 
facts. This is not a rebellion. There is not an invasion. So, no, you 
can't federalize. That is a test in the law.
  A very similar decision, I think, was reached by a district judge in 
Illinois. And then it went to the circuit court. In the circuit court 
in Illinois, my understanding is they backed up the district judge and 
said: Yep. No rebellion. No invasion. You can't federalize.
  Well, in Oregon, the administration took another tack. They said: 
Well, OK. We can't federalize the Oregon troops, but we will send in 
troops from Texas, National Guard troops from Texas and California that 
have already been federalized.
  The district judge in Oregon said: I am sorry. Once you federalize, 
it is not as if you can just travel through the countryside and do 
whatever the hell you want. You have to have a rebellion or you have to 
have an invasion, and you have neither. So, no, you can't come.
  But here is what really worries me about this. When you have an 
authoritarian President, they have a playbook, and that playbook was 
carefully crafted for this President under Project 2025. It involves so 
many pieces of stealing the power of the purse from Congress, 
overriding due process, attacking the power of universities and law 
firms, attacking the ability of the free press, including lawsuits 
against the Wall Street Journal and pressure created against our 
networks on what information they can air.
  An additional part of this playbook is to be able to use the military 
to suppress domestic dissent. And to create the path for that, you want 
court decisions that say it is OK, and you want the military to get 
accustomed to being deployed so when you tell them to go suppress 
domestic dissent, they will do it.
  So here we have the fact that the President was stopped, but there 
are now two more steps coming that I am really worried about. One is 
that, in California, in the Ninth Circuit, a panel of three judges 
said: You know--well, one of them said the district judge was just 
right; there is no rebellion; there is no invasion. But the other two 
said: Well, you know what, even though the district judge used the 
definition of ``rebellion'' that was considered at the time--basically, 
that there has to be a sizable group that is well-organized, that is 
weaponized, seeking to overturn the government--we think maybe you 
should apply a looser definition of ``rebellion'' and then, instead of 
looking at the facts on the ground at the time that the President 
wanted to federalize the troops, look back a few months when there were 
a few more arrests, and maybe that is a justification to say there is 
something like a rebellion. But, most importantly, you should give high 
deference to the President.
  This is what terrifies me because I am afraid that the Supreme Court 
may issue a decision even soon on the shadow docket on the Seventh 
Circuit decision, and they will say: Yeah, it is a rebellion if the 
President says so.
  And that is insane. That opens the door to using the military 
anywhere the President wants, anytime, against our citizens, violating 
the fears of our Founders, who didn't want a standing army to begin 
with because they felt that it threatened freedom, because they knew 
Chief Executives are tempted to use standing armies against their 
people. That is what Kings do, and that is what authoritarians do. So 
they were terrified of having those standing armies.
  And then we had the whole concept developed after the military was 
used in reconstruction that that is enough. Military needs to defend 
the Nation, not be used. So we have the Posse Comitatus law, and the 
Posse Comitatus law says you can't use the military for domestic 
action.
  But there is an exception to it, the Insurgency Act--the Insurgency 
Act. And who knows what is going to happen with the interpretation of 
that act. So I really appreciate your bill--your bill--that says the 
military cannot be used for law enforcement because right now the 
courts could give the greenlight to the President to use troops and 
federalized National Guard in exactly that fashion, and we need to 
close that avenue down and do it fast because we have got an 
authoritarian President bent on being able to use the military against 
the people of the United States.
  Mr. DURBIN. If the Senator from Oregon would yield for another 
question.
  Do you recall, as I do, how many times Candidate Trump and President 
Trump spoke before rallies supporting his cause and railed about the 
murderers, terrorists, rapists, criminally insane, and sexual predators 
who are coming across the border and threatening us?
  And his argument was it was that fear of criminal activity by them 
that warranted this Federal intervention in many States, including our 
own.
  I just wanted to give one example that is timely and tells a story. 
First, let me say that fewer than 30 percent of the people who are 
being detained by ICE--fewer than 30 percent--have any criminal 
conviction whatsoever. These people may be here out of status. For 
example, they came in on a student visa and stayed when they should 
have left, or came in here on a tourist visa and stayed when they 
should have left.
  But to brand these people that are being detained on the streets of 
Chicago, for example, as criminals--violent criminals, as the President 
described them--is totally unfair.
  I tell the story of a church that I visited just a few days ago in 
Chicago--Christ Lutheran Church on Wilson Avenue in the Albany section, 
which is a largely Hispanic section of the city of Chicago.
  The pastor of that church Tom Terrell told me that after his service, 
a few days before, it ended at noon. And as parishioners were leaving--
they walk home in the neighborhood as they do every Sunday--ICE arrived 
in an unmarked truck and stopped this gathering of his parishioners and 
started questioning them and asking them for identification papers. 
This is becoming common in Chicago.
  When others noticed it, they came to their front porches and out 
their front doors and started blowing whistles to let people know that 
ICE was in the neighborhood conducting this. ICE panicked, and as a 
result of it, threw down

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a tear gas canister in front of these people who had just come out of 
church and got in their unmarked vehicle and left.
  This kind of activity is far beyond protecting us from the most 
dangerous criminals who might have come across the border in times 
past. It is intimidation in an effort to have people so afraid that 
they will either not participate in the economy, that they will not be 
going to church, and many of them are afraid to send their kids to 
school.
  Where is this leading and why? I will tell you I think you shared 
what you said, the Senator from Oregon, my feelings that this is not 
the end of it. It is not a temporary thing. It is a long-term 
commitment by the President to militarize neighborhoods, particularly 
those in blue States and cities like Chicago.
  What is the purpose? Not just to spread fear but when the election 
comes, which is another few months away, of course, but when the 
election comes, to discourage people from voting in those 
neighborhoods, if not disqualify them.
  Does that sound like an outlandish idea, the President who will 
refuse to accept the fact that he lost an election? It doesn't to me, 
and it becomes a reality every time I come home.
  This President argues that there are dangers in the streets of 
Chicago. Two weeks ago, the streets were overrun by 53,000 people that 
didn't live in Chicago. It is called the Chicago Marathon, and they had 
53,000 participants. This was a calm, peaceful, quiet, and great and 
happy day in the history of Chicago.
  And for him to characterize this as a criminal city and one that 
needs military occupation is totally unfair, and it doesn't reflect the 
reality. This past Saturday, as I mentioned, over 100,000 gathered 
without violent incident, a reminder that cities like that that are 
being besmirched by the President are still solid places to live--with 
their challenges and problems, of course--but beyond that, it certainly 
doesn't merit the military presence the President is suggesting.
  So I would ask the Senator from Oregon: Do you feel that there is a 
long-term plan to this militarization by the Presidency?
  Mr. MERKLEY. Well, to my colleague from Illinois, the answer is 
absolutely yes. The President, as you mentioned, campaigned on the 
argument that there were violent criminals, and they were going be sent 
home who were here without documentation.
  What we have seen is a wholesale attack based on people's accent and 
the color of their skin. And in fact, if I understood a recent court 
decision, it has given some permission to continue targeting people 
because of their skin color or their accent.
  And the idea that as we go around America--and we are mostly a few 
generations removed from being immigrants--more recent immigrants are 
going to have accents, and we have worked toward a vision of being a 
race-neutral society; that people are now being allowed to be targeted 
by ICE because of their skin color, that just is, to me, a horrific 
embedment of discrimination.
  And I think that the President intends to pursue this aggressively 
for every moment that he possibly can as long as he is in office and 
beyond, to the degree that he can help drive future administrations.

  We saw it through his entire first administration. My first real 
involvement over immigration began when I read a speech by our then-
Attorney General who said what we are going to do is separate the 
children from the parents and send the message that you don't want to 
come to America.
  I said to my team: I am sure I didn't read that correctly. I am sure 
I didn't understand that correctly because no American administration--
not a red administration, not a blue administration--would ever 
deliberately harm children in order to send some political message.
  I remember my team said: Well, there is one way to find out. You can 
go down to the border. And I thought, you know, I have got this weekend 
free so I went down to the border. It is how I became the first Member 
of Congress to go into a warehouse on the border and see the children 
being taken away from their parents.
  I will never forget this wire cage with about eight or nine kids in 
it, lined up by height because they were about to get a meal and had 
been told to line up by height.
  And the youngest was just knee-high to a grasshopper, basically a 
tiny little guy--maybe 4 or 5. And I could see these kids looking 
through the wire screen trying to see if they could see their aunt or 
uncle or father or mother or sister in some other cage in this big 
warehouse.
  And I walked outside and talked to the press about it and was just 
stunned. I think the Nation was stunned. And the President formally 
reversed that policy, a bit of time later, but he never reversed the 
drive to attack people based on their skin color.
  Whom do we see he wants to allow a free pass into the United States? 
Basically, a wealthy White population from South Africa, and they are 
some of the most privileged population in the world. But the President 
says: Those are the folks.
  And remember his comments from his first term. He said he really 
wanted people from those Scandinavian-style countries. So I do feel 
that he wants to pursue this aggressively throughout this 
administration, and we are going to see a lot more terrorized 
immigrants.
  Mr. DURBIN. I thank the Senator from Oregon.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, I see my colleague from Washington State 
is here. I would welcome a question.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, I rise to ask the Senator from Oregon a 
question.
  I appreciate my Northwest colleague being here to bring attention to 
these important issues, and I--so much has transpired in the last few 
weeks, and so I just appreciate the fact that you are trying to bring 
part of the awareness.
  If we made a long list, there would be many, many things here in this 
list of authoritarianism that we do not like, and I appreciate you 
bringing specific attention, although I do find some musings that 
people find a bicycle protest somewhat threatening, which it is just 
not. You know, we are kind of famous for our bicycle events in the 
Northwest, so don't know why somebody finds that threatening when 
authoritarianism is really the threat.
  But I have been so involved with my colleague Senator Grassley in 
making a really important point, and that is the President is abusing 
his power on tariffs. When you think about the actions of proposing 
tariffs, this is exactly why people said, ``We don't want kings to have 
this authority.''
  Why? Because it is such an important constitutional authority given 
to Congress. It is not something that we think that the President of 
the United States should have to usher in economic impact in this 
dramatic way.
  And the IEEPA tariffs, the lower courts have already said, ``Yes, we 
don't think that he has this authority.'' He has been abusing this 
authority. Now, he is going to try to say there are other emergency 
powers, and hopefully, the courts will continue to do their job.
  But when I think about all of the things he has done, and lots of 
them are big issues, to me, this one--to basically wield an economic 
impact on the cost of affordability for Americans, for housing, for 
food, for transportation cost, a whole myriad of things--when it is 
only the authority of Congress to do this.
  I think of how big this economic stick is that he is wielding. So all 
we have said here, collectively, a bipartisan group of Senators, is 
that you should--if you think these things are so great, you should 
come to the Congress. But the constitutional authority is that only 
Congress has this authority.
  So I think it is a very dangerous precedent. I think, in a global 
economy with a lot of economic activity to be had, I don't think it is 
a good idea to have somebody in the office of the Presidency acting as 
if these tariff policies are their domain.
  And clearly, the cost of this on goods and services--particularly 
those that are really, really hurting us, like I said, affordable 
housing and things of that nature--are really the impacts. And I don't 
know to what degree--sorry to say I didn't stay up with you and watch 
all night, so I don't know what degree you covered tariffs. But I don't 
know what you think about this

[[Page S7655]]

particular point in this debate of yours about the authoritarian power 
and how much its being abused on tariffs.
  Mr. MERKLEY. I so appreciate the question from my colleague from 
Washington State, and I am heartened to hear of your work across the 
aisle with Senator Grassley to try to address this question of tariffs.
  Now, the very first bill ever considered by the U.S. Senate was a 
tariff bill. So you can imagine our Thirteen Colonies, the 26 Senators, 
gathered in a fairly small space, and going: No, no. I want the tariff 
on a jug of molasses to be this and on sugar to be that and so on and 
so forth.
  Over the course of 3 weeks, they reached an agreement on a couple 
hundred products. And the one person who kept notes through this whole 
thing, a daily diary, got frustrated by it: Oh, well, now we are going 
back to the same product we considered 3 weeks earlier. In 3 weeks, 
they considered a lot.
  But the point is, it was Congress that was deciding these tariffs. 
This wasn't an inherent power to the President, and there is no law 
that it has delegated power to the President to do tariffs. Tariffs are 
done by law. That means they are a bill that occurs here, and it is a 
bill that becomes the actual tariff when it is signed by a President.
  But the President--we have never delegated that power, and I am not 
even sure, if we tried to, if the Court would say you could delegate it 
because the Court sometimes says: You have responsibilities as Congress 
that you can't delegate it. You cannot delegate the design of how much 
money goes to certain programs and whether or not they can be canceled. 
You cannot delegate that.
  And so here we are with this enormously destructive tariff policy. 
Now, count me in if there is a slight tariff on goods that are low-
wage, low-environmental, low labor standards countries--count me in to 
encourage a little more of the factories to be in the United States.
  But for people to make investment decisions to put those factories in 
the United States, you have to have a stable tariff regime. You can't 
have the tariffs up one side and down the next. And so, no companies 
are making decisions about building factories right now. They may say: 
Well, for a few months because there is this big whopping tariff on 
Vietnam, maybe we should build a factory here, but wait, that tariff 
may change. And, oh, it did change on Vietnam.
  (Mr. MULLIN assumed the Chair.)
  And think about the chaos that comes in our foreign policy, because 
here we have wronged a country that we are trying to induce to be a 
significant manufacturing partner with us rather than products coming 
from China and to be a force in the region to counterbalance China 
somewhat, and we treat them in an arbitrary and capricious way. Well, 
there goes years and years and years--decades, really--of rebuilding a 
relationship with them.
  And with Brazil, the President just says: I don't like the fact that 
their strong-arm former President is being put in prison for trying to 
overthrow their democracy.
  Really? OK. But you are going to put a tariff on them, a 50-percent 
tariff. Or last week, it was going to be a 100-percent tariff on China 
after China said they were going to control their minerals. It is 
chaos.
  What I heard from small businesses yesterday--they said: We have two 
problems that are turning Main Street into ``Pain Street.'' The first 
is the tariffs. They are affecting either the inputs for our products 
or how we sell our products or just the uncertainty that is causing 
people to buy less, and all of that is a problem.
  They said the second problem is that most of them buy their insurance 
on the exchange, and because of the not so beautiful--what I like to 
call the big, ugly betrayal of a bill, the average cost of that is 
going to double costs in America.
  This one owner said--I think I understood him to say he had four 
employees, and he talked to three of them. They each said: I am not 
going to buy insurance. I looked it up on the exchange. The price has 
doubled or something like that. I am not doing it. I am going to take 
the risk.
  We know where that leads. That leads to people not going to the 
doctor when they need to go. It is small problems leading to big 
problems. It leads to big problems being treated in the emergency 
room--the most expensive place.
  So I do think the tariffs are absolutely--we need to reclaim that 
power here in Congress and the rationality and the theory behind it--a 
theory that will help make America more prosperous but not this crazy, 
fluctuating, up-and-down that leaves everybody struggling to know what 
plant should they grow in their field, what product should they produce 
in their factory, should they produce more, should they warehouse them, 
or should they shut down. I mean, no one knows.
  Ms. CANTWELL. Mr. President, if I could--the Senator from Oregon, if 
he had time for another question on this point.
  You know that the Pacific Northwest has a big export economy. We have 
many ports. People may not know, but we probably export a significant 
amount of soybeans. And I don't know if the Senator is aware that this 
is a crisis now. These growers, particularly in the Midwest, are on 
their heels over this.
  This is having huge economic impact, and it is a constitutional 
authority by Congress. And instead of our colleagues dealing with this 
authority and dealing with the fact that their own constituents are 
getting run over, they are still ignoring the fact that the President 
is abusing these powers.
  So I don't know how much you are aware of this, but it is these kinds 
of activities that lose you shelf space, go to some other country, and 
then when you try to get it back, the country is already in business 
with somebody else. So this is affecting our growers across the United 
States. It is time for our colleagues to admit that this is an abuse of 
power and help us reign it back in.
  And so, I so appreciate your efforts here to talk about 
authoritarianism, and I appreciate your comments on tariffs 
specifically, but this is--one side of it is the consumer impact, and 
the other side of it is the economic impact to growers who wonder why 
they send people here to vote and take care of their interests if you 
are going to have somebody at the White House who is just going to run 
over them. And I hope that we can continue to emphasize this.
  And of course, obviously, on the healthcare costs, we put out a 
report last--well, now, I think 4 weeks ago--about the high cost of 
healthcare being implemented because of the lack of the ACA tax 
credits.
  But, oh, by the way, guess what was in that report? That tariffs were 
also having an impact on the cost of healthcare. So it is impacting us 
on healthcare, the very underlying issue of why we are here and trying 
to get some relief for the American consumer, as now they start to see 
these bills and see the choices that they are going to have, but 
tariffs are affecting our economy in a very significant way, and it is 
time for our colleagues to say this is the authority.
  They have a chance to sign on to our bill. They certainly could sign 
on. There are seven Democrats, seven Republicans. They certainly could 
sign on and say that they support that. I don't see anybody on the 
other side of them making a case that the President has this 
constitutional authority; it is more that they are just silent, and 
America needs to know that our economy is being hurt by tariffs, and it 
is an abuse of power by the White House.
  So thank you.
  Mr. MERKLEY. I appreciate my colleague's question regarding 
particularly the soybeans. My understanding is that China was a major 
consumer of soybeans, and they have bought exactly zero beans--massive, 
massive amounts in the past. But now when you go from huge tonnage, 
ships and ships full of soybeans, and then you drop down to zero, wow--
the overproduction of soybeans. The price drops on them. What do I do? 
How do I store them? They are going to go bad. Where else in the world 
can I find a market? Can I get China back when all this fuss ends?
  Meanwhile, Brazil is stepping up in the soybean world to provide that 
supply and will. As it is so often, once you lose that relationship and 
that trust and the personal connections, it is very hard to get those 
customers back.
  So I understand the distress for our farmers. They are just one 
example of

[[Page S7656]]

the capricious tariffs--the massive fluctuations are so devastating.
  You mentioned in your question that there is also the issue of how 
tariffs can affect healthcare, and I have heard that tariffs are being 
placed on a lot of the ingredients that come in, including from China, 
to make our medicines, and therefore that drives up the cost of drugs 
as a factor. That is at least one connection. I suspect there are 
others--maybe the cost of wheelchairs or medical devices; I am not 
sure.
  Washington is an extraordinary exporting State on the coast of the 
Pacific Rim, as is Oregon. We are about the same size. We have kind of 
a friendly competitive relationship between our two States. But we have 
the same issues. It means that we often work together to try to solve 
those issues for our region of the country. And I thank you so much for 
your leadership.

  I see my colleague from Minnesota is on the floor, and I would 
welcome a question, if she has one.
  Ms. SMITH. If the Senator from Oregon would yield for a question, I 
would appreciate that. I have a specific question, but I would like to 
just actually follow up on the interesting conversation you were having 
with Senator Cantwell from Washington about soybeans, because I 
represent Minnesota, a very large soybean State, and I was just home in 
Minnesota last weekend. I heard a lot about what is happening with 
soybeans.
  You are exactly right, Senator Merkley. We are having a bumper crop 
of soybeans. The beans are pretty much out of the field, and Minnesota 
farmers and producers are trying to figure out what to do with those 
beans.
  Because of Trump's tariffs, the Chinese market for soybeans has been 
decimated. Trump tariffs have completely ruined that market. And as I 
think you said, Senator Merkley, these export markets for American 
agricultural products--it is not like an on-off switch; it is not like 
a pipe that you just open or close. These relationships in these export 
markets are incredibly important. So what is happening here is that 
American and Minnesota farmers are looking at this and they are seeing: 
OK, Trump tariffs have made U.S. soybeans basically noncompetitive, and 
so China, our biggest export market, is turning to South America--in 
particular, turning to Argentina.
  American soybean producers are literally wondering how they are going 
to pay the bills when their operating loans are coming due right now, 
and they are looking at the loans they are going to need to take out, 
the working capital loans they are going to need to take out this 
winter in order to buy fertilizer and seed and all they need to get 
crops in the ground for springtime.
  It is so offensive to them that at the same time that they have lost 
this market in Argentina, the President, President Trump, is sending 
billions of dollars to Argentina.
  So I think I have seen, Senator Merkley, that the amount of money 
that the President is sending to Argentina to bail out the Argentinian 
debt, to resolve this capital crisis in Argentina--there is one group 
that we know for sure is going to benefit from this bailout, and these 
are the friends of Donald Trump in the United States of America--the 
big fund managers, the big private equity firms that made huge 
investments in Argentinian debt, hoping that it was going to go up, and 
sure enough, it will because of what the current President is doing.
  So helping big Wall Street fund managers, hurting American farmers--
that is the story of what is happening with Donald Trump and his 
tariffs right now.
  Senator Merkley, I was listening last night to what you were talking 
about, and you gave a really powerful quote or a paraphrase, perhaps, 
from the book ``How Democracies Die,'' and one of the things that you 
highlighted, I want to just quote here.
  You said there has to be a fierce reaction in the year that the 
authoritarian starts to dismantle the Constitution.
  Well, this is the year. And I was reflecting on this as I was 
thinking about what happened all across the country and what happened 
in my home State of Minnesota and I am sure in Oregon as well with 
these huge demonstrations that we saw all over the country. I am going 
to ask you to reflect a little bit more on what you said last night and 
what we have seen here with this reaction to the authoritarian 
activities of the President.
  But I wanted to just share that what I saw in Minnesota was really 
remarkable. By all accounts, nearly, you know, maybe up to 100,000 
people turned out just in Minneapolis, which is, you know, the biggest 
city in my State. Minneapolis and Saint Paul are roughly 2.5 million 
people all in. And we had 80 of these events all over the State.
  What I saw--and I am wondering what you saw in the demonstrations in 
Oregon--what I saw was incredibly patriotic people showing up--people 
who love their country and want to keep it, people who understand that 
in this country, we swear allegiance not to a King but to our 
democratic values and to our Constitution. It was remarkable to me to 
see that love of country and that patriotism.
  I also saw--and I would love to hear your response to my question and 
comments--I also saw a lot of people turn out at these big events who 
don't typically come to these, don't come to political demonstrations. 
It is just not their thing. But they felt compelled to do this, maybe 
because of what you were talking about, Senator Merkley, earlier, which 
is they understand there needs to be a fierce reaction in the year that 
an authoritarian starts to dismantle the Constitution, and they were 
there to demonstrate their allegiance to our Constitution.
  So maybe I will pause there, Senator Merkley, and I would love to 
hear your thoughts on this.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Well, I so appreciate the question from my colleague 
from Minnesota, and the commentary I was giving is more my distillment, 
my impression of the information in this book rather than a straight-
out quote from it. But essentially, in the past, the death of democracy 
came at the hands of men with guns. Now it is coming through people who 
get elected, and after they get elected, they work to erase the 
separation of powers. They try to get a legislature that will be more 
of a rubberstamp and say: We will do what you say.
  Well, suddenly the whole vision of Congress laying out the programs, 
an amount to be spent, and the policies is supplanted by Congress just 
saying: Well, what do you want us to do? OK, we will do that.
  Then the Supreme Court hands over more power, and we have seen that 
happen here in the United States as well--certainly with the Trump v. 
United States, where the Supreme Court found invisible ink in our 
Constitution. I am pretty sure neither of us can go through here and 
find anywhere in article I and certainly not in article II, which 
addresses the Executive, that there is any sign that they want the 
President to be considered above the law, and yet that is what the 
Court said.
  So to the broader question of how--once you are in this authoritarian 
takeover, what are your odds of stopping?
  And, in general, the authoritarian works to entrench the 
authoritarian rule. So people get knocked down when they speak up, and 
other people are afraid to stand up and become more timid.
  The press gets a little more careful after getting sued. The Wall 
Street Journal got sued for $10 billion, maybe gets a little more 
careful about what it says in its newspaper.
  The network, which is threatened with the possibility of losing its 
broadcast license, or the network that is threatened with the 
possibility of a merger opposition may say: OK. You know, we are going 
to change our programs. We are going to get rid of that program that 
Trump doesn't like or we are going to get rid of that comedian that 
insulted Trump.
  And you start to see these effects pile up, and they grow over time.
  So in that first year, if there is not a reaction from the people, 
then people assume two things: Oh, that sounded outrageous to me, but 
maybe it is not so bad. Maybe telling universities what to teach, 
having the government tell them that, isn't so bad. Maybe telling the 
broadcast news what to put on air isn't so bad and so forth. It is like 
maybe kicking people out of the country for exercising their free 
speech on college campuses isn't so bad.
  If nobody is protesting, it is like, ``Oh, well, maybe that is not so 
bad,''

[[Page S7657]]

and it makes it easier for the authoritarian power to get a deeper and 
deeper grip on the system and become the status quo. And that is why 
you need a protest in the first year to say: No, this is breaking the 
norms. This is breaking the law. This is violating the Constitution, 
and we are not going to take this assault crushing our freedoms. We are 
going to stand up and say: Hell no.
  And then people go: Oh, I thought those things were pretty 
outrageous. And, look, there is somebody or some group or some force I 
can get behind to help know that I am not alone because, as a normal 
citizen, what power do I have? But if someone else is organizing and 
speaking out--and that is why this No Kings march was so important--7 
million people, 2,700 locations. You had an incredible set of 
demonstrations in Minnesota. We had an incredible set of demonstrations 
in Oregon.
  And I went to one in a very small town. It is kind of just a few 
stores and gas stations. And it is in a pretty conservative county. 
And, boy, 200 people were out on the road with their creative signs.
  I was really struck, especially by talking to veterans who said: You 
know, I volunteered. I went to war overseas because my country asked me 
to do it. And it was framed as you have to defend this country and this 
set of freedoms that we cherish so much. And I will be damned if a 
President of the United States is going to take away what we fought and 
died for, a President who never bothered to put on a uniform. And those 
were powerful words that I appreciated from our veterans.
  But that is why that first year is so important, that people know 
that this is not OK and that others are willing to organize and resist 
and push back.
  And then the second piece of that is the next election because the 
goal of an authoritarian President is to make it more and more rigged, 
the elections. And if you want three examples: One right now is the 
President is trying to consolidate a voter registration list from 
States around the country, making it easier, potentially, to manipulate 
that list in the next election.
  A second factor is Trump is trying to get States to gerrymander in 
order to produce--basically divide up blue districts by attaching 
little pieces of it to red districts so that the blue district 
disappears, and you get more Republican House Members and less fair 
representation of the diversity of America. So the gerrymandering.
  And then he is complaining about vote by mail. You have vote by mail 
in Minnesota. We have vote by mail.
  You have one of the highest turnout States. We sometimes say we are 
the highest turnout State, and then sometimes I look at stats, and go: 
I think Minnesota might have, you know, beat us out a little bit on one 
election or another.
  But the point is that the integrity of vote by mail is so high 
because it cannot be manipulated on election day. And we see that 
manipulation in so many forms on election day, where precincts are 
moved so people don't know where to go. False information is put out 
where to go. They are put where there is no parking if you don't want 
people to vote. The machines don't work. The staff doesn't show up. The 
lines are long. People are intimidated. They are told they can't pass 
out water to people standing in line, which just seems like a horror of 
a possibility, people passing a law saying you can't give people water 
who are standing in line wanting to vote.
  And all of those factors really play a big role. That is why Trump 
wants us to vote on election day. More ability to manipulate the 
outcome of elections.
  So those are two incredibly important things. And then I wanted to 
just say: What is going on with Argentina that we are sending them 
money, $20 billion and maybe $40 billion in order to help them with 
their debt, which is owned by a bunch of Trump's friends.
  So they bought it for pennies on the dollar, and now they are going 
to become megarich. And where did we pass a bill saying you can send 
$20 billion or $40 billion to Argentina? What happened to America 
first? This is Argentina first.
  This is the corruption of the President's friends first. What policy 
is that? I want to see that on a hat.
  It is outrageous. You think about $40 billion. That is approximately 
$100 for every single person in our country contributing to bail out 
Trump's friends who bought up Argentinian debt.
  No. Hell no.
  I don't know what authority he is doing that under, but let's take it 
away. Let's get our Republican partners to join us and say that we 
should take it away.
  Ms. SMITH. If the Senator would yield for one more question?
  Mr. MERKLEY. I would be delighted. Yes, I will yield for a question.
  Ms. SMITH. I want to just follow up on something that you talked 
about with the attempt by the Trump administration to consolidate and 
get some control over our voting process in this country. One of, I 
think, the strengths of our country is while we should have high 
national standards for free and fair elections, we have control over 
elections at the local level, and that gives our electoral system a lot 
of resilience.
  I want to just thank our Secretary of State in Minnesota, Secretary 
of State Steve Simon, for refusing to provide to the Trump people our 
voting rolls and data about our voters as a way of protecting our local 
control over our ballots.
  And I want to just follow up also with what the Senator from Oregon 
was talking about with the way that the President is ignoring the rule 
of law, ignoring the article I--you know, ignoring the powers of 
Congress, and, you know, I was thinking a lot about what the preamble 
of our Constitution says.
  I mean, the preamble of our Constitution says:

       We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more 
     perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic 
     Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the 
     general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to 
     ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this 
     Constitution for the United States of America.

  That is the promise that we all make each other in this great 
democracy. And what I think we see happening--I wonder if the Senator 
would like to comment on this--what I think we see happening is that 
President Trump is trying to undermine that promise, and he is trying 
to exhaust us and distract us and make us feel like we actually don't 
have any power to have much of an impact on what he and Russell Vought 
and his administration do and that that will cause us to just give up 
and give in.
  But, of course, Americans are stronger than that. Americans are more 
resilient than that. Americans care more about their democracy than 
perhaps Donald Trump believes or expects.
  And one of the powerful things that I see happening, that I saw 
happening this weekend and I see happening all over this country, is 
Americans standing up and saying, basically, we know a bully when we 
see him. He is not as strong as we think that he is. And he is not as 
strong as he wants us to believe that he is, and we are going to stand 
up to it.
  And that Senator Merkley gives me a sense of faith and a sense of 
hope as I see people put their faith in this democracy into action 
every single day in the ways that are meaningful for them personally.
  Mr. MERKLEY. My colleague from Minnesota, I appreciate the question, 
but I particularly appreciate the recitation of the preamble, and I 
grabbed my pocket Constitution here that I have been bringing up 
various points through the night. And the line that I have highlighted 
here from some previous time was: ``And secure the blessings of 
liberty.''

       Secure the blessings of liberty.

  You know, psychologists may say there is a hierarchy of needs: You 
need food. You need water. You need shelter.
  But we are Americans, and I can tell you liberty is at the top of 
this list. The idea that I can't say what I want, the idea that a 
private university can't teach what it wants, the idea that a private 
law firm can't provide its contributions to the legal help to the 
nonprofits it wants to provide help to--it goes on and on about the 
compression of liberty.
  People around the world have come here, dreaming of liberty. They 
have seen Lady Liberty with her torch held high, welcoming people from 
around the world, where you may be oppressed back home, but you come to 
this shore. And you can say what you want. You

[[Page S7658]]

can worship as you want. You can have your company operate within the 
law, making its own decisions, without government oppression.
  And suddenly all of that is being challenged.
  And so I do appreciate a lot your emphasis that this component, which 
may seem more abstract if you are a family struggling with healthcare 
and your children are hungry, but even for families that are dealing 
with the challenge of getting onto their feet with basic healthcare, 
they still have the DNA of American liberty throughout their body, 
knowing that they can--they may not have all the food they want, but 
they can say what they want. And they can criticize the President of 
the United States. And that President damn well better not put them on 
an enemies list and proceed to tell the Justice Department to go on 
some kind of a search to get them arrested or charged or tried or 
imprisoned.
  And yet that is happening right now, an enemies list. Let's be blunt 
about it. The President has been transparent about it. Other things he 
may not be transparent about. But when it comes to an enemies list, he 
is transparent as hell. He lays it out to the press: These are the 
folks I am going after. He does his tweet to Pam Bondi: Why haven't you 
acted yet? Why haven't you done it yet?
  I read one of those tweets sometime in the hours passed, and it is 
stunning that the President, clearly, feels he has full ability to 
weaponize the Justice Department as his personal revenge factory, and 
he is all in on it. And we have to stop him. Thank you.
  And I notice that my colleague from Massachusetts has arrived, and I 
would welcome a question, if he has one.
  Mr. MARKEY. Well, thank you, and thank you so much for raising all of 
these issues about the threat to our democracy. Authoritarianism is 
running rampant. Healthcare, education, our environment are all being 
threatened in violation of the U.S. Constitution.
  And so I would ask if the Senator would yield for a question.
  Mr. MERKLEY. I would be delighted to yield for a question.
  Mr. MARKEY. Thank you. So Republicans are shutting down the 
government to cut Americans' healthcare. In fact, Donald Trump and the 
MAGA Republicans have been shutting down our government since day one. 
We are witnessing a Robin Hood in reverse as Republicans make deep 
healthcare cuts and steal from those most in need, all to pay tax 
breaks to CEO billionaires in our country.
  And as a result of Trump's ``Big Ugly Bill,'' over 320,000 
Massachusetts residents could lose insurance coverage. That is almost 5 
percent of the entire State. The Commonwealth could lose over $2 
billion in Medicaid funding, absolutely, with Massachusetts hospitals 
losing $424 million each year, erasing 19,000 healthcare jobs in the 
State of Massachusetts alone.

  After ripping healthcare away from hundreds of thousands of 
Massachusetts residents, MAGA Republicans are now willing to 
dramatically raise health insurance costs for even more families. If 
the premium tax credits from the American Rescue Plan expire at the end 
of this year, 337,000 additional Massachusetts residents will see their 
health insurance costs spike. In the process, our residents 
collectively will lose $425 million in tax credits each and every year, 
averaging over $1,300 per enrollee each year. Some can see their 
premiums surge over $1,000 a month, leaving them an annual premium of 
more than $25,000.
  So this healthcare premium bomb is about to go off all across our 
country on kitchen tables--dramatic increases in the costs for 
healthcare for families. That is just unacceptable.
  The price of groceries is up. The price of electricity is up. And now 
Trump and his MAGA Republicans want to jack up the cost of health 
insurance, forcing families from Boston to the Berkshires, from 
Portland, ME, to Portland, OR, to make difficult choices to make ends 
meet.
  Right now, thanks to these tax credits, a couple in their thirties 
earning $50,000 in the city of Boston with two children could pay just 
$4 a month for their health insurance premiums. But soon, if Trump and 
MAGA Republicans decide to let these credits expire, that couple will 
receive a notice in the mail that they will have to pay $176 a month, a 
4,000-percent increase costing thousands of dollars more per year.
  A 62-year-old couple living in Watertown that earns $86,000 a year 
could pay $1,700 more each month.
  A 58-year-old living in the Berkshires making $32,000 a year could 
see their premiums increase by 170 percent.
  Last week, Democrats on the Small Business Committee, on which I 
serve as ranking member, released new data showing over 10 million 
small business owners and their employees rely on the Affordable Care 
Act's enhanced premium tax credits to afford health insurance.
  Small businesses are the heartbeat of our economy. But Republicans 
are turning Main Street into ``Pain Street.'' Republicans are making a 
Jenga tower of our healthcare system. They remove one block, access to 
Medicaid, and then another, health insurance tax credits. They already 
have put us into a healthcare crisis.
  But they don't stop there. Republicans have cut or frozen over $1.3 
billion in grants to Massachusetts from the National Institutes of 
Health for lifesaving medical research and clinical trials. They are 
gutting our public health workforce by revoking temporary protective 
status for Haitians and Venezuelans and directing ICE to terrorize 
lawful immigrants who are disproportionately healthcare and human 
service workers.
  We know these cuts will have even worse impacts on Black and Brown 
communities. Right now, 60 percent of Black children rely on Medicaid 
for their healthcare. Sixty percent of Black children in our country 
rely upon Medicaid for their healthcare. If these cuts go through, 
millions could lose access to checkups, asthma treatments, and mental 
health care to keep families healthy and children in school. It would 
leave parents with impossible choices between medicine and meals. And 
restrictions on Medicaid don't just trim budgets, they cut into lives.
  With each Jenga block Republicans remove from the tower, Americans' 
healthcare becomes more and more unstable. We know how Jenga ends. The 
tower collapses. That is where we are heading right now.
  But Democrats are not going to let our healthcare system collapse. 
The Republicans want to loot the healthcare system of tens of billions 
of dollars and then hand it over in tax breaks to the Republican 
billionaires who are their supporters. Well, the Democrats are not 
going to drive the getaway car in the biggest healthcare financial 
heist in the history of our country. We are not going to do that. We 
are fighting to keep the premiums affordable.
  Republicans call it a government shutdown because they don't want to 
admit what they and Trump are doing. It is a healthcare shutdown and 
Speaker Johnson has Republicans in a political witness protection 
program right now. They are scattered all over the country. We want 
them to come here so we can negotiate with them to solve this 
healthcare problem.
  We can solve the government shutdown and end the healthcare crisis 
with one vote--one vote on the floor of the House and the Senate. It 
wouldn't take more than that. They just have to come here.
  Right now, what we have is a President saying: Well, there is nothing 
to negotiate on the shutdown.
  So, ultimately, that is going to be the challenge which this country 
is going to be facing because the Republicans are refusing to come to 
negotiate.
  We are calling on Donald Trump and Republicans to reverse their cruel 
cuts, return the funding they looted from our healthcare system, and 
restore access to essential care for all Americans.
  So I have a question for my colleague. As this ticking healthcare 
timebomb gets closer to exploding, how will it hurt Americans' wallets 
and our national economy?
  Mr. MERKLEY. I so appreciate the question from my colleague, who 
certainly laid out a lot of ways that it is going to have a huge impact 
across the country and in your State of Massachusetts.
  I was thinking about several of the points that you were making, 
which really are parallel for Oregon, but they are parallel for every 
State. In some

[[Page S7659]]

cases, the States that are most affected are not even States that are 
blue States. That is certainly true when we are talking about these tax 
credits, because 75 percent of the folks who access the tax credits on 
the exchange are in States that President Trump won.

  We are not advocating to restore affordability to healthcare because 
it is an issue in our States, although it certainly is an issue. We are 
advocating because it is the right thing for every American that 
healthcare is a right. It is a foundation for a family to thrive.
  When I think about the things that enable a family to do well, it is 
healthcare; it is a decent home, decent community; it is housing; it is 
education, the opportunity for good education; and it is a good-paying 
job that sets your family on its feet.
  In healthcare--a fundamental foundation in my State--the projected 
loss of people because of the slashes to Medicaid is 235,000 people 
losing their insurance in my State, a projected increase that isn't as 
high as the rest of the country. And now that we are starting to get 
numbers directly from the exchange from insurers, maybe we find out it 
is as high. But the projection across the country was more than double, 
114-percent, increase. Why is that? Because premiums go up and the tax 
credit comes down.
  So a gap that is this big becomes a gap that was that big--114 
percent. My State projected 68 percent. It might happen that it is less 
than 114, yes, if it is true.
  But here is what I know about inflation and the fundamental item. 
People get pretty nervous when they have 5 percent inflation. They get 
really upset when they have 10 percent inflation. When they have 68 
percent or 70 percent or 100 percent or more inflation, they are not 
going to buy the healthcare policies.
  You mentioned that Main Street is ``Pain Street.'' Maybe I heard you 
say that in the past. If so, thank you, because I have been using that 
phrase, and I will try to give you credit for it because it may well 
have been something I overheard you say.
  I talked yesterday because we had folks representing small businesses 
visiting here on Capitol Hill. One of the individuals said there are 
two things that are causing us a lot of pain. I couldn't resist: Main 
Street turned to ``Pain Street.''
  He said: One is tariffs, and the second is healthcare.
  He said: So many of us small business owners don't have enough to 
negotiate with a Kaiser or Blue Cross. We have our folks, our 
employees, go to the exchange.
  Well, he said he talked to three of his four employees, if I got the 
numbers right. And he said it doesn't sound like any of the three of 
them are going to buy health insurance. If it is as expensive as what 
it appears when I go online right now, with the premiums up and the tax 
credits down, then the gap in the middle that I have to fill is too big 
for what I earn, and I am just going to take the gamble in various 
forms.
  It sounded like that is what his staffer meant.
  But he knew that any one of them might win that gamble. They might 
get through a year without a healthcare problem. But if there is a 
group of them, a few of them are going to have significant problems. 
They are not going to go to the doctor because they don't have health 
insurance. Then the problem is going to get worse, and when they do go, 
a small problem becomes a big problem. When they do go, they are in the 
emergency room, which is the most expensive place to provide 
healthcare.
  And if preventive care disappears, which is such a big piece of what 
we tried to do in the exchange, either you could get insurance in which 
you are covered for preexisting conditions, insurance in which your 
children could stay on your policy to age 26; insurance where 
preventive actions are free because an ounce of prevention is worth a 
pound of cure; and tax credits make it affordable--if you eliminate 
that affordability factor, we are back where we were.
  I tell you, that impact on rural Oregon is devastating because rural 
Oregon is less affluent than suburban Oregon. So there is a higher 
percentage of folks who are on Medicaid, our Oregon Health Plan. And 
when it comes to children, we are talking that 70 percent of the 
children in rural Oregon have the Oregon Health Plan.
  What does knocking 235,000 people off do and what does it do to the 
revenue of the clinics and the hospitals that have to shut down 
projects?
  Or, according to the Sheps Center, 300 hospitals across the country 
will probably be forced out of existence, and they won't even have a 
hospital, won't have any programs. Where are you going to go, 70 miles 
down the road to find your next hospital in rural America?
  So it is a very big deal, indeed. I am so glad you raised it.
  There is a tie-in to the authoritarian structure that I just want to 
emphasize. And that is, when you have an authoritarian who starts their 
year with a speech surrounded by--backed up by--billionaires, then does 
a bill that is about sabotaging programs for families to fund tax 
breaks for billionaires, well those two things are connected because an 
authoritarian doesn't feel the need to pursue government by and for the 
people. If you are pursuing government by and for billionaires, then 
sabotage the programs for people and fund the billionaires. They are 
the friends all around you, including friends who bought up Argentina's 
debt, which we are going to ship $20 billion or $40 billion off to.
  Mr. MARKEY. Would the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. MERKLEY. I would be delighted to yield.
  Mr. MARKEY. I want you to follow up a little bit on that University 
of North Carolina Sheps Center study. I requested them to do that 
study. It came back, and it was a blistering, scalding indictment of 
the Republicans' support for these dramatic cuts to our healthcare 
system.
  And it concluded, as you said, that over 330 hospitals--rural 
hospitals--in our country, would close. That was 30 in Kentucky, 30 in 
Louisiana--disproportionately in rural America.
  Could you talk about that, maybe a little bit more, especially in 
terms of your home State of Oregon but what that portends for the rest 
of the country in terms of the provision of healthcare services and 
then the flooding of the other hospitals' emergency rooms, the increase 
in the premiums for those who can afford health insurance--but the 
costs are just going to skyrocket--and elaborate, if you could, just a 
little bit more on that looming crisis?
  Mr. MERKLEY. As I start to respond to your question, I want to repeat 
my main mission statement for being here through the night, and that is 
to ring the alarm bells of alarm at this authoritarian takeover and at 
this strategy of doing authoritarian bills in which families lose and 
billionaires win. Families lose their healthcare or their nutrition 
benefits or their Medicaid in order to fund tax breaks for 
billionaires.
  But I am so glad you requested that study from the Sheps Center at 
the University of North Carolina. They are highly accredited, highly 
capable. It is a great place to go for this sort of information.

  I think back to a couple of years ago when we had a hospital in Baker 
City, OR, and they announced, very suddenly, that they were having to 
shut down their maternal care unit. Now, it is quite a ways down the 
highway to the next hospital. So, depending on the roads you take, can 
you even get down those roads in the winter when there is ice or there 
is snow if you are having to go 40 or 70 miles depending on your 
undertaking?
  Boy, it is the idea that, when you are trying to get prenatal care, 
you will have to go that far round trip; the idea that maybe it will be 
harder to get classes that you are supposed to take to help you prepare 
for being a good parent; the idea that, when you go into labor, you 
will only have limited time. So are you going to make it to the 
hospital?
  Anyway, it is a big deal to this medium-sized town to lose their 
maternal unit. But why did they lose it? Well, it is inherently an 
expensive program.
  So what happens when hospitals are looking at increasing costs and 
they have got significant personnel costs? They may now have increasing 
costs from the tariffs because the tariffs affect some of the drug 
prices and they are going: Well, we are not balancing. Where are we 
losing the most? So they cut a program like that or maybe they

[[Page S7660]]

cut their drug addiction program, and folks who have a drug addiction 
just have nowhere to go or maybe they cut their mental health program.
  The point is sometimes they are so close to the line, they are like, 
``We cannot make it anymore. We have to consolidate into a single 
hospital further down the road, and we have to partner with someone 
else. We have got to shut the whole thing down.''
  So that is where, I think, the possibility of losing 300 or more 
hospitals comes in, particularly in rural Oregon. You have a whole 
bunch of rural America--you have a whole bunch of families who don't 
have insurance. They are going to the hospitals for care. They are 
going to get care, but then they can't pay the bills, and suddenly, the 
crunch is too big.
  There are 235,000 people in Oregon who will lose health insurance 
through the Oregon Health Plan who can't pay their bills. Maybe an 
additional group, a significant group, loses the ability to get 
healthcare through the exchange. That is a lot of uncompensated care. 
Maybe that hospital just can't make it. That is what is happening. We 
have been losing hospitals in rural America for that reason. They are 
already at the edge.
  This type of blow in the Republican bill was placed for January 2027. 
Now, that may seem like a long time from now, but that is basically 15 
months from now that we are going to be seeing the implementation of 
this dramatic assault on healthcare. So that is why I say it seems 
legitimate to me that we can see that sort of damage to healthcare 
across the country, with hospitals in rural America shutting down.
  I appreciate so much my colleague having joined us. I see my 
colleague from Connecticut. Let me see what the right thing to say here 
is.
  I will yield for a question if he has one.
  (Mr. SHEEHY assumed the Chair.)
  Mr. MURPHY. Mr. President, I thank Senator Merkley.
  Let me just say how much I appreciate, his colleagues appreciate, and 
many Americans appreciate the labor that he has put in to raising these 
alarm bells tonight, and I would appreciate the chance to ask the 
Senator a question.
  Mr. MERKLEY. Yes, I will yield for a question.
  Mr. MURPHY. I thank Senator Merkley.
  In having done this before, I know that the language is important.
  So the Senator and I have had a number of conversations over the past 
6 months about the importance of being straight with people about what 
is happening in this country. I am sure that a lot of our Republican 
colleagues on this floor have looked at what the Senator has been doing 
overnight, have looked at some of the similar speeches that I and 
others have given on the floor, and think that we are engaged in pretty 
remarkable hyperbole, right? This is the United States of America. Our 
democracy is going to survive forever. This is not authoritarianism. 
This is just a different version of democracy.
  But I think it is important to talk for a moment--and this will be 
the foundation of my question--as to how you know when you have lost 
your democracy, how you know when you are on the wrong side of a 
transition to authoritarianism.
  There are a lot of folks who will say: Well, listen. We are still 
going to have elections in a couple of weeks. We are probably still 
going to have elections in November of next year. Well, there are 
troops in Washington, DC, right now. They aren't inside the Capitol 
Building. We are still operating.
  Well, many of Trump's critics have been taken off the air, like Jimmy 
Kimmel, temporarily, and Stephen Colbert, soon to be permanently. There 
are plenty of people who oppose the President's policies who are on 
television and who are talking openly about their disdain for his 
policies online. So I understand many of my colleagues who say: Well, 
this still looks like a democracy. It may be different than it was a 
few months ago, but it is not authoritarianism.
  I guess what concerns me is that there is not going to be this day 
when democracy turns off, and there is not likely going to be a 
cancelation of elections--because President Trump is following a 
playbook, a playbook that many other would-be autocrats have used 
successfully to transform democracies into either autocracies or deeply 
illiberal democracies in which the opposition party never wins.
  That is what happens in a place like Hungary or in a place like 
Turkiye. They still have elections, and there are still critics of the 
regimes. In fact, the opposition party can still win a mayoral race or 
a local election, but the rules are rigged such that the opposition 
party never has enough oxygen, never has enough support, never has 
enough ability to air their case that they ever win at the national 
level.

  As you have articulated overnight in this heroic effort, you can see 
this very detailed plan to constrict the space in which the 
opposition--which is, from an organizational standpoint, the Democratic 
Party--has to operate. It is a plan that Donald Trump didn't create 
himself. It is a plan that has been midwived in other nations that he 
has copied.
  It is, first and foremost, about punishing dissent, targeting 
individuals who have been critics, and using government power, whether 
that be the Department of Justice or the FCC, to silence those critics.
  It is about commandeering the spending power of the Federal 
Government to say: If you criticize me, you are not going to get 
Federal spending, right? Just a few weeks ago, the President canceled 
all energy projects in Democratic States, just in Democratic States--a 
clear signal and sign that, if you speak up against me, you are not 
going to get Federal funding.
  It is about using the military to try to disincentivize protests, and 
it is about mobilization, especially in places like American cities 
where there are a lot of folks who oppose the President.
  Then it is about rigging the rules. The President has been openly 
targeting ActBlue, which is the primary way that Democrats raise 
political contributions. It seems as if he may try to shut down the 
vehicle by which people make contributions to Democrats.
  He is instructing Republican States to do something exceptional, 
which is to change congressional boundary rules outside of the normal 
schedule so that, even if he is deeply unpopular and even if Democratic 
congressional candidates get the majority of votes nationwide, his 
party will still control Congress because they will have rigged the 
rules of how these boundaries are set.
  So whether it be the seizure of spending power, the use of the 
military, the manipulation of Federal regulatory and law enforcement 
powers to quash political dissent, or the rigging of the rules to make 
it much harder for Democrats to be able to win in elections, it is a 
comprehensive plan.
  I guess my question to Senator Merkley is this: How do we know when 
we have lost our democracy?
  Do you agree with me that it is very likely that we are still going 
to have elections but that they just aren't going to be free and fair 
elections? that not every single opponent of the President will be 
thrown in jail but just enough so that it quells the interest of the 
public and of corporate leaders and of civic leaders to speak out? that 
not every critic of the President will be taken down, off the air, but 
enough such that media companies will figure out that, if they want 
their next merger approved or if they want their licenses to broadcast 
to continue, they had better just tilt the coverage toward the 
President and just make sure that they don't have too much criticism on 
the air?
  This is my worry. There are a lot of, frankly, our colleagues and 
there are a lot of Americans out there who believe that our democracy 
is still alive until the day when it dies, but we are not going to know 
that day. There is just going to be a moment at which the President 
will have successfully rigged the rules, punished dissent, seized so 
much power that the minority party won't have the ability to win a 
national election.
  We will still exist as a Democratic Party, but just like the 
opposition parties in Hungary and Serbia and Turkiye, we won't be in a 
position to engage in a way that gives voters an actual choice.
  So my question to the Senator is, Do you share that view of how his 
campaign of repression of political speech

[[Page S7661]]

is happening? Do you worry that people are just waiting around for that 
epiphany--that conflagration--where the democracy disappears or that 
that may not be how this plays out?
  Mr. MERKLEY. My colleague has described very well the way this works.
  In the past, in general, you had military coups. People with guns 
stormed in, took over, shredded the constitution, tossed it out, had 
command of the armed forces. Indeed, it was an observation even at the 
start of our country.
  I have this quote from Madison during the Constitutional Convention 
in 1787:

       A standing military force, with an overgrown Executive will 
     not long be safe companions to liberty.

  The temptation to use that military.

       The means of defence against foreign danger, have been 
     always the instruments of tyranny at home.

  So men with guns charged in and took over, but now we have a very 
different form in which democracies fail. It is the erosion of the 
checks and balances of the Constitution. So let's take a look at how 
those are being eroded.
  Well, we see that we have changed the rules of the Senate so that we 
are now doing mass confirmations of the President's list of desired 
individuals. I think, did we not have a list that was well over 100 the 
other day? There is no consideration, really, of whether they are 
suitable at all to serve in the desired positions. That is an erosion.
  Then we have the power of the purse. And the vision is that, in a 
democracy, the decisions on what programs should exist, how they will 
operate, and how they will be funded are made by the Congress. The 
President executes. So you deliberately fence off those decisions from 
the President.
  But what do we have right now? We have those decisions being made by 
the President of the United States of America. Of the programs he 
doesn't like, he is exercising a version of a line-item veto by slow-
walking the funding disbursements by canceling grants, by impounding 
funds, by waiting until the end of the fiscal year and filing a request 
to have the funding authority reversed. Then, during that waiting 
period, the end of that fiscal year comes, and--poof--the funds' 
authority evaporates.
  All of these are strategies to put the power with the Presidency that 
belongs in a democracy here--right here--and down the Hall in the House 
of Representatives.
  Let's take a look at the Supreme Court and whether they are 
continuing to defend the separation of powers.
  No. Hell, no, they are not. They made a decision, and the decision is 
called Trump v. United States, wherein they said the President is above 
the law. There is no clause in our beautiful Constitution, in our ``we 
the people'' Constitution--there is no clause at all--that says the 
President is above the law.
  No one ever thought the President was above the law until the Trump 
v. United States case goes to the Supreme Court. Then the originalists, 
who know the Founders were terrified of a President trying to become a 
King, suddenly give him the power to violate the laws at will, with no 
accountability and with pardon power. I mean, the whole executive 
branch is above the law.
  That is another erosion: the liberal use of the pardon power to 
essentially give a free pass to hundreds of people who stormed this 
Capitol while the Senator and I were sitting here in this Chamber and 
they were calling for the execution of the Vice President.
  Then we can look at the freedoms. Are the freedoms deteriorating?
  One freedom is to criticize the President without the power of the 
state coming after you. Yet the power of the state is now coming after 
the people on Trump's enemies list, and he is telling, in public 
tweets, his Attorney General to go get them: Go get them fast now. I 
want action. They shouldn't have gotten off. Let's get them.
  Well, that is the tone of those tweets.
  One of the people who is high on that enemies list is a fellow 
Senator. If you have the whole of the executive branch coming after 
you, targeting you not because you have done something wrong but 
because they want to take you down, that is an authoritarian state, and 
it is happening right now here in the United States of America.
  When you have a President who is telling the universities: We will 
cancel your research contracts, millions or even billions of dollars, 
if you do not teach the way and operate the programs the way we want--
well, that is tyranny.
  If you proceed to have a President say to the networks: If you want 
that merger, or you want that broadcast license to be sustained, you 
better get that program off the air or that comedian off the air who 
insulted the President--that is tyranny.
  When you have folks being shipped out of this country because they 
expressed an opinion on policy in the Middle East, and it is being done 
with no due process, that is tyranny.
  So I would say, yes, authoritarianism is here now. Let's ring the 
alarm bells.
  Mr. MURPHY. Would the Senator yield for one additional question?
  Mr. MERKLEY. Yes, I would.
  Mr. MURPHY. Thank you.
  I wanted to ask you about--and I am sure you have talked about this 
many times already--what is happening, what has been happening in your 
city, what is happening in Chicago.
  I wrote a book a couple of years ago about the story of violence in 
America. In it, I talked about the Founders' worry about a standing 
army. I did that because, while I actually believe there is a common 
law right to private gun ownership in this country--I do think that is 
guaranteed in the United States of America--I know the real history of 
the construction of the Second Amendment.
  The Second Amendment actually was written to make sure that this 
country could muster a militia, given the fact that our Founding 
Fathers were very specific about their desire for there not to be a 
standing army.
  Now, of course, a lot has changed since the founding of this country. 
We now have the biggest standing Army in the world. But you have spoken 
a lot about the conversation our Founders had, having watched the 
experience, having lived the experience of British monarchial rule, and 
they did not want a standing army, specifically because they had seen 
how that army had been used against them and had been used throughout 
Europe to try to destroy the ability of people to dissent; that it was 
used sometimes in foreign action to defend the country and the Nation, 
or to conquer, but it was often used domestically to try to control 
speech and control political opposition.
  So our Founding Fathers, I think, would be watching the deployment--
or the planned deployment--of the U.S. military into the streets of 
this country with the same kind of alarm that you are bringing to this 
speech overnight, because this doesn't have anything to do with public 
safety. This is a means to try to intimidate people into not speaking 
out.
  You described scenes in Portland where you have the military, 
essentially, trying to provoke conflict. And they are trying to provoke 
conflict in part to just make it seem as if things are out of control 
in neighborhoods where things are not out of control. But they are also 
just trying to scare people into not coming out and protesting.
  Listen, it is absolutely understandable that an American citizen, who 
has never engaged in political speech or political protests but thinks 
this moment is extraordinary and wants to raise their voice, would 
think twice before going out onto the streets if they were potentially 
facing the barrel of a gun from a member of the U.S. military. That is 
intimidating, and it is intended to be intimidating.
  So as you have talked about, our Founders' worries about how this 
country could fall into despotism. What do you think they would say 
about the use of the military today, 250 years later, to try to 
politically intimidate U.S. citizens in our cities?
  Mr. MERKLEY. I thank you for that question.
  I start with a strong thought: Let's not let this happen. Let's not 
have a standing military. It is expensive, and it is too big a 
temptation for our Executive to use it against people the way we had 
seen in so many other places.
  That second stanza or that second phrase is what Madison said during 
debate at the Constitutional Convention: ``The means of defense against 
foreign danger''--that is the army--have always been ``the instruments 
of tyranny at home.''
  That is using the army against your own population. So that is why 
they were so worried.

[[Page S7662]]

  Over time, because of the security demands of the country and a 
variety of various wars, we did pursue a standing Army and an Air 
Force, and we expanded and so forth. We got the Marines, got the Navy, 
and we have the militia, the National Guard.
  I think they would say: You have been pretty lucky so far that the 
understanding was so deeply rooted that these could not be used against 
your own population except in extraordinary situations. And one of 
those extraordinary situations would be if the civil rights of 
individuals were being disturbed and you needed the deployment to help 
restore them because the local forces wouldn't protect those civil 
rights.
  It is written into law in just that fashion. That is why there was a 
deployment to help students go to school--Black students being able to 
go to school--when folks were trying to block them from going to school 
in the South. That is what that deployment was about.
  But then you have this other standard that they can only be deployed 
if there is an invasion or a rebellion and just an understanding that 
that is a high test to meet. But the concern is, you can have an 
erosion of the common understanding that it is a high test.
  We saw that in two of the judges in the three-judge panel out in the 
Ninth Circuit. They said: Well, you used the definition, district 
court. It was appropriate for the time the laws were written, and that 
would normally be enough, but maybe you need to have a more flexible 
version of rebellion--of definition--and maybe you need to go back in 
time a few months, when there were a few more arrests, and maybe that 
gives us a stronger case to recognize that the President might be able 
to deploy; and you should give high deference to the President's 
interpretation, separate from the facts.
  I mean, just that last point--high deference to the President's 
view--and what it does is it destroys the barriers put in place, the 
standards put in place. No longer do you need a rebellion to be allowed 
to use the federalized National Guard in America. No longer do you need 
an invasion. You just need a President to say: It looks like a 
rebellion to me.
  That is what happens with an authoritarian President. They are not 
hesitant to say that. Former Presidents have been hesitant to say that 
because they have had a deep sense of their role in protecting the 
norms and the values that include defending our freedoms. But the 
authoritarian President we have right now does not have that compulsion 
to protect the norms--violating the norms, violating the law, violating 
the Constitution in action after action after action and maybe stopping 
when the courts tell him to stop.
  But even then, we had a 9-to-0 decision saying: Facilitate the return 
of Abrego Garcia from El Salvador. And what did the President do? He 
ignored it.
  Those are all indications of the scary state in which we are at this 
moment.
  I thank my colleague from Connecticut very much.
  I see that my colleague is here from Maryland, and I would welcome a 
question, if you have one.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I was going to ask if my colleague would yield for a 
question.
  Mr. MERKLEY. I will yield for a question.
  Mr. VAN HOLLEN. I want to start my question by saluting the Senator 
from Oregon, Senator Merkley, for standing strong and long in defense 
of our democracy and our Constitution and ringing the alarm bells. 
Authoritarianism is here, and it is here right now.
  We are facing a lawless President, who, when he was asked whether he 
had to comply with the Constitution of the United States said, ``I 
don't know,'' and a President who, every day, is attacking the 
foundations of our democracy and of the rule of law.
  I know my colleague from Oregon joined 7 million Americans last 
Saturday to say no Kings in America. I was very heartened to see 
thousands of people come out across the State of Maryland joining their 
fellow patriots from around the country in saying: In America, we have 
no Kings.
  You have been highlighting all night the way the President of the 
United States, Donald Trump, is assaulting the foundations of that 
democracy and our Constitution.
  On No Kings Day, we reminded one another--all fellow Americans were 
out there saying--that we are not going to go back to the days of King 
George III. We fought an American Revolution to secure the blessings of 
liberty. It was out of that experience that our Founders developed the 
Constitution of the United States and then the Bill of Rights.
  I want to zero in on a couple of those things and then ask you a 
question about one of those pillars that is being attacked right now by 
Donald Trump.
  You just mentioned the attack on due process, and we did witness that 
in the case of Abrego Garcia--Kilmar Abrego Garcia--who was abducted in 
the streets of Maryland and ended up locked up in a gulag in El 
Salvador. And the Supreme Court of the United States, by 9 to nothing, 
said that his rights have been violated. A Fourth Circuit judge, who 
had been appointed by Ronald Reagan said that what happened to Abrego 
Garcia was a textbook case of violation of due process.
  Despite that overwhelming evidence, for a period of time, the Trump 
administration took the position that they would never allow him to set 
foot back in the United States.
  We prevailed, and, ultimately, he is now back here before the courts 
of the United States.
  In fact, the Federal district court judge down in Tennessee recently 
indicated there was strong evidence to indicate that the Trump 
administration had brought this other claim against him purely for 
malicious reasons and that it was a vindictive prosecution--in other 
words, a political prosecution--that they were prosecuting him simply 
because he exercised those due process rights.
  It should not be a liberal, a conservative, a Democrat or a 
Republican idea that in the United States of America, we are not 
deprived of our liberty without due process. As you have been saying 
all night, that was a foundational principle based on the experience 
that we had under King George III, where people could just be abducted 
and, without due process, arrested.
  You have spoken about the assaults on the First Amendment. We saw 
very early in the Trump administration the crackdown on students who 
were expressing their views on college campuses. The administration 
didn't like the views they expressed about what happened in Gaza, and 
so they literally locked them up.
  Now, again, fortunately, the courts have intervened, and most of them 
have been released from prison. Their cases are still pending, but the 
judges have made clear that what these students experienced was a gross 
violation of the First Amendment of the United States.
  And, of course, we saw that continuing, as you have indicated, with 
the weaponization of the Federal Government--whether it is the FCC or 
other instruments of the Federal Government--to try to deter, crack 
down, stop speech that the President of the United States doesn't like. 
We saw the whole Jimmy Kimmel case where, for a period of time, ABC did 
take him off the air. I want to thank all people across the United 
States who rose up and said: That is wrong; that is unconstitutional. 
Many people canceled their Disney subscriptions.
  This is a moment where all of us as Americans need to stand up and 
recognize, as you are this evening, that we are right now living under 
an authoritarian President.
  We have seen--and you have experienced it firsthand in your State of 
Oregon--the President trying to implement the statement he made, the 
outrageous statement he made, that we are going to use American cities 
as training grounds for our military. I mean, regardless of someone's 
political views, they should recognize how un-American that is.
  The list goes on and on, but another major assault by the President 
of the United States on our Constitution is one that you have been 
speaking about and, as the ranking Democrat on the Budget Committee--
senior Democrat on the Budget Committee--have been really leading the 
way on, is this direct assault on article I, this direct assault on the 
power of the purse--because there are very good reasons that the 
Framers invested the Congress with the power of the purse and that 
power

[[Page S7663]]

of taxation and the power of spending the people's money--to make sure 
that our budgets reflected the will of the American people.
  As you pointed out, it is simply illegal for the President of the 
United States to look at that budget and say he is going to cherry-pick 
the parts he likes and implement those and discard the parts he doesn't 
like. That is not how it works.
  You have talked about the Nixon line-item veto and how the Supreme 
Court shot that down, but this President is trying to do that--is doing 
it right now as we speak.
  As part of the proposal the Democrats have put forward to reopen the 
government--and we want to reopen the government--we also would like to 
establish some guardrails to ensure that the President of the United 
States cannot engage in that illegal activity. And I call it illegal, 
and I am on strong grounds to say so. The GAO, which is an independent 
watchdog, has reached that conclusion, that the President has illegally 
impounded funds--that is the technical term--and they have found that 
the so-called pocket rescission is illegal.
  I do want to also just quote from Senator Susan Collins, the chair of 
the Appropriations Committee, which we both serve on. She goes into a 
good description of why this unilateral impoundment of funds is illegal 
and unconstitutional. She says:

       Any effort to rescind appropriated funds without 
     congressional approval is a clear violation of the law.

  That is one of our Republican colleagues.
  Senator Murkowski, who is also on the Appropriations Committee, has 
also pointed out that this is an illegal action. It is one of a series 
of illegal actions the President has taken.
  I want you, if you could, to talk about measures that we need to take 
to put up some guardrails and protections about it. You have done that 
through an amendment, the Merkley amendment, with regard to the other 
part of the rescissions process. You have spoken eloquently about this 
issue. But if you could just go to the heart of the matter: why the 
President's unconstitutional withholding of funds is a direct assault 
on our democracy and the vision our Framers had of checks and balances. 
When they said ``checks and balances,'' they didn't mean a blank check 
for a lawless President.
  So maybe, if you could, Senator Merkley, if you could talk to that 
and answer that question.
  Mr. MERKLEY. I very much appreciate your zeroing in on this question 
of how the President is violating the law and the Constitution by 
taking the power of the purse, but before I address that, I want to 
thank you for going to El Salvador to visit Abrego Garcia in prison, 
because if you had not taken that initiative to highlight it, I don't 
know that he would ever have gotten out of there.
  The phrase used for that prison is there is a one-way door going in, 
and only coffins come out. That is the type of horrific situation it 
is. He may have easily been killed. He may have suffered the 
depravations of that prison, been affected by health issues, and he may 
never have gotten the attention necessary for the administration to 
finally help facilitate his removal.
  By elevating that issue, you did two things. One is you helped that 
man return to his family, which is a huge victory. I know he has more 
battles to come because of his being targeted. But second of all, you 
brought in an American recognition that due process matters, that court 
decisions matter, and that we are paying attention and we are going to 
keep making as much good trouble as we can when we see violations of 
fundamental rights for Americans, for the benefit of the individuals 
involved or for the benefit of everyone else. But we will hopefully 
dissuade the administration from violating the rights in the first 
place. So thank you so much for that trip and that undertaking.
  In regard to the difference between a democracy and an authoritarian 
state, it often comes down to who controls the money. If you control 
the money, you make the decision about what the programs are and how 
the programs are implemented and how much they are going to get.
  In a democracy, you have a whole collection of voices from different 
parts of the country coming together to share their collective 
knowledge, the difference of their economies, their personal life 
experiences that give them insights on needs that are relevant, the 
needs that have been expressed that they have heard in their 
conversations with citizens. That collective knowledge is placed into a 
plan for how we spend our resources in order to build a better America. 
The values of our country are deeply embedded in those spending and 
program decisions.
  But in an authoritarian state, you have one individual--a man, 
potentially a woman--and that individual says: This is the way it is 
going to be. I like these programs, and I am going to fund these. Those 
other ones, forget about them.
  Then we are a dictatorship.
  The President is exercising every effort to secure that power over 
the programs and is not doing it secretly. Mr. Russell Vought, who was 
the OMB Director at the end of the last Trump administration and who is 
the architect of Project 2025, was very open even before his hearing 
before the Budget Committee, saying: I believe in the unitary Executive 
and that the President can make the decisions and can impound funds. I 
don't agree with the Supreme Court decisions of the past, and I think 
if we get to the Supreme Court, we are going to get a different 
decision this time.
  We did get a little taste of that just recently in a shadow docket 
decision in which the question was, if the President submits a request 
to reverse a funding decision--that is called a rescission, to reverse 
a funding decision--and submits it within the last 45 days and there is 
a 45-day grace period in the law that the President doesn't have to 
disburse the funds, and therefore you have reached the end of the 
fiscal year, and, poof, now you are outside the window, and that money 
evaporates, the authority to spend that money evaporates.
  So that was the strategy that was tested with the Court. And I 
expected the Court to say the following: In the rescission law, it says 
that no rescission, no undoing of the existing spending, is, in fact, 
legitimate unless it has been submitted to the House and Senate and 
voted affirmatively by the House and Senate.
  Now, the House and Senate don't have to--well, they don't have to do 
the whole proposal, the President says; they can pick pieces. But the 
pieces that pass both Chambers, then the President can shut down that 
spending.
  But in this case, there was no vote of the House and Senate to undo 
existing law, and yet the Court said: Well, we are giving deference 
here to the President, and since the fiscal year expired, well, we will 
not cancel that strategy.
  So they empowered what is essentially: Yes, Mr. President, you can 
slow-walk the funding, file in the last 40 days a proposal to undo the 
funding, never get a vote on it, and you can wipe it out on programs 
you don't like.
  So the Court has given much more power on this, where previously the 
Court has said: It is very clear in the Constitution. The power of the 
purse is with Congress. It says it right there in article I, and, hell 
no, you can't delegate that to the President, and, hell no, you can't 
impound the money.
  But in this case, a Court that is much more deferential to giving 
power to the Executive did exactly that. So this is a huge concern, 
that the Court has green-lighted a fundamental violation of the vision 
of the Constitution and delivered a tool that we might see used 
repeatedly.
  My hope, like yours, is that all 100 Senators will join together--or 
at least a significant majority of both sides--and say: We are going to 
protect our constitutional prerogatives, and so we are going to put in 
a clause into any spending bill and say, yes, there is a 1974 bill that 
says the President can submit a proposal to undo spending that has been 
approved, but the provisions that we pass in this bill are exempted 
from that power. They cannot be undone through a simple majority what 
was passed through a supermajority. They cannot be undone on a partisan 
basis what was done on a bipartisan basis to address the wealth of 
understanding about what different parts of the country need.
  So that is the proposal that we need to put into each bill, every 
bill, saying, yes, these can be undone by future

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spending. But we do that all the time, by the way. We do a fiscal year 
2026 bill, and we say there is 2-year and 3-year money in there, and 
now it is clear that that money is not needed for that program, and we 
undo it. But that is done on a bipartisan basis to undo a bipartisan 
decision, not a partisan.
  Ms. HASSAN. Will the Senator yield for a question?
  Mr. MERKLEY. Yes, I would be delighted to yield for a question.
  Ms. HASSAN. First of all, my question starts with a thank-you, 
Senator Merkley, for raising the issue of the growing threat of 
authoritarianism in our country. I thank you for noting and being a 
champion of the very principle that our country was founded on, which 
is that we are a country--a government--of, by, and for the people.
  As I think about what that principle means, I think about the fact 
that in a democracy, what our Founders wanted to ensure was that our 
governing bodies, our elected officials, would, in fact, be accountable 
to the people.
  So what does being accountable to the people you represent mean? 
Well, about 50 years ago, this Congress came together and, in a 
bipartisan way, passed something called the IDEA, the Individuals with 
Disabilities Education Act. Why? Because families all across this 
country, from every political persuasion, understood that their 
children with disabilities could learn and thrive if they had access to 
public education just the way other kids did. Because families spoke 
up, because individuals spoke up, we now have seen 50 years of IDEA 
special education in our schools.
  We have more work to do in that direction, to be sure. We need to get 
more resources to our local schools the way the IDEA originally 
promised we would from the Federal Government. But because families 
demanded it and their elected representatives heard them and listened 
and acted and believed they were accountable to them, the quality of 
life for children and families with disabilities has improved 
exponentially.
  Then I think about Medicaid expansion. When I was Governor of New 
Hampshire and the Affordable Care Act passed, one of the things that 
States had the opportunity to do was adopt expanded Medicaid so that 
people who had mental illness, for instance, or substance use disorder, 
addiction, could get care under Medicaid, or people who were working 
part time and had chronic illnesses could actually get healthcare.
  At first, in a divided legislature--a legislature that was one 
Chamber Democratic and one Chamber Republican--the Republicans blocked 
Medicaid expansion. But gradually, the people in my State of New 
Hampshire, the ``Live Free or Die State,'' spoke up, spoke out, and 
said: This is really important to our families.
  As a result, we found bipartisan agreement to expand Medicaid and 
provide health insurance coverage so that people could get better and 
could get fully employed and could then go on to private insurance--
something that is critically important.
  Again, this happened because the people in my State--the elected 
leaders in my State believed they were accountable to their 
constituents.
  Now, I think a lot about authoritarian regimes and their lack of 
accountability because authoritarians don't believe that they are 
accountable to the people; they believe that their people are their 
subjects and are accountable to them. That, of course, is what we are 
seeing from Donald Trump right now.
  I think about the fact that in 2022, we passed in this body the PACT 
Act, and it was signed into law. That is the law that provides 
healthcare to our veterans who have been made ill from toxic exposure 
during their service. These are our brave heroes that we owe everything 
to, that we owe our very freedoms to. And this body came together 
because veterans all across this country--and their families and their 
supporters--came forward and said: We have been made ill in our 
service. We need healthcare.
  And we came together, and on a bipartisan basis, because we believe 
and know that in a democracy, we are accountable to the people, we then 
delivered something so that the people--the veterans, our heroes, the 
people that we owe the most to, that we owe our way of life to--could 
get the healthcare they needed.
  That is the difference that having elected leaders in a democracy 
makes.
  So, as I think about this administration taking healthcare away from 
millions of Americans right now, one of the challenges we are facing is 
that people who get their health insurance on healthcare.gov--those 
premiums are due to at least double on November 1.
  In my home State, that means that a 60-year-old couple earning 
$85,000 a year is likely to see their health insurance go up by $14,000 
a year. A recent report says that if you are family of four in New 
Hampshire and earn $100,000 a year, you cannot make ends meet because 
of the cost of housing and groceries and energy, daycare, healthcare.
  So we now have an administration led by a President whose 
authoritarian tendencies you have laid out so well who is standing idly 
by while this healthcare calamity is facing us, because, of course, it 
is not just people who get their health insurance on healthcare.gov who 
will see their costs skyrocket; it is going to be the entire health 
insurance premium marketplace that is going to see increases.
  So we are looking at a President who is busy building ballrooms, 
buying vanity airplanes for his Secretary of Homeland Security, doing 
all these things to satisfy himself and the people around him but who 
doesn't seem to believe he is actually accountable to the people.
  I always thought that in the United States of America, we weren't 
subjects to be ruled; we were citizens to be heard.
  So, Senator Merkley, can you speak a bit to how this administration's 
attacks on our democracy have real impacts on the day-to-day lives of 
Americans?
  Mr. MERKLEY. I appreciate so much this passionate question from my 
colleague from New Hampshire. And there is no one here among 100 
Senators who has spent more time working on issues of disability, 
bringing their own life understanding to bear to help millions of 
people across this country.
  When we expanded the folks eligible under standard Medicaid, it had a 
huge impact on the availability of healthcare for the disabled, and 
then there is the additional work we did to try to say: Healthcare is a 
right. It is a foundation. Let's build a system where everyone has 
access.
  But the way you have framed the difference between a democracy and an 
authoritarian power is powerful.
  Under a democracy, leaders are accountable to the people. And I am 
pretty sure that these 100 Senators all think about the fact that 
people elected them because they said they would lead on certain issues 
and carry the fight.
  They have a responsibility to follow through and make it happen, to 
honor that social contract they have with their voters. They are 
accountable to them. And if they are not accountable to them just in 
terms of the work they do here, they are going to be accountable in the 
next election.
  But the attitude of the President is very different. As you put it, 
in an authoritarian regime, it is more like the leader believes the 
people are accountable to the leader. And, wow, what a difference that 
makes because suddenly, there is no need to worry about the healthcare 
of the people, and you can lay out legislation that does damage to the 
people but takes good care of the rich and powerful because that is the 
world you live in, and you want to help those folks, and that is just 
OK because you are not accountable.

  That is the connection we see between the authoritarian presence of 
the President, who proceeds to attack and diminish due process, free 
speech, academic freedom, free press, proceeds to weaponize the 
Department of Justice to go after his list of perceived enemies, and 
then strives to create conflict in order to send the military in to 
address a conflict and expand his authoritarian power. So that is one 
world.
  But on the other end, we have the legislation he championed. How 
could a leader accountable to the people support a bill that kicks 15 
million off healthcare in order to fund tax breaks for billionaires or 
run up 30 years of debt--$30 trillion over 30 years--to give tax breaks 
for billionaires? That debt is going to haunt us in the future in

[[Page S7665]]

terms of being able to do basic programs in healthcare, housing, 
education, infrastructure, and job creation. The answer is, because he 
is an authoritarian leader.
  That is how these two things are connected.
  These real impacts that you are talking about are so evident. Child 
nutrition programs are savaged to do tax breaks for billionaires. And 
here we are in this Republican shutdown designed to ensure that the 
cuts to healthcare continue, and there is more damage to come to 
ordinary people. States will run out of their women and children 
funding. States will run out of other basic programs. Food banks are 
going to run out of food, probably, because of the additional burden 
they are sharing.
  And not one element of the President goes: I am accountable to the 
people. I am supposed to be here driving welfare for the entire Nation. 
I can't let the healthcare double in price--as you pointed out--on 
average across the country. I can't allow a program to go into effect 
15 months from now, in January 2027, that will result in millions of 
people losing their Medicaid.
  Then, in that bill, he has a third attack on healthcare, which is to 
change the way that States can receive or develop their match. If 
States can't raise enough money to do the match, they have to really 
shrink the programs. That is another--that is like a 2028 impact.
  So it is like impact, impact, impact, savage, savage, savage the 
healthcare in multiple layers. And this is the connection between the 
authoritarian mentality and the real effects that devastate families in 
our country.
  Ms. HASSAN. Would you yield for another question, Senator?
  Mr. MERKLEY. I would love to yield.
  Ms. HASSAN. As you were talking and as I have been thinking about the 
various ways in which a true democracy delivers results for its 
people--I mentioned in my prior question the fact that we passed in 
2022 the PACT Act.
  You know, I was with a group of veterans right after we passed the 
PACT Act, and I thanked them for all the advocacy that they had done to 
get it over the finish line.
  Then we got to talking about the war in Ukraine and why it was so 
important to stand up with the Ukrainian people, who are fighting for 
the very freedom, for the very form of government that we so cherish--
our democracy. I found myself asking them a question, and I will ask it 
to you now, Senator: Would Vladimir Putin take care of his veterans the 
way the PACT Act proposes to take care of our veterans?
  What are your thoughts about that?
  Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you for posing this question which has not come up 
in the many hours I have been standing here but is very relevant to the 
question of what happens under authoritarian control and, worse, 
recognizes that Russia retained some trappings of democracy, but it is 
clearly a dictatorship, and that is the danger.
  When you have that authoritarian presence--certainly, Putin is that 
personality, and he did get the Duma basically to become the 
rubberstamp, and he did get the courts under his control, and 
everything that flows, flows out from his authoritarian presence.
  When it comes to how he views the Russians that he is sending to war, 
he says that they are expendable pawns. I mean, they were sent on 
unbelievably unsupported missions to be shredded.
  Over time, certainly the Russian military has gotten much better, but 
in those phases where he just wanted to pour people into the front, and 
enormous numbers were dying--I still think the actual number is pretty 
high per day--it was, you know--again, he is not accountable to the 
people.
  One thing he did which was very effective is control over the press 
because I expected the mothers of all those folks being sent in to be 
shredded to become a massive force, a resistible force that would shake 
the foundations of Russia. But they didn't, in part because the 
information was so dramatically controlled.
  This is these early-stage efforts to control and discourage the 
dissent or, I guess you could say, uncomplimentary programming by our 
networks or by our newspapers; the suits that have been filed against 
CBS and ABC, and they are told basically ``You have to pay off these 
suits if you want the government to do its basic function to approve 
your mergers''; and the attack on public broadcasting, the attack on 
the Wall Street Journal, and more. I mean, the list is long.
  But when an authoritarian President wants to control the press and at 
least discourage--make people think twice about challenging him--I 
mean, a $10 million suit against the Wall Street Journal? I don't know 
where that will end up, but I imagine there are folks thinking, do I 
need to be more careful in what I say in this story? Oh, my news agency 
might get kicked out of the White House briefing.
  Oh, that is another strategy--to cut off.
  So the answer is, no, I do not think the PACT Act, which said: Hey, 
our soldiers were exposed to these chemicals, and there are a lot of 
diseases that flow from that, and we should absolutely make sure they 
get treatment, and we shouldn't put them through a long list of, oh, 
maybe somehow, somewhere; you have to prove it. How do you prove that 
disease, when it probably started--how do you prove it? The PACT Act is 
a great act.
  On Ukraine, I mean here is a country that threw out a President who 
was trying to put them under the thumb of Putin. Here is a country that 
said: We are not asking you to come to fight with us, but give us some 
arms. We are fighting for our own freedom.
  This is a country that said we reject the idea of having the 
dictatorship Putin-style. We want to preserve democracy with our 
freedoms, and we are willing to die and fight for it. That is the 
American vision. That is Lady Liberty, that is the best of what we have 
in America, and the Ukrainians stood up to Russia and have done a 
phenomenal job against an extraordinarily large country with massively 
more resources, and they are still in the fight for their future and 
their freedom.
  I see my colleague from New York is here.
  Mr. SCHUMER. I had a few questions earlier this morning of my great 
colleague, and, once again, his strength, his indomitability, and his 
caring about this democracy, which we all know is at risk, is just 
amazing.
  And so my question relates to something he touched on before in his 
discussions with our great Senator from New Hampshire.
  There are so many ways this administration is trying to rip apart 
democracy, and one of them you mentioned a minute ago is the 
threatening of media to just do what Trump wants.
  And the man who is the head of the FCC seems to be an instrumentality 
of that. Trump has said: Things they say I don't like should not be put 
on the air. And they have held over the heads the broadcast licenses of 
some of our great media companies.
  In other ways, they are getting some of their friends to take over 
some of our media companies. And isn't one of the greatest blows to 
democracy, I would ask my colleague--one of the greatest blows to 
democracy is when we don't have a fully free press, and has it been a 
hallmark of so many of the countries that he has mentioned that are 
autocracies or absolute dictatorships to have no free press, so no 
information can come out, and doesn't that dramatically hurt the 
American people when government is shielded and can do whatever it 
wants and hurt as many people as it wants because you don't have a free 
press? Shouldn't it really frighten every American that this is a large 
step on the road away from democracy toward tyranny and toward 
authoritarian government?
  Mr. MERKLEY. My colleague from New York, absolutely.
  Benjamin Franklin wrote that ``whoever would overthrow the Liberty of 
a Nation, must begin by subduing the freeness of speech.''
  And I will just roll into that speech and the press. And we have seen 
what Trump has done. He sued CBS News for $10 billion because he didn't 
like the way that a program was edited on the television. There is no 
way that that suit would ever have held up in court.
  But what happened, CBS said: Hmm, we are involved in a merger, and 
that merger involves Paramount, controlling shareholder, and they 
wanted approval for a sale of Paramount to Skydance, and Paramount was 
CBS's parent company.
  So here is President Trump holding the approval of that merger over 
the

[[Page S7666]]

head of the network to get a payment for himself out of the company, 
and that was $16 million in the end, but then CBS announced it was 
canceling the ``Late Show with Stephen Colbert''--top-rated late-night 
show.
  Surprisingly, 3 weeks after CBS canceled it, the merger was completed 
between Skydance and Paramount. Trump didn't like all the things 
Colbert did to make fun of the President.
  You know, you can judge the freedom of a country by how much people 
feel they can say funny things about the President.
  And I have thought many times, I come to this floor, and I criticize 
the President of the United States. I have come to this floor and 
criticized the Democratic Presidents for things they are doing, and I 
do not leave here thinking someone is going to jump out of a car and 
grab me, throw me into a van, I am going to be disappeared or tortured. 
Yet that is so common in authoritarian settings.
  And it is so actually disturbing to me. One reason that I constantly 
raise the fact that I hate that we are seeing forces deployed across 
the United States that do not have an individual identifier because 
that makes me think about when people jump out and grab people, and 
they did this at the protest in 2020 in Portland--no label, threw them 
into vans, unmarked vans. You didn't know what the hell was going on.
  But ABC, well, ABC had their own challenge with Jimmy Kimmel, and 
there was a situation where Nexstar and Sinclair, they own dozens of 
ABC affiliates.
  So let me just say the list is long, including excluding companies or 
broadcast reporters from the White House briefings, and now, most 
recently, telling all the reporters at the Pentagon that they have to 
not ask any questions in the Pentagon or they are going to lose their 
access to be reporters of the Department of Defense.
  Mr. SCHUMER. I thank my colleague, once again, a great answer, 
freedom of the press is at risk, and if freedom of the press is at 
risk, so is our entire democracy.
  I see my colleague from Massachusetts has come, and I know she will 
have some excellent, thoughtful, and perceptive questions. So I will 
yield back to my friend.
  Mr. MERKLEY. I am so glad that you emphasized the issue of the 
freedom of press and amazingly how it is under attack in all these 
different ways here in the United States of America. It is 
unbelievable.
  And it is why I am ringing the alarm bells. The authoritarianism is 
here now. Thank you, Mr. Leader.
  And I see that my colleague from Massachusetts is here, and I would 
welcome a question, if you have one.
  Ms. WARREN. I do. Mr. President, I am seeking recognition.
  The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
  Ms. WARREN. Thank you very much. My friend Senator Jeff Merkley is 
ringing the alarm bell. He is carrying the momentum of millions of 
peaceful protesters at No Kings Day, directly onto the floor of the 
U.S. Senate for all of the spineless Republicans in Congress to see.
  I want to be clear here: Peaceful protest is patriotic. Holding the 
floor to protest the Trump administration's lawlessness is patriotic. 
Standing up for what is right, that is patriotic, and I am proud to 
join my friend, Jeff Merkley, in saying this part out loud: Donald 
Trump is not a King. He will never be a King. And America does not bow 
down to Kings.
  So thank you, Jeff, for reinvigorating that energy and bringing it to 
the floor of the Senate today and every day. You are a true patriot.
  So let's talk for just a minute about what is going on here. New 
reporting from the Wall Street Journal this morning says that the 
average cost of a family health insurance plan is now $27,000 a year. 
That is a stunner, $27,000.
  And that is after years of rising costs. The cost of healthcare is 
rising faster than inflation. Healthcare is too expensive, and families 
are barely hanging on.
  So what do we have to do? We have to protect Americans' healthcare 
and lower costs for families. Seems pretty obvious, right? Not to 
Donald Trump.
  In fact, Donald Trump and the Republicans are doing the exact 
opposite. Their genius plan was to pass legislation that would rip away 
healthcare from 15 million Americans, jack up premiums for millions 
more, force rural hospitals and community health centers to close down, 
and shut down the entire government, instead of coming to the table to 
save healthcare and lower costs.
  Now, Republicans just keep bowing down to Donald Trump. They seem to 
have lost their spines. Every one of them needs to go to the doctor and 
get a spine transplant. But instead, they are willing to make it more 
expensive for everyone else to go to the doctor.
  Make no mistake, our healthcare system is already broken, but Donald 
Trump and the Republicans are making the problem so much worse.
  Families in Massachusetts are now starting to get notices this week 
telling them that their healthcare premiums are going up next year. We 
are talking hundreds of dollars a month. Some families are seeing their 
premiums more than double; others will get priced out of their plans 
completely, leaving them with no coverage at all. And it is not just 
Massachusetts; Americans across the country are counting on us to lower 
healthcare costs, and I want to share some of their stories right now.
  From a family who gets their healthcare through the healthcare 
exchange:

       If our premium doubles, we will simply not be able to 
     afford it. Either my husband or I will have to scramble to 
     find a job with benefits in a saturated market or we will be 
     going without insurance for the time being.

  So that is the story of a family that could get kicked off their 
insurance altogether because their costs will go through the roof.
  More uninsured people mean more costs for everyone else, and that is 
a lose-lose for the American people.
  Here is another one from a teacher:

       My healthcare costs are going up by 39 percent. How do I 
     even live?

  Families across this country are asking themselves exactly the same 
question. Democrats are here right now fighting for every single one of 
those families.
  Here is a story from someone else:

       If my premiums go up, I have to cancel my insurance because 
     my check would be gone, and I have an autoimmune disease. It 
     would be over for me. How could I raise my two boys and care 
     for my parents? I am the stronghold of the family.

  That is the reminder that this kind of increase that the Republicans 
are imposing on American families, this increase in health insurance, 
it has echo effects. It is not only the person who can't afford 
insurance for themselves, it is what happens to her two children, what 
happens to her older parents that she is taking care of.
  Families hanging on by their fingernails cannot afford insurance 
premiums jumping by hundreds of dollars a month.
  Those are the families the Democrats are fighting for right this 
minute. And Republicans won't even come to the table. Republicans are 
off on vacation.
  Here is another story I received from a type 1 diabetic:

       I have an ACA plan that makes my insulin affordable. 
     Without it, my insulin would be $1,000 a month. Please don't 
     give up this fight and please continue to stand for people 
     just like me.

  We will not stop fighting for you.
  Here is another one:

       Ours will go from $1,300 monthly to $3,600 monthly. It is 
     paramount.

  Look, $1,300 monthly--$1,300 a month for healthcare is already too 
much, but this family will now have to pay nearly triple. For families 
already struggling with the rising cost of everything, they cannot 
afford to shell out extra thousands of dollars every month for 
healthcare.
  So you are hearing all of this right. Americans are struggling to get 
by, Republicans won't come to the table to fix it and end the 
government shutdown, and instead of working to lower healthcare costs 
for Americans right now, Trump is bending over backward to dig up $40 
billion to bail out his political buddy in Argentina and help out Wall 
Street hedge fund investors--$40 billion.
  So what could $40 billion do for us at home for a whole year instead? 
Well, $40 billion could stop health insurance premiums from doubling. 
It could restore food assistance for families that will be hurt by 
Trump's cuts. It would

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cancel a chunk of student loan debt for nearly 4 million borrowers. It 
would fund public media. It would restore cuts to humanitarian aid and 
USAID. And to put it in even more perspective, that $40 billion that 
Donald Trump is sending off to Argentina, it could fund childcare for 
military families for almost 20 years.
  It would fund the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to stop big 
banks and giant corporations from scamming people for almost 50 years.
  And it could pay for 100 Qatari jets, meaning one for every Governor 
of all 50 States and a backup plane for each and every one of them.
  So there you have it. Remember Trump's promise to lower costs for 
Americans on day one?

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