[Congressional Record Volume 171, Number 174 (Tuesday, October 21, 2025)]
[Senate]
[Pages S7667-S7695]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
TRUMP ADMINISTRATION
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Ricketts). The Senator from Massachusetts.
Ms. WARREN. Thank you very much.
I just want to go back to this point as I tee up the question for
Senator Merkley here, and that is, Donald Trump right now is sending
$40 billion to Argentina, and I just want to go through the list again
about what could we do with that $40 billion if we kept it right here
in the United States.
Forty billion dollars would stop health insurance premiums from
doubling. Forty billion dollars would restore food assistance for
families that will be hurt by Donald Trump's cuts. Forty billion
dollars would cancel a chunk of student loan debt for nearly 4 million
borrowers. Forty billion dollars would fund public media.
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, retaining the floor, I yield to the
question that is being posed by my colleague from Massachusetts.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts has the floor.
Ms. WARREN. I yield the floor.
Mr. MERKLEY. I yield for a question to be posed by my colleague from
Massachusetts.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon is recognized.
Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you very much, Mr. President. I see that my
colleague from Massachusetts is here and has gotten half of her
question out.
If you would like to continue the question, I would invite you to
give me a question.
Ms. WARREN. OK. I am almost there.
Am I recognized to do that, Mr. President?
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Oregon has the floor and has
yielded to you for a question.
Ms. WARREN. As I was saying, I was talking about what this $40
billion that Donald Trump is sending to Argentina could be used here at
home, and that is to stop the doubling of health insurance premiums, to
restore food assistance for families that the Trump administration is
cutting, to cancel student loan debt, to fund public media, and to
restore humanitarian aid and USAID.
To put it in a different perspective, that same $40 billion could
fund childcare for military families for nearly 20 years; it could 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--one for every Governor in the United States,
plus a spare jet for them.
So there you have it.
Remember Donald Trump's promise to lower costs for Americans on day
one? Well, instead, Donald Trump is bailing out his ``favorite
President'' and bailing out rich Wall Street investors who invested in
Argentina debt.
The American people are begging us to do something about the
skyrocketing cost of living. They are crying out for help. But Donald
Trump can't hear them over the sound of the bulldozers that are
demolishing a chunk of the White House to build his brandnew ballroom,
a $250 million ballroom--a monument to Donald Trump himself, paid for
by big corporations that are trying to suck up to the administration
for special favors.
The American people told Donald Trump to cut the cost of living.
Instead, he is cutting off part of the White House for his new
billionaires' ballroom.
Families are missing car payments, but Donald Trump is too busy
building his ballroom to notice.
The price of coffee is up nearly 30 percent, but at least Donald
Trump will have a fancy, new ballroom in the White House. The price of
coffee is up nearly 30 percent, but at least Donald Trump will have a
fancy, new ballroom where the White House is supposed to be.
Farmers are going bankrupt, but Trump is too worried about the
construction of his ballroom to help.
The cost of baby strollers--or, as Donald Trump calls them, the
things you carry babies around in--those are going up, but Trump is too
busy building his fancy ballroom to notice.
So my friend Jeff Merkley is exactly right. We are not in normal
times. All of us need to stand up, speak out, and push back.
My question for you, Senator Merkley, is, How is the fight to lower
costs for families all around this country linked to the fight against
Donald Trump's authoritarianism?
Mr. MERKLEY. I thank so much my colleague from Massachusetts for the
question of how the price of goods around the country is linked to
Trump's authoritarian undertakings. It kind of boils down to this--and
a colleague came to the floor and used this term a little while ago, a
colleague from New Hampshire. She said: In an authoritarian structure,
the authoritarian believes that the people are accountable to the
authoritarian, and in a democracy, the leader believes that the leader
is accountable to the people. That is the difference.
So if you are in a situation where you have an authoritarian for the
President, first thing they do is try to erode the checks and balances
of the constitution to concentrate more and more power in the
Executive. Of course, we see that in all kinds of ways we have been
discussing.
Then they proceed to try to change the rules for elections so they
can rig the next elections.
Then they start to attack any form of dissent--suppress freedom of
assembly, freedom of press, freedom of speech and due process. We see
that.
Then they say: Now we want to free the military. But in all of that
is this sense that the people are simply pawns for the authoritarian
President.
Then, in that setting, it becomes just fine to do a bill that savages
healthcare for the people to fund tax breaks for billionaires. It
becomes just fine to do a bill that savages child nutrition to do tax
breaks for billionaires. It becomes just fine to run up debt over the
next 30 years $30 trillion to fund tax breaks for billionaires.
That is the way the authoritarian personality is connected to the
policies that emerge from bills that authoritarian champions. They are
not bills by and for the people; they are bills by and for the
powerful.
I see that my colleague from Connecticut has come to the floor, and I
would be happy to yield if you have a question.
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. I am very grateful for the opportunity to ask a
question and for the Senator from Oregon yielding to me.
Mr. MERKLEY. I will yield, absolutely.
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. First of all, I want to thank him for his leadership,
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his fortitude, and his determination exhibited so eloquently over these
last 24 hours. He is really providing a model for all of us in standing
up and speaking out.
Let me say that after listening to the eloquent words of my colleague
from Massachusetts, that the destruction Donald Trump is doing to the
White House is emblematic of the wrecking ball he is taking to our
democracy.
Put aside the waste of money that could be used to improve our
education system, to solve food insecurity, to guarantee the election
integrity of this Nation, the damage that he is doing to this iconic
symbol of America is so costly to our image and esteem around the
world.
The White House is a symbol of America, and he is destroying a part
of it. What he intends to build as a replacement to the East Wing is a
gargantuan insult to America, and it is unfortunately emblematic of a
lot of the other destruction he is doing in so many other areas as we
watch the norms and laws that protect our great experiment in democracy
erode under his destructive action.
In some ways, it is a little bit like the frog in the pot. The water
begins to heat without our noticing it. The acts seem benign when taken
individually, but cumulatively, they will boil and destroy our
democracy.
The President has turned the Oval Office into an auction house. He
has put a ``for sale'' sign on the White House lawn. Influence and
power are the way to a quick profit, whether it is crypto or pardons or
many of the other perks of office. He is using it for his own personal
ends and weaponizing the Department of Justice against his personal
opponents, his political adversaries--a violation of basic norms of the
Department of Justice and of our democracy.
He is prosecuting political enemies in courts that he has filled with
MAGA zealots and has a Department of Justice that is run by his
personal lawyers. He is punishing constituents of Democrats by
canceling billions in Federal programs and firing dedicated public
servants during a government shutdown when he simply fails to find them
worthy.
Last week, he announced that the administration is sending $20
billion in bailout money to Argentina and perhaps another $20 billion
in private funding. What he is doing in tariffs has been eclipsed by
all the other stuff, but it hits Americans in their pocketbooks.
Groceries are skyrocketing in price. Americans are finding it more
difficult to put food on the table. Farmers are being crushed by these
tariffs as well.
Healthcare. The tax credits that make healthcare insurance affordable
to millions of Americans will end at the conclusion of this year
because he has failed to provide leadership in extending them, and that
is why the government has been shut down by Republicans--because they
have refused to agree to extend those healthcare tax credits.
But maybe most alarmingly--most alarmingly--as is visible in the
streets of Oregon, California, Chicago, Los Angeles, is the deployment
of our military, our National Guard.
The Senator from Oregon has spoken so powerfully and eloquently to
bring a critical lens to this desecration of democracy and the impact
on our military itself, because they are being used for a purpose that
goes against the fundamental purpose of our military in this country.
The Founding Fathers were deeply worried about the use of a standing
army, potentially, within the homeland, and many were opposed to a
standing army because of that concern.
So we have laws--Posse Comitatus--that forbid the use of the military
against American citizens on American soil. The health of our Republic
depends on the proper use of our military against foreign adversaries
and threats from abroad.
But the President of the United States, in effect, has decided that
he will use our National Guard as a police force, supplanting local and
State police. And the damage is done not only to institutions--which
should be supported and we should be providing more resources to local
and State Police, more training and equipment to them so they can do
the job of keeping order and maintaining our democracy--but, also, to
the military itself, which is demoralized and potentially degraded by
the misuse of these resources that are designed to support them in
countering adversaries abroad, and, of course, to the faith and trust
of Americans in the military, as they see it misused.
So I want to ask my colleague from Oregon about perhaps his personal
experience as he watches this deployment of the National Guard in his
State. How are the people of Oregon reacting to the misuse of our
National Guard? Is there faith and trust in the military affected by
the President's deployment of the National Guard in a circumstance that
a Federal judge has found is unnecessary because whatever protests have
happened in the past weeks and months have been peaceful and without
the necessity for this kind of military intervention?
Mr. MERKLEY. I really appreciate the question from my colleague. It
is quite an interesting moment right now because unless there is a
decision that has been made while I have been speaking--and that is
certainly possible due to the amount of time--there has not yet been a
decision by the district judge to dissolve the second temporary
restraining order. So the National Guard has not been federalized and
able to deploy.
But it was going to depend on what happened at midnight last night,
in which the district judge had said: I want to see if the circuit
court decides to do an en banc panel. That is a fancy way of saying,
instead of 3 judges evaluating the situation, a panel of 12 judges--the
chief judge and other judges from the Ninth Circuit, selected
randomly--would examine the decision. If that was going to happen, my
impression was she was going to hold off.
The other thing that was unfolding was that the Seventh Circuit,
putting Illinois--and Chicago has been really affected by this. The
Seventh Circuit made a decision in support of the district court there,
but that looked like it was going to the Supreme Court. And they may do
a shadow docket decision very soon, at any moment, which could also
affect what happens. So my guess is soon.
If none of those happens, my guess is that soon, in fact, the second
temporary restraining order will have been dissolved, and that will
give the ability for the National Guard to be in their mission.
I think there has been a lot of effort put into saying: These are our
Oregonians. These are our soldiers, our folks. We have gone and
supported them as they have gone on missions to Iraq and missions to
Afghanistan and missions elsewhere in the world. We go and we welcome
them home, and we think that they will have a very deep understanding
that whatever they are instructed to do, they will not deliberately do
provocative things.
The thing that would really sour the situation--I am putting up a
little picture here that I know you can't see, but it is a picture of
one of the Federal agents, not the Oregon National Guard, walking up
and spraying a protester straight in the face. She had gotten out of
the way as she was requested. She was sharing her opinion in a vocal
manner but not in the way of anything--she had moved as requested. When
people see that and other things where agents start assaulting peaceful
protesters, that is where things get dicey.
So far, the Portlanders have said this is what Trump wants. He has
almost instructed people, these other Federal agents, to come and
provoke a riot. In fact, they even staged a fake riot last week, which
was an extraordinary thing that should trouble every American.
He asked the protesters to back up several hundred yards, and they
did that without conflict. So there was no tussle. There was no
breaking the line. There was no throwing of things. They backed up. But
behind the line of the Federal agents--probably Federal Protective
Service--were videographers. The goal was to tape a fake riot. After
they had been backed up, on command, the Federal Protective Service
threw down the flash-bangs, which sound like gunfire. They threw down
tear gas with big pluming smoke that was very irritating, and they
fired pepper balls at the crowd. Well, the net result of that is the
protesters scattered while being videographed so they would look--so
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that Trump's team could say: Look, there was a riot.
I just can't believe that our government would stage a fake riot like
that. It was carefully preserved and recorded by Oregon Public
Broadcasting. So I am confident in saying what happened.
I don't think anything like that will ever happen with the Oregon
National Guard. I think they will be extraordinarily careful to execute
their mission in a professional fashion and to provide a little bit of
encouragement to protesters: Get out of the way of the car--or do
things like that.
That is my belief of our Oregon National Guard.
There is also the Oregon National Guard from California. The
President said he is going to send some from Texas. That could still be
possible. I just hope all are well-trained, and that it is a redline
that you never attack a peaceful protester.
So far, the Portland protesters decided to engage in joy and whimsy.
They have just frustrated the hell of the Trump team because they want
riots. No, there is the ``pastries and pajamas'' team, and there is the
Puppy Dogs for Peace team, a wedding taking place, a Unipiper doing the
bagpipes on his unicycle, and there are folks putting down candles on
the ground and flowers in the air and just basically doing the cha-cha
slide. I have no idea how to do that, but maybe I will learn down the
road here.
But this type of joy and whimsy has been a terrific way to respond to
Trump trying to provoke violence and failing to do so. I think the
Oregon National Guard will be extremely professional.
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. If my colleague would yield for one more quick
question.
Mr. MERKLEY. Yes, I yield for a question.
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. I think he is absolutely right to call attention to
the extraordinary professionalism of the National Guard, which,
hopefully, will avoid the provoked violence that President Trump,
unfortunately, would welcome, apparently, here. But we know that the
President has said that if the courts deny him the opportunity to
deploy the National Guard, he will consider using the military under
the Insurrection Act.
Yesterday, I came to the floor in support of reforms that I have
proposed to the Insurrection Act that would reduce the unbridled and
unchecked powers that he has right now. The Insurrection Act makes
modifications to the Posse Comitatus law in ways that potentially
provide him with unbridled authority.
My reform bill would require accountability. It would enable use of
the military in the event of a claimed rebellion or insurrection for a
limited amount of time, require the President then to come to Congress
and make the case, and Congress to approve a set of reforms that would
protect the American people against misuse of the military in the event
that he could not deploy the National Guard in this way.
I want to ask my friend from Oregon--and I believe I know the answer
because he has supported reforms in the past--whether these kinds of
reforms to the Insurrection Act are important and necessary to protect
the American people and the military itself against the kinds of misuse
of powers that could occur.
Mr. MERKLEY. The reforms that my colleague speaks of are incredibly
important because we have a standard under title 10. Under title 10,
which is the federalization of the National Guard, the standard is
there has to be a rebellion and there has to be an invasion.
A rebellion: a sizable group, well-organized, well-armed, seeking to
overthrow the government.
An invasion: a significant military force coming across to attack us.
They are well-understood terms. Even with that title 10, I am very
nervous because even though the law does not say to give deference to
the President in title 10, two of the judges said you should give
deference to the President, which I find absurd because what it means
is these standards that were crafted in legislation here--I am sure
broadly and intensely debated--and said no, it has to be a rebellion or
it has to be on the verge of a rebellion and the understanding of what
that would look like--and to say it is a rebellion just because the
President says there is one and there is nothing, like that type of
deference, that is throwing open the gates to say an authoritarian
President can roll out the military under title 10. That is scary as
hell.
The Insurrection Act, in ways, is even scarier because it does have
an explicit deference to the executive. So while it has a standard, it
says that, interpreting that standard, there should be deference. I
have read a number of analyses that say there is no way that the
Supreme Court is not going to essentially say that the President
interprets what is happening, given the language that exists there.
That was written with the belief that we would always have a capable,
responsible defender of the Constitution in the Oval Office and we
don't. So reforming that act and closing that loophole absolutely is
incredibly important to save our Republic.
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. I thank the Senator from Oregon.
I yield the floor to my other colleague from Oregon.
Mr. MERKLEY. I note that my colleague from Oregon, following proper
protocol here, has arrived on the floor. I would be happy to answer a
question, should you have one.
(Mr. SHEEHY assumed the Chair.)
Mr. WYDEN. I thank my colleague very much.
I just want to make sure, from a parliamentary standpoint, would the
Senator from Oregon yield for my question?
Mr. MERKLEY. I would be happy to yield for a question.
Mr. WYDEN. Mr. President and colleagues, I want to start by
commending my partner from Oregon, who has now been on the floor for
close to 18 hours. What he is doing is ringing the alarm bells about
authoritarianism in America. It is an important public service.
Let me begin by saying, the Wyden family certainly knows a thing or
two about watching a democracy slide towards authoritarian rule. I
wrote in my book about how the courageous women in my family, in the
face of the Nazi takeover of the German republic, recognized the very
real threat of the growing authoritarianism in Germany. They pushed the
rest of the family to recognize what was happening to their democracy
when some of the men didn't want to face reality. Because of the
vigilance of women, I am standing here today in the Senate.
Now, further, on this point, as my colleague knows, during the
protests in Portland this past weekend, Federal agents dragged a 4-
foot-6 blind man named Quinn across a driveway and detained him for
over an hour. Apparently, they thought he didn't move out of their way
fast enough. It is hard to imagine--it has been reported in
publications, in the Oregonian and the like--how anyone could see Quinn
as a threat.
As he put it: I think they wanted to make a point, so they picked the
weakest person they could find and made a big show about it.
What Donald Trump and the Vice President are offering us is, indeed,
an authoritarian playbook: Attack the weakest in order to intimidate
the rest of us. That is why it is the obligation of all Americans to
pay attention to all of the discussions on this topic and to speak out
and not yield. The American abolitionists told me that eternal
vigilance is the price of liberty to keep the powerful from stealing
from the many for the few.
Senator Merkley, I am interested in what you think Americans should
do to secure the benefits of liberty for themselves and their families
and future generations and what do you want Americans to take from your
speech today?
Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you so much to my colleague from Oregon for this
question.
It is very powerful to think about how fast the menace grew through
the Jewish community in Germany and how, if one did not recognize that
threat--and if I understood it right, the women in the family were the
ones who said: We have got to get out of here--
Mr. WYDEN. That is correct.
Mr. MERKLEY.--to save their futures and, therefore, your future.
Why? Why do we have to have a world where the powerful engage in
these assaults based on race or religion or ethnicity?
I sometimes hear Rodney King in my head--``Why can't we just all get
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along?''--after he had been badly, badly beaten.
The fact is, it seems like we have a long ways to go to erase
prejudice from our hearts, and when people gain positions of power who
carry that prejudice in their hearts, it often becomes open hatred and
amplifies the ability of others to more openly discriminate or engage
in provocative acts. So, anyway, I hope the generations to come will
find a better path.
But in your question on securing liberty, this most important
message--and I will have my team put it back up--is the alarm bells are
now. The authoritarian actions are not down the street. They are not
around the corner. They are not something to worry about 2 months from
now. They are here right now.
All the basic characteristics of authoritarian control are present at
this moment in the United States of America: stealing the power of the
purse so that the President makes decisions of what programs are
funded; taking and ignoring due process, which is our guarantee of
freedom from an authoritarian state; attacking the issue of liberty for
the press to be able to write what they want and not be compelled
through using licenses or mergers as a way to coerce them to put up
what the government wants; the President telling the universities that
they need to shape their education the way the President wants and
support his political agenda--are you kidding me?--and so forth. And
then weaponizing the Department of Justice to go after an enemies list.
So it is here now. That is the main thing. And what do Americans do
to secure liberty?--what you did on Saturday, what you did on Saturday,
with 7 million people taking to the streets. It was the largest
demonstration in the history of this country, saying: No Kings in the
United States of America. Our Presidents are not Kings. Our laws are
not suggestions, and our Constitution is not optional.
That outcry, both inside a Chamber like this but, very importantly,
in the streets, is the outcry that tells the rest of the country: This
is not OK. This is not acceptable. This is breaking the law. This is
shredding the Constitution. This is attacking our freedoms, and we the
people will reclaim our Constitution, our separation of powers, and our
freedom.
That is why the action of demonstration and the action of speaking
out are so important at this moment. It needs to work toward the next
election where people of any party, if they believe in our
Constitution, campaign and win on the basis that they are going to
secure for the next generation--our generation and the next
generation--the freedoms and the characteristics of our Constitution
and make sure this doesn't happen again.
Mr. WYDEN. Senator Merkley, you have said it very well.
It seems to me America is the last bastion of liberty in the world.
There is nowhere to flee to, no mighty republic that stands if American
democracy fails.
I want to commend my partner from Oregon for taking this
exceptionally important stand. This is a message, particularly for all
of America, and it is high time it be made on the Senate floor, and I
commend my colleague.
Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you so much to my colleague from Oregon.
And I so appreciate so many folks coming down to echo and amplify
that we have to ring the alarm bells now so the American people will be
very clear as to what is going on.
I see my colleague from Rhode Island, and I would be happy to yield
to him for a question.
Mr. REED. Will the Senator yield for a question? I think he will.
Mr. MERKLEY. I will, indeed, yield for a question.
Mr. REED. Thank you very much.
First, let me say that you are demonstrating incredible courage and
conscience today and last evening as you stand here and point out the
grave situation this country faces. You have clearly indicated--and I
believe you are right--that the direction of this administration is
toward authoritarian rule. Step by step, unfortunately, we seem to get
closer.
One of the great ironies of the administration is that President
Trump loves to sort of fake people out, if you will, while he is doing
something he doesn't like or we wouldn't like. For example, for 56
times, he has talked about the deep state, the deep state, while at the
same time it appears he might be building such a deep state.
For example, the Washington Post reported that the former chief data
officer for the Social Security Administration has said that Elon Musk
and his DOGE gang copied a mainframe database containing the personal
information of hundreds of millions of Americans, including names,
birth dates, addresses, and more. In fact, if you step back, DOGE has
pilfered information from every Federal Agency, and we are in a
situation where I believe Trump is prepared to weaponize that
information against the American people in so many different ways.
So I would just ask: Did you hear my distress that Trump could use
this information to attack his opponent? Could he use this information
to disrupt the elections in '26 as a path to further authoritarian
influence in the United States?
Mr. MERKLEY. I say to my colleague from Rhode Island that, when an
authoritarian President starts collecting data in this fashion, they
probably have a plan for it, and that plan is not going to be one to
enhance liberty for the American people.
One of the things that I am deeply concerned about--and I am not sure
if this is the same database you are referring to--is a collection of
voter registration databases--is that the same? Yes--from across the
country.
Mr. REED. If the Senator would yield?
Mr. MERKLEY. Yes, I will yield for a question.
Mr. REED. DOGE, it has been my observation, has pilfered information
from every major Federal organization, and the Social Security
Administration's former employees have indicated they have taken the
most critical files that have detailed information on every American.
I think you are right. There are only two things you can really do
with this kind of data. You sell it or you weaponize it or you do both.
The concern I think we both share is weaponization.
In addition, I believe that the administration has sought from
secretaries of state throughout the United States information about
their voting rolls, which is specifically directed perhaps at electoral
interference.
I yield the floor.
Mr. MERKLEY. I appreciate that clarification of the question.
It is absolutely concerning. You can imagine the many ways in which
it can be weaponized. Any hostile agent from outside the United States
can use that data in all kinds of ways. What happens if, suddenly, your
Social Security benefits aren't there or the files regarding your
disability benefits or your age and birth records? Who all knows what
can disappear or be modified? Banking records are possibly included if
you had banking transactions to pay your taxes. It could be incredible
amounts of stuff.
We have had fairly protective practices of these databases, which is
why, when DOGE went in with laptops, there was a lot of resistance.
Some people who provided that resistance got moved aside physically to
enable DOGE to access.
Then there is this other database effort, which is the voting
registration database effort and the idea of collecting that. They have
been pushing the secretaries of state. Many States have said no, and
they are going to court; they are resisting. Well, thank goodness they
are because a national registration voter database can be used just
like a State can purge names from it, which several States have done,
saying: Oh, these names look the same. Maybe it is like you have two
Jack Ryans or, more commonly, it is done to Hispanic names, where they
say: Hey, there is the same name in Georgia as there is in Mississippi,
so we will purge this name.
I mean, it is hostile purging, and people don't know that they are no
longer registered until they go to the polls to vote, and then it is
often too late. So I am very, very concerned.
I want our States to maintain their own independent voting
registration databases because that would be a phenomenal way to
manipulate the next election.
I used to--and I say ``used to.'' Months ago, in February, people in
my
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townhalls would say: Aren't you worried about an effort to postpone the
next election or declare an emergency?
And I would say: No. I just can't imagine that taking place.
Now, I can imagine that taking place because we have seen emergency
measures abused. We have seen the President assume powers he does not
have. For example, tariff power is not delegated to the President. It
has always been done by law here in this Chamber and down the Hall.
So when the President is that authoritarian--taking powers the law
doesn't grant, arguing it in court, and the court giving him more
power; and his consolidating information on voting, I am very, very
worried about that.
I want to encourage the secretaries of state in every State, whether
you are in a blue State or a red State, to hold onto your data, protect
it, back it up, double secure it, and tell the Feds to keep their hands
off.
Mr. REED. Well, I concur.
If I may raise one additional question?
Mr. MERKLEY. Yes, I will yield for a question.
Mr. REED. You have seen firsthand what is happening in Portland. It
is outrageous. The situation has been completely distorted by the
President to suggest that there is major civil upheaval. That is not
the case at all from the reports I have heard.
His also suggesting that military personnel can enforce the laws of
the United States violates the Posse Comitatus Act, which has been a
barrier to police powers by the military since the 1870s.
I assume, like myself, you are particularly disturbed that he is,
again, not only weaponizing data, but he is weaponizing our military
forces to go in and carry out civil wars.
Your comments?
Mr. MERKLEY. Yes. In regard to your question, I am extremely worried
about the Trump administration's effort to pave the path with the
courts and with the discipline of the military and have them in the
practice of being deployed to, if you will, in theory, quell unrest.
But the law on title 10 is very clear. You need to have a rebellion,
or you need to have an invasion, and it is very clear you don't have
either of those. Even then, two judges on the three-judge panel on this
court said: Well, let's kind of give a little more flexible definition
of ``rebellion,'' and by the way, maybe you can give more deference to
the President's evaluation. After all, they run the building.
Once you say the President can simply declare there is a rebellion,
then the standard set in law means nothing. You are just throwing open
the doors to an authoritarian President who is deploying troops against
the American people.
We have already seen, with the provocative actions of assaults on
peaceful protesters, how dangerous that is. And, then, of course, the
Insurrection Act, as an exception to Posse Comitatus, is extremely
scary because it explicitly has in the law a certain interpretation by
the President, or deference to interpretation by the President. The
core assumption was that a person in that position would always be a
person who had high regard for the Constitution and for the boundaries
and for the liberties and for the freedom and would defend it with
their whole heart, mind, and soul. But that is not a person we have in
the Oval Office today.
So I do support efforts that a number of folks--and I believe you
might be well involved in--are striving to plug some of those loopholes
so that that power does not get deployed.
Mr. REED. Thank you very much, Senator.
Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you.
I note that we have a Senator from Wisconsin. I would be happy to
yield for a question, if she had one.
Ms. BALDWIN. Will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. MERKLEY. I will happily yield. Thank you.
Ms. BALDWIN. Thank you.
Senator Merkley, you and I are both members of the Senate
Appropriations Committee.
I have a question for you about how critical a functioning Congress
and a functioning appropriations process is to our separation of
powers, our checks and balances, and, therefore, to our very democracy.
The Federal Government is currently shut down because Republicans who
control the House, the Senate, and the White House are hell-bent on
raising healthcare costs for the American people. In fact, 22 million
Americans are about to see their health insurance costs potentially
double, triple, or more. And the only way for us to get out of this
mess is for Democrats and Republicans to sit down together and
negotiate a solution.
So far, Republicans refuse to come to the table. The House has been
out of session for over a month--out of town--and President Trump is
leaving the country, again, at the end of this week.
The longer this Trump shutdown continues, it appears more likely that
our Republican colleagues will totally give up Congress's power, which,
of course, is the power of the people in the government-funding
process.
In fact, this morning, reporters are circulating the Capitol,
speculating that Congress will give up on passing fiscal year 2026
appropriations bills and instead attempt to pass a full-year continuing
resolution. This would be a failure on the part of the House and the
Senate majority, controlled by Republicans. And, really, it would be a
failure on the part of President Donald Trump. It would be a failure
that undermines one of Congress's core democratic functions: setting
priorities through the power of the purse.
So my question for you, as you hold the floor to shine a light on the
ways in which this President continues to undermine our democracy and
disregard the Constitution: How is Donald Trump undermining Congress
through his attacks on the bipartisan appropriations process? And when
he does that and the majority--the Republicans in Congress--allow this
to happen, how do the American people lose?
Mr. MERKLEY. I so appreciate the question from my colleague from
Wisconsin.
Part of the discussion earlier was you can detect a difference
between a democracy and an authoritarian government in the following
fashion: Are the decisions about which programs are funded, how they
will operate, and how they are funded decided by the Congress or by the
President? That is the power of the purse, and it is so clearly laid
out by our Founders that you put it in Congress's hands because if you
put it in the President's hands, you have a strongman--1 person, not
100 people in this Chamber bringing their diverse life experiences,
their knowledge, their particular interests, and saying these things
are important to our various parts of the country. You just have one
man from New York deciding what is important, one man who hangs out
with a group of billionaires deciding what is important.
So an incredibly essential distinction between a democracy and an
authoritarian government is the decisions about the programs, their
design, and their funding are made by Congress.
What we have seen is that the President and his head of Office of
Management and Budget, Russell Vought, are attempting to take that
power out of the hands of Congress and have the President decide which
programs are funded and how much.
Every time you hear the President say: I canceled these grants
because they are out of sync with the priorities of the President, that
is an authoritarian statement because it is not the President's
prerogative to decide how to spend that money; it is the power of the
people, through their elected representatives in the House and Senate.
Then, in addition, Mr. Vought has coordinated a series of strategies
to essentially cancel programs by slow-walking the disbursal of funds;
by freezing the funds; by impounding the funds; by delaying until the
end of the year and then submitting a request to legislatively have the
funds undone but then the clock runs out on the year, and poof, the
funds disappear. He has a fancy name for it: a pocket rescission. But
think of it more like the carriage in ``Cinderella'' that hits
midnight, and poof, the carriage is gone, and you only have a pumpkin.
In this case, we only have a lump of coal when we hit the end of the
year.
Then there is a requirement under the law for the President to lay
out an expenditure schedule so that we can see whether or not funds are
being delayed, or frozen, impounded, and so forth, and that schedule
has disappeared. That website has been shut
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down. So the President is hiding, and contrary to the law, what is
required so that we can protect the prerogatives of our Constitution.
These are the ways the President is directly attacking the power of
the purse and trying to turn this--this is one of the ways. He is doing
a whole series of other things, in attacks on freedom, on weaponization
of the Department of Justice to go after enemies, sending the military
into the streets. But this is a key one in terms of the checks and
balances of our Constitution. He is trying to take the power of the
purse and has made substantial progress in doing so.
Ms. BALDWIN. Thank you.
Mr. MERKLEY. I see my colleague from Hawaii has arrived, and should
she have a question--
Ms. HIRONO. Yes. Would my colleague yield for a question?
Mr. MERKLEY. I would be happy to yield.
Ms. HIRONO. First of all, I commend you for holding the floor to
raise issues of such concern to the American people.
I want to focus my question on the corruption of the Trump regime.
This corruption is rampant and unending, from making untold sums off
meme coins to the latest outrage, demanding that the Department of
Justice pay him more than $200 million. That is taxpayers' money that
he wants to get his hands on. We have a President putting his financial
interests before the best interests of the American people.
This is the classic Trump playbook: using the power of his office to
make a profit at the expense of the American people and as a
distraction from the chaos and cruelty that he is sowing every single
day. It is classic authoritarianism, using the tools of government to
enrich himself, reward his friends, and punish his enemies.
So I am asking my colleague: What kind of threat does this blatant
corruption pose to our democracy, our institutions, and on the American
people?
Mr. MERKLEY. If the Senator from Hawaii will repeat the last sentence
of her question, I would appreciate it.
Ms. HIRONO. Certainly.
So the rampant corruption of this regime, what kind of threat does
this blatant corruption pose to our democracy, our institutions, and
the American people?
Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you so much for the question.
When I hear that word ``corruption''--and I admit, I am starting to
feel a little dazed after these many hours on the floor--my head goes,
first, to the financial corruption of the President, but there are
always other forms of corruption he has engaged in, in terms of
corrupting the basic balance of the separation of powers and the checks
and balances. But let me speak, first, to the financial corruption.
One thing that we have seen is that he is using the Presidency to
enrich himself and his companies and his family.
The most blatant example of this is when he said: I have this product
that I want people to buy. I am going to hold a competition, and the
people who buy the most of this product, a crypto coin, would be
invited to a very special dinner at my golf club, where I will be
present, and you will have access to me.
So he sold access to the Presidency to the people who bought the most
of his crypto coins. In that case, it was a meme coin, and that means,
basically, the coin is a collectible. It basically has no value.
But then he engaged in another form of crypto corruption, and that
involved saying: We are going to have a stablecoin. And a stablecoin
means you give me a dollar, and I give you a crypto token that you can
use in international transactions.
Then there was a transaction involving--I believe; I hope I still
have this right--the United Arab Emirates. They basically bought
several billion dollars of these coins. What happens then is that the
President can hold those dollars until the coins are redeemed and
benefit from the interest earned on those several billion dollars.
Meanwhile, there was a desire by the foreign government to get access
to highly capable AI chips. The answer was, no, we are not doing that.
But then after they bought all these coins and enriched the President
of the United States, well, then the President said: Let's give them
the coins; let's give them these advanced chips.
So, certainly, the smoke, and I would say even the flame, of selling
access and favors out of the Presidency is now to the tune of having
made billions of dollars in the roughly 9 months that he has been in
office.
I would be happy to yield for another question if you were talking
about a different type of corruption.
I yield--I don't yield yet because I have to do this protocol right.
I see my colleague from New Hampshire is on the floor, and I would
welcome a question, if you have one.
Mrs. SHAHEEN. Will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. MERKLEY. Yes, I will yield for a question.
Mrs. SHAHEEN. I am normally your seatmate, but I thought it might be
easier if we talked this way.
Mr. MERKLEY. Absolutely.
Mrs. SHAHEEN. So I am down here in a different place than I usually
am to ask a question.
But I want you to know how much I and all of your colleagues
appreciate your standing up for democracy because we are in a pivotal
moment, as you said, not just in this country but globally.
I know that you care about not just what is happening domestically in
the United States, but you also care about what is happening in the
world because you and I serve on the Foreign Relations Committee
together.
I just came from a meeting with NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte,
who shared that Europeans are now spending more on defense than the
United States for the first time since President Eisenhower. And they
are working together to strengthen sanctions against Putin and his
bloodthirsty gangs who are wreaking havoc on Ukraine and Europe.
I have some good news that I wanted to share with you from the
Foreign Relations Committee this morning, since you weren't able to be
with us, and it applies to what is happening in Ukraine and Europe--
because this morning, in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, the
committee considered three bipartisan bills to address Russia's
continued, expanding aggression--for the first time in this Congress.
So the first time since the beginning of the year, we have actually
taken action in the Foreign Relations Committee, action that you
supported with your proxy votes--and I appreciate that--to take action
against Russia's aggression in Ukraine.
One bill will designate Russia as a state sponsor of terrorism
because of what they have done to kidnap Ukrainian children. One will
stop Chinese entities from supporting Russia's brutal war machine
against Ukraine. And the final one will authorize a continued quarterly
transfer of Russia's foreign assets that have been seized in the United
States to support Ukraine.
So I think--all of these bills passed. They were bipartisan. They
passed unanimously out of the committee. And I think it is a critical
time in history for this Congress to be taking a stand on Ukraine.
So, Senator Merkley, given this important moment in history, what
more can we do in the Senate to support our allies and to protect the
Ukrainians from further bloodshed from Vladimir Putin?
Mr. MERKLEY. I so much appreciate the good report and question from
my colleague from New Hampshire and appreciate her leadership on the
Foreign Relations Committee as the top Democrat, working hard to
partner across the aisle for the common cause of international
security.
Every time I think about Ukraine, I think about how fiercely,
including in the Orange Revolution, in which they did so much to say:
No, we will not be taken over by Russia; we will not be put under the
thumb of Russia by one of our Presidents. They have said: We see the
system to our north where there is no freedom, where people are not in
charge of their own destiny because they are ruled by a dictator, and
we reject that and will fight with our lives--and so many have, in
fact, perished on the battlefield--to defend our freedom.
That inspires me every time I think about it.
At the moments in which President Trump has been less supportive of
[[Page S7673]]
Ukraine and more supportive of Russia, I have tried to send him magical
vibes--no--understand the difference between standing with a nation
fighting for freedom and snuggling up with a dictator. We are a light
to the world when we fight for democracy and support democracy.
So I am really pleased to hear about these three bills passing, and I
hope that other factors can be worked up in the international community
that will help slow down the Russian war machine. They are an
incredibly large country, and they have built huge factories to produce
cruise missiles, and so, nightly, Ukraine is hammered with hundreds
now. So it just means more resolve by the United States, more resolve
by Europe.
I am surprised to hear that the Europeans collectively are spending
more on defense than the United States. If that had been a trivia
question, I would have failed. But there it is, and that certainly has
been partly to recognize the threat from Russia.
If Russia is willing to slice off a piece of Georgia, as they were in
2008, I believe; if they are willing to throw thousands of soldiers
into a fight with Ukraine really with no consideration--I mean, it is
just like fodder to the war machine. And then we are seeing that they
are overflying some of the other European countries. And these are
incredibly provocative.
So I think all of that goes toward hopefully forging a unity of
purpose between Europe and the United States.
Something you may not know--one of the skeletons in my closet is I
spent a rotation working at NATO in Brussels when we were trying to
develop a treaty for intermediate-range missiles because of the nuclear
threats, to stabilize the threats, in the middle of the 1980s. The
United States and Europe worked so closely together. That is the type
of partnership--it is the type of partnership that has taken some hits
in the last few years. We want to restore that vision of that careful,
detailed, determined coordination so that we advance the best
strategies. And, of course, battlefield strategies are also changing
dramatically as we go--being able to adjust to this changing world.
So that is my hope, that building on the work the committee did
today--and hopefully those bills will be here on the floor, and
hopefully they will be on the President's desk--that we can continue to
strive to a peaceful conclusion with security for Ukraine and not allow
the war machine of Russia to overwhelm it.
Mrs. SHAHEEN. Thank you.
Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, for the first time in several hours, I
don't have a colleague who is asking me a question, and so I am going
to return to the conversation that I was holding forth on regarding the
Department of Justice.
I have here this page called ``Justice Connection, Urgent Message
from Recent DOJ Alumni Decrying Attacks on Justice Department.'' I
believe I asked unanimous consent to have this put in the Record, but
if I did not, I am asking it now.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sheehy). Without objection, it is so
ordered.
Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you very much, Mr. President.
Here is how that reads:
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.
Well, that is a powerful letter from these 292 former career
employees of the Department of Justice.
I was very struck about the phrase that says: ``We call on Congress
to exercise its oversight responsibilities.''
That came up about an hour ago, in one of the conversations, that we
could do so much more and we should try to be partnering with our
Republican colleagues to provide that essential function of oversight.
That is one of the checks and balances, and we should be deeply engaged
in making it as effective as possible because here is quite a list of
the things going wrong with the Department of Justice.
These things beg for hearings to be held, for issues to be
understood, for the press to be able to report, for solutions to be
able to be found, for lines that prevent unacceptable conduct to be
clearly delineated.
But that can't happen unless Congress exercises its oversight
ability.
OK. We have Chapter 8. So we are headed back to the book, and the
book is this book, ``How Democracies Die.'' And with each chapter, I am
trying to give some sense of the chapter but not every element of it.
So I will read some of the pages, maybe scan through some others, and
try to address a few of the issues that I will raise.
This particular chapter addresses President Trump's first year in his
first administration, and it is titled: Trump's first year: an
authoritarian report card. So remember this was just his first year in
office. We are now in his fifth year in office, headed toward his sixth
year in office, and we have seen such an acceleration. So the items
identified in the first year, well, we may well see that they become
more serious over time.
Donald Trump's first year in office followed a familiar
script. Like Alberto Fujimori, Hugo Chavez, and Recep Tayyip
Erdogan, America's new president began his tenure by
launching blistering rhetorical attacks on his opponents. He
called the media the ``enemy of the American people,''
questioned judges' legitimacy, and threatened to cut federal
funding to major cities. Predictably, these attacks triggered
dismay, shock, and anger across the political spectrum.
[[Page S7674]]
Journalists found themselves at the front lines, exposing--
but also provoking--the president's norm-breaking behavior. A
study by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and
Public Policy found that the major news outlets were
``unsparing'' in their coverage of the Trump administration's
first hundred days. Of news reports with a clear tone, the
study found, 80 percent were negative--much higher than under
Clinton (60 percent), George W. Bush (57 percent), and Obama
(41 percent).
Soon, Trump administration officials were feeling besieged.
Not a single week went by in which press coverage wasn't at
least 70 percent negative. And amid swirling rumors about the
Trump campaign's ties to Russia, a high profile special
counsel, Robert Mueller, was appointed to oversee
investigations into the case. Just a few months into his
presidency, President Trump faced talk of impeachment. But he
retained the support of his base, and like other elected
demagogues, he doubled down. He claimed his administration
was beset by powerful establishment forces, telling graduates
of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy that ``no politician in
history, and I say this with great surety, has been treated
worse or more unfairly.'' The question, then, was how Trump
would respond. Would an outsider president who considered
himself to be under unwarranted assault lash out, as happened
in Peru and Turkey?
President Trump exhibited clear authoritarian instincts
during his first year in office. In Chapter 4, we presented
three strategies by which elected authoritarians seek to
consolidate power: capturing the referees, sidelining the key
players, and rewriting the rules to tilt the playing field
against opponents. Trump attempted all three of these
strategies.
President Trump demonstrated striking hostility toward the
referees--law enforcement, intelligence, ethics agencies, and
the courts. Soon after his inauguration, he sought to ensure
that the heads of U.S. intelligence agencies, including the
FBI, the CIA, and the National Security Agency, would be
personally loyal to him, apparently in the hope of using
these agencies as a shield against investigations into his
campaign's Russia ties. During his first week in office,
President Trump summoned FBI Director James Comey to a one-
on-one dinner in the White House in which, according to
Comey, the president asked for a pledge of loyalty. He later
reportedly pressured Comey to drop investigations into his
recently departed national security director, Michael Flynn,
pressed Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and
CIA Director Mike Pompeo to intervene in Comey's
investigation, and personally appealed to Coats and NSA head
Michael Rogers to release statements denying the existence of
any collusion with Russia (both refused).
President Trump also tried to punish or purge agencies that
acted with independence. Most prominently, he dismissed Comey
after it became clear that Comey could not be pressured into
protecting the administration and was expanding its Russia
investigation. Only once in the FBI's eighty-two-year history
had a president fired the bureau's director before his ten-
year term was up--and in that case, the move was in response
to clear ethical violations and enjoyed bipartisan support.
The Comey firing was not President Trump's only assault on
referees who refused to come to his personal defense. Trump
had attempted to establish a personal relationship with
Manhattan-based U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, whose
investigations into money laundering reportedly threatened to
reach Trump's inner circle; when Bharara, a respected
anticorruption figure, continued the investigation, the
president removed him. After Attorney General Jeff Sessions
recused himself from the Russia investigation and his deputy,
Rod Rosenstein, appointed the respected former FBI Director
Robert Mueller as special counsel to oversee the
investigation, Trump publicly shamed Sessions, reportedly
seeking his resignation. White House lawyers even launched an
effort to dig up dirt on Mueller, seeking conflicts of
interest that could be used to discredit or dismiss him. By
late 2017, many of Trump's allies were openly calling on him
to fire Mueller, and there was widespread concern that he
would soon do so.
So in this section, we are hearing about all of the attacks on the
referees during Trump's--and this is just a classic part of an
authoritarian government--attack the referees. And, of course, we saw
it in year five, this year. Immediately, Trump took out special
investigators of the various Agencies and did so in order to make sure
that there wasn't the type of oversight that would point out to the
public or to Congress where things were going wrong.
Take out the referees--that is the authoritarian strategy being laid
out here.
President Trump's efforts to derail independent
investigations evoked the kind of assaults on the referees
routinely seen in less democratic countries--for example, the
dismissal of Venezuelan Prosecutor General Luisa Ortega, a
chavista appointee who asserted her independence and began to
investigate corruption and abuse in the Maduro government.
Although Ortega's term did not expire until 2021 and she
could be legally removed only by the legislature (which was
in opposition hands), the government's dubiously elected
Constituent Assembly sacked her in August 2017.
President Trump also attacked judges who ruled against him.
After Judge James Robart of the Ninth Circuit of the U.S.
Court of Appeals blocked the administration's initial travel
ban, Trump spoke of ``the opinion of this so-called judge,
which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our
country.'' Two months later, when the same court temporarily
blocked the withholding of federal funds from sanctuary
cities, the White House denounced the judgment as an attack
on the rule of law by an ``unelected judge.'' Trump himself
responded by threatening to break up the Ninth Circuit.
The president took an indirect swipe at the judiciary in
August 2017 when he pardoned the controversial former Arizona
sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of violating a federal
court order to stop racial profiling. Arpaio was a political
ally and a hero to many of Trump's anti-immigrant supporters.
As we noted earlier, the chief executive's constitutional
power to pardon is without limit, but presidents have
historically exercised it with great restraint, seeking
advice from the Justice Department and never issuing pardons
for self-protection or political gain. President Trump boldly
violated these norms.
Not only did he not consult the Justice Department, but the
pardon was clearly political--it was popular with his base.
The move reinforced fears that the President would eventually
pardon himself and his inner circle--something that was
reportedly explored by his lawyers. Such a move would
constitute an unprecedented attack on judicial independence.
As constitutional scholar Martin Redish put it, ``If the
president can immunize his agents in this manner, the courts
will effectively lose any meaningful authority to protect
constitutional rights against invasion by the executive
branch.''
This discussion over pardoning himself and the risk it creates of
misbehavior is an interesting prelude to the fact that, essentially,
the Supreme Court pardoned Trump, saying that the President cannot
commit a crime. If he can't commit a crime, then you can do whatever
and you don't have to be pardoned because you haven't committed a
crime. So the Supreme Court essentially gave him the same protection
and created the same risk for an authoritarian state that Trump
pardoning himself would have resulted in.
The administration responded by launching attacks on the
OGE.
Office of Government Ethics.
House Oversight Chair Jason Chaffetz, a Trump ally, even
hinted at an investigation of Shaub. In May, administration
officials tried to force the OGE to halt investigations into
the White House's appointment of ex-lobbyists. Alternately
harassed and ignored by the White House, Shaub resigned,
leaving behind what journalist Ryan Lizza called a ``broken''
OGE.
President Trump's behavior toward the courts, law
enforcement and intelligence bodies, and other independent
agencies was drawn from an authoritarian playbook. He openly
spoke of using the Justice Department and the FBI to go after
Democrats, including Hillary Clinton. And in late 2017, the
Justice Department considered nominating a special counsel to
investigate Clinton. Despite its purges and threats, however,
the administration could not capture the referees. Trump did
not replace Comey with a loyalist, largely because such a
move was vetoed by key Senate Republicans. Likewise, Senate
Republicans resisted Trump's efforts to replace Attorney
General Sessions. But the president had other battles to
wage.
I think this is an important moment to remember that back in 2017,
colleagues across the aisle played a role of reason in pushing back on
some of the unacceptable things that Trump was trying to do.
They protected Comey. As it said:
Trump did not replace Comey with a loyalist, largely
because such a move was vetoed by key Senate Republicans.
Likewise, Senate Republicans resisted Trump's efforts to
replace Attorney General Sessions.
Early in the conversation, we were talking about the importance of
one of the checks and balances of the Constitution, which is for the
Senate and the House to hold hearings on what is going on.
When I read the two-page letter from the 283, I believe it was, 282
former career employees at the Department of Justice, they laid out a
host of things that are going wrong. It is essentially an invitation:
Please hold hearings because a lot of bad stuff is happening inside the
Department of Justice.
So I encourage colleagues on both sides of the aisle who serve on the
Judiciary Committee to take them up on that invitation, to bring these
former members and others to share what is going on, because that is
our responsibility under the Constitution, to provide that type of
spotlight, insight, and
[[Page S7675]]
hopefully advice to help the administration, well, more effectively and
legally pursue the enhancement of the American system of justice.
Of course, this whole litany of the way Trump attacked the referees
was a prelude to the absolute assault on the referees that occurred
during this year in such a systematic fashion, in such an expanded
fashion.
The Trump administration also mounted efforts to sideline
key players in the political system. President Trump's
rhetorical attacks on critics in the media are an example.
His repeated accusations that outlets such as the New York
Times and CNN were dispensing ``fake news'' and conspiring
against him look familiar to any student of authoritarianism.
In a February 2017 tweet, he called the media the ``enemy of
the American people,'' a term that, critics noted, mimicked
one used by Stalin and Mao. Trump's rhetoric was often
threatening. A few days after his ``enemy of the people''
tweet, Trump told the Conservative Political Action
Committee:
I love the First Amendment; nobody loves it better than me.
Nobody. . . . But as you saw throughout the entire campaign,
and even now, the fake news doesn't tell the truth. . . . I
say it doesn't represent the people. It never will represent
the people, and we're going to do something about it.
Do what, exactly? The following month, President Trump
returned to his campaign pledge to ``open up the libel
laws,'' tweeting that the New York Times had ``disgraced the
media world. Gotten me wrong for two solid years. Change
libel laws?'' When asked by a reporter whether the
administration was really considering such changes, White
House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said, ``I think that's
something we've looked at.'' Ecuadorian President Rafael
Correa used this approach. His multimillion-dollar defamation
suits and jailing of journalists on charges of defamation had
a powerfully chilling effect on the media. Although Trump
dropped the libel issue, he continued his threats. In July,
he retweeted an altered video clip made from old WWE footage
of him tackling and then punching someone with a CNN logo
superimposed on his face.
President Trump also considered using government regulatory
agencies against unfriendly media companies. During the 2016
campaign, he had threatened Jeff Bezos, the owner of the
Washington Post and Amazon, with antitrust action, tweeting:
``If I become president, oh do they have problems.'' He also
threatened to block the pending merger of Time Warner (CNN's
Parent company) and AT&T, and during the first months of his
presidency, there were reports that White House advisors
considered using the administration's antitrust authority as
a source of leverage against CNN. And finally, in October
2017, Trump attacked NBC and other networks by threatening to
``challenge their license.''
This was written in 2018, but you see the strategies as they are
reporting on January 2017 through January 2018. You see how the
strategies were being explored that have been so fiercely pursued this
year. You see that here he was threatening a merger, which is something
he did with CBS. You see that here he was threatening libel law
changes. And while he didn't do that, apparently, what he did in the
most recent year was to do a lawsuit, a $10 billion lawsuit against the
Wall Street Journal because he didn't like something that they said. He
also attacked, of course, ``60 Minutes'' over how they edited an
interview with Kamala Harris.
So the strategy of attacking the press in 2017 continues with Trump
reentering office in 2025.
And finally, in October 2017, Trump attacked NBC and other
networks by threatening to ``challenge their license.''
There was one area in which the Trump administration went
beyond threats to try to use the machinery of government to
punish critics. During his first week in office, President
Trump signed an executive order authorizing federal agencies
to withhold funding from ``sanctuary cities'' that refused to
cooperate with the administration's crackdown on undocumented
immigrants. ``If we have to,'' he declared in February 2017,
``we'll defund.'' The plan was reminiscent of the Chavez
government's repeated moves to strip opposition-run city
governments of their control over local hospitals, police
forces, ports, and other infrastructure. Unlike the
Venezuelan president, however, President Trump was blocked by
the courts.
Although President Trump has waged a war of words against
the media and other critics, those words have not (yet) led
to action. No journalists have been arrested, and no media
outlets have altered their coverage due to pressure from the
government. Trump's efforts to tilt the playing field to his
advantage have been more worrying. In May 2017, he called for
changes in what he called ``archaic'' Senate rules, including
the elimination of the filibuster, which would have
strengthened the Republican majority at the expense of the
Democratic minority. Senate Republicans did eliminate the
filibuster for Supreme Court nominations, clearing the way
for Neil Gorsuch's ascent to the Court, but they rejected the
idea of doing away with it entirely.
Now, that topic is something I know a little bit about, having
immersed myself in exploration of the ins and outs of the filibuster.
And one may wonder why the Senate Republican majority did not proceed
to eliminate the filibuster. Well, here is the reason why: Mostly, my
Republican colleagues do their policy through tax bills. Tax bills can
be done through reconciliation, and reconciliation is a simple majority
mechanism. So, therefore, they largely don't need to dump the
filibuster because they can do their policy by simple majority already.
You saw that this year with the so-called Big Beautiful Bill that we
called the ``Big Ugly Betrayal,'' done solely on a party line, and if I
recall right, all of us in the 53-to-47 Senate--I think we ended up
with a 50-50 vote broken by the Vice President. So it passed by the
narrowest of margins, but it was done entirely on simple majority by
one party.
Meanwhile, Democrats tend to like policy ideas, and policy ideas
require a supermajority. So if you are a Republican leader, you can
pursue your objectives by simple majority through the tax bill, and
then when you are the minority, you can block the Democrats' policy
bills using the supermajority requirement.
So it is essentially: Heads, we win; tails, you lose. That is a
pretty good arrangement. Who would want to mess with that?
Now, Trump didn't understand that. I am sure if he was asked, he
couldn't explain it. But that is why it doesn't make sense for
Republicans to get rid of the filibuster, because it is inherently
advantageous for them, given the difference in how Democrats and
Republicans pursue bills.
Perhaps the most antidemocratic initiative yet undertaken
by the Trump administration is the creation of the
Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity,
chaired by Vice President Mike Pence but run by Vice Chair
Kris Kobach. To understand its potential impact, recall that
the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts prompted a massive
shift in party identification: The Democratic Party became
the primary representative of minority and first- and second-
generation immigrant voters, while GOP voters remained
overwhelmingly white. Because the minority share of the
electorate is growing, these changes favor the Democrats, a
perception that was reinforced by Barack Obama's 2008
victory, in which minority turnout rates were unusually high.
Every now and then, we see the parties flip on a significant issue.
That is always kind of an interesting question to explore how that
happens.
So here is the Republican Party that was founded, antislavery--the
Republican party that fought for civil rights bills against the
Southern Democrats who resisted civil rights bills, including
filibustering them to keep them from happening. So you would think that
in that situation, once civil rights were actually conveyed by the
Voting Rights Act, it might be the Republican Party that quickly
absorbed the new voters, since the Republican Party had been the
premiere champion for civil rights. But that is not the way it worked
out.
The Democratic Party, with Johnson, took the lead in overturning the
bans on voting participation by minority Americans. The Democratic
Party, although being the party that had long oppressed and suppressed
civil rights, became the party that pushed through the 1964 Civil
Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. And it is the Democratic
Party, despite its long history of suppressing civil rights, that
became the welcoming party for newly-enfranchised minority voters.
Another interesting flip, in my mind, is on international trade. When
I came to the Senate, it was primarily Republicans who wanted the
Trans-Pacific Partnership. In fact, it was very important trading
strategy for very powerful companies. And it was mostly Democrats who
opposed it--not purely, but that was certainly the weight.
But then Trump, when he ran for President the first time, he started
advocating against the TPP and started advocating for bringing
factories back to America, including using tariffs to make American
factories more competitive. And so the Republican Party, after his
election, became the party that was driving against the TPP, and it was
more the Democrats who still had folks who were supporting it--anyway,
another flip worthy of thinking about as, over time, special events
take place that change the direction.
[[Page S7676]]
The first special event was the passage of the 1964 and 1965 bills,
led by Democrats that converted the anti-civil rights party into the
pro-civil rights party. And the flip on the Trans-Pacific Partnership
being driven by Trump's effort as a Republican candidate to become an
opponent of the TPP, rather than the traditional position of
Republicans to be for it.
Perceiving a threat, some Republican leaders came up with a
response that evoked memories of the Jim Crow South: make it
harder for low-income minority citizens to vote. Because poor
minority voters were overwhelmingly Democratic, measures that
dampened turnout among such voters would . . . tilt the
playing field in favor of Republicans. This would be done via
strict voter identification laws--requiring, for example,
that voters present a valid driver's license or other
government-issued photo ID upon arrival at the polling
station.
The push for voter ID laws was based on a false claim: that
voter fraud is widespread in the [U.S.] All reputable studies
have concluded that levels of such fraud in this country are
low.
Mr. KELLY. Will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. MERKLEY. I see the Senator from Arizona on the floor, and, yes, I
would yield for a question.
Mr. KELLY. Senator Merkley, I appreciate everything you are doing to
highlight the many ways that this President has been undermining the
Constitution and the rule of law.
We have now experienced about 9\1/2\ months of this Presidency, and I
am going to ask you a question about one thing in particular, and it is
about the U.S. military and the leadership of the U.S. military.
But I want to kind of set the stage here a little bit. The United
States has the most lethal military in the history of the world. The
President presiding right now has experienced that as a U.S. Navy SEAL,
I myself as a pilot flying off of an aircraft carrier in the first gulf
war. No nation--at least today--matches the combat capability, the
professionalism, the effectiveness of the U.S. Navy, Air Force, Army,
Marine Corps, and now Space Force. And I will include the Coast Guard,
too, because we like to count the Coast Guard, especially when they
partnered with us on things that really mattered to the United States.
You know, one of those that I would like to discuss, where we should
see more involvement from the Coast Guard, is what we are currently
seeing in the Caribbean with regards to drug trafficking, which is a
problem and presents a clear and present danger to the citizens of this
country, and it is something we need to do more about.
I was on one of the cable shows last night, talking about this
specific issue. So to date, there have been 6 or 7 strikes in the
Caribbean that have killed 32 people, and, you know, some of those were
trafficking drugs.
Those routes, by the way, Senator Merkley, are used generally to
traffic cocaine and marijuana through the Caribbean, to Caribbean
islands and on to Europe. They are not the routes that traffic fentanyl
to the United States.
And over the last 6 weeks or so, we have conducted kinetic strikes
against these boats without what I recognize as the legal authority to
do so. It is not something I have seen in my experience in the U.S.
Navy--I spent 25 years in the U.S. Navy--that I have seen during my
career. I am now retired. But during my career, I never saw a President
command the Department of Defense to do things that I felt were outside
the boundaries of what we would consider illegal action against people.
We have traditionally done this with the U.S. Coast Guard, sometimes
in conjunction with the U.S. Navy. We are in a partnership. They do
what we would call law enforcement. And members of the Coast Guard come
aboard Navy ships. We interdict drugs that are coming through the
Caribbean or, more often, on the pacific side, on the western side of
Mexico, up into California, and we interdict those drugs, and then we
prosecute those individuals.
And, in my view, I think the administration has not made a case to
the U.S. Congress and to the American people as to why this is a legal
action.
A couple of weeks ago, when we were being briefed on this, I felt
that they were pretty much tying themselves into a knot in trying to
inform us on why this is allowed under the law.
Now, here is one of the things I really worry about. I worry about
these young sailors or naval aviators or drone operators that are the
trigger pullers, the guys who are dropping the small-diameter bombs
from airplanes. It could be an F-18 or an F-35 or some other weapons
system or folks that are operating an MQ-9 drone.
If you are the guy that is pulling the trigger in a combat operation,
you typically expect that the people above you have done all the due
diligence necessary to make sure that you are not going to be in some
kind of legal jeopardy. And I really worry about that today.
There might be some young Navy lieutenant out there or Marine Corps
captain or Air Force, for all I know, a MQ-9 operator, that might
someday find out that they have done something that is not consistent
with the law, and they are now in legal jeopardy. And that is a big
problem.
I never saw that during my 25 years in the U.S. Navy. The two ships I
sunk in the Persian Gulf, not for one second did I feel like I was
getting some bad information from the battle group or from anybody
above in the chain of command, whether it was General Schwarzkopf or
Colin Powell or the President of the United States, George Herbert
Walker Bush. It was not a concern of ours. It is a concern today.
And I can tell you, as I watch this from my vantage point on the
Intelligence Committee and on the Armed Services Committee, there are
members of our military that are now in some sort of potential future
legal jeopardy. And it is because we have a President that I believe
doesn't do his homework, doesn't follow norms, and possibly is making
decisions that are not legal.
(Mr. BANKS assumed the Chair.)
We have seen the politicalization of the U.S. military over the last
9 months. That really disturbs me--the speech in Quantico where the
Secretary of Defense dragged in hundreds of our senior leadership from
all over the world, admirals and generals and senior enlisted staff who
have very important jobs, who are working every single day to make sure
that our Nation and our allies are safe and secure and have to make
some really complicated decisions every day about the posture of force,
how to equip them, make sure they are ready to fight--and the Secretary
of Defense, for some reason, decides that he needed to give a TED talk
about gym clothes and PT and other stuff that has no bearing on whether
or not we are a capable military.
I don't know why he feels this way. But in my experience, from the
time I first put on the uniform in 1986 to the time I took it off in
2011 and then beyond since I have been retired from the U.S. Navy, our
effectiveness has never been diminished. Our innovation and our
professionalism and our ability to train well is something that really
makes us stand out.
I have experience with some of our allies, but I also have a little
bit of experience with our adversaries. While I was at NASA flying the
Space Shuttle over a decade--first flight in 2001 to my last in 2011--
every one of my missions I had a lot of interactions with Russian
cosmonauts. Most of these Russian cosmonauts--not all of them but
most--were members of the Russian Air Force, pilots, some of them test
pilots.
I flew with these guys. They weren't the best pilots in the world, I
have to admit. I was shocked the first time I flew with a guy who I
will not share his last name. His first name was Vladimir. But I was
really shocked that this guy who was a MiG-25 pilot could not fly
formation in an airplane, something so fundamental and basic to a
military pilot, that they did not train enough to be capable enough to
do something that was so fundamental to be an effective fighter pilot.
And then after--that was early in my NASA career. Later, as I started
flying to space with these guys, I realized that Russians and the
Russian military, in particular--because that is where my experience
was with these military guys--they were motivated by different things.
It explains a lot of what I see out of Russia today.
Now, as Americans, whether you are in the U.S. Navy, whether you are
a naval aviator or in the Air Force, Army, Marine Corps, Space Force,
even in U.S. industry and in organizations in the United States, and I
don't think this is unique to us, but everybody doesn't share this
value: Americans are
[[Page S7677]]
usually most motivated by mission success. We care about the mission
first. We care about the mission before ourselves. We care about the
mission more than anything. I think it is true for American companies,
too, that they have a set of goals, and they have a plan and they are
going to execute the plan.
It is not true of our Russian adversaries. It took me a while to
learn this, but I found that they were motivated primarily by a couple
of things: One was the appearance that they were in charge. That
mattered to them more than anything else, that I look like I am in
charge of whatever this operation is, not mission success. The second
thing would be who could I blame? If things go wrong, where to place
the blame. And the third thing, which was really interesting, was what
can I steal from my employer. That, to me, was three principles I saw
in my Russian cosmonaut colleagues.
They talked about the stealing. I wasn't sure they were actually
stealing anything from the Russian space agency or not, but they talked
about it as something that is fundamental to their system and their
economy.
I bring this up because I often feel that we are unique as a service,
as a fighting force in the world. Our allies--some of them are really,
really good. But there is nothing that I found in my experience in my
career--I am 61 years old--that is as professional as U.S.
servicemembers and as motivated by mission and doing the right thing
and making moral and ethical choices. And that is all at risk.
In Senator Merkley's State, in Portland, they are sending armed
uniformed soldiers to do what we traditionally feel is police work--
intimidating the population, using tear gas against U.S. citizens for
no reason. By the way, National Guard and Active-Duty servicemembers
are not trained for this mission.
In my 25 years in the Navy, I never once did anything that you would
consider to be close to police work. I would know. I am the son of two
cops, so I would get a sense for what that was. It never happened. And
unless you are a military policeman, it doesn't happen for infantrymen,
for special ops or submariners, and certainly not for Active-Duty
infantry.
So at this time in our history, I am really worried about legal
jeopardy that our young servicemembers have been put in. But I am also
worried about, does this fundamentally change the nature of the U.S.
military, which has been, in my view, a force for good around the
world, where we come to the defense of our allies and we do it in a way
that garners a tremendous amount of respect, I think, even from our
adversaries. I think that is all at risk.
So I wanted to ask Senator Merkley: You have been here 16 years now
in the U.S. Senate. You have tremendous experience at this. My
understanding is, you have a very close relationship with the people
you represent in Oregon. How worried are you about the changes that
could happen to the U.S. military?
And also, I am interested in what are you hearing from your
constituents about this. They have been the focus and have been
highlighted by this administration, not just this year but in Donald
Trump's first Presidency as well.
I yield back to the Senator from Oregon.
Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you so much to my colleague from Arizona for your
question.
I so appreciate the decades of experience and knowledge you bring in
regard to the services. I have only a small chapter in my life of 2
years working for Secretary Weinberger as a Presidential fellow. But I
didn't wear a uniform. I was a civilian working on a host of different
programs for 4 months or so. They were great assignments. I learned an
awful lot.
But everything you are talking about comes from your deep connection,
involvement in the uniformed services, and such a wealth of knowledge
just listening to you. I so appreciate that you bring that to bear.
In terms of my concern about the military, I felt, from my much more
limited world, mostly the Pentagon, that folks have worked incredibly
hard not to be partisan. Certainly, the Secretary of Defense brought a
set of missions that tied into President Reagan's administration and
his goals. But people didn't overtly talk about pardons or press in
terms of the sort of derisive commentary we have now and heard on cable
television on both sides.
When I think about these last few years, I am concerned that the
military has been substantially politicalized. I may be wrong about
that because I don't have that view from inside. But I think about how
the President gave the speech to the 800 generals, and he basically
said: If you don't like what I am saying, you can leave the room. If
you leave, I will strip you of your rank and your career will end.
To me, that was: I want you to be loyal to me, not the Constitution.
I want you to be loyal to me, the President of the United States, which
is, I felt, very inappropriate and out of sync with the military I saw,
ready to work in partnership with administrations of either side.
But I don't know if we see, for example, the speeches at the military
academy. I recall some story about folks cheering and clapping for what
was a partisan set of political points being made. I don't know. I am
going to leave it to your analysis because you have a much better sense
of that.
But when it comes to the effort to create a pathway to use the
military against civilians inside the United States of America, that is
of grave concern to my constituents; to look at the current dynamic now
in which President Trump said Portland is a war zone, it is war-
ravaged, it is in complete chaos--while he was saying that, there might
have been two or three protesters outside the ICE building conducting
themselves peacefully; there have been weeks with no arrests--that is a
real invention.
When our Governor talked to President Trump, she pointed that out,
and I gather he was like, ``Well, I have seen the tapes.'' I don't know
what tapes he was watching, maybe 2020 tapes when we did have actual
conflict in the city. But here you have Portlanders, who have been so
restrained. Even when they have suffered being hit by pepper balls,
tear gas, they have not engaged in the scuffles with police, and they
have been protesting with joy and whimsy.
I mean, it is a strange feeling to see people bringing their pets
down and having ``Keep Your Paws Off Portland'' signs or folks handing
out pastries in pajamas or otherwise proceeding to celebrate their joy
as a way of saying to President Trump: There is no riot here. Don't use
anything that you have said as a foundation for deploying troops to our
city.
In fact, a district judge simply said that the President's
description of the city is untethered to the facts.
There is a huge concern that the President is striving to get the
courts to make decisions that will open the doors and say there will be
deference to the President so he can deploy, under title 10, the
National Guard, the federalized National Guard, against peaceful
protesters or that the President will proceed to using the Insurrection
Act, which does inherently give more support, deference, to the
President.
So there is a lot of concern, to my colleague from Arizona, about
what is going to unfold.
Meanwhile, I am delighted to see my colleague from New Mexico on the
floor, and I would welcome a question if he has one.
Mr. LUJAN. Will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. MERKLEY. Yes, I will yield for a question.
Mr. LUJAN. First, I want to begin by thanking our friend, and I say
``our friend'' because he is more than my friend, Senator Merkley. We
are friends from across our Nation's Capital and across America--some
who are here, listening to you themselves, and others who, I am sure,
are tuning in. Whether it is on social media or on C-SPAN or on one of
the news outlets that is carrying the conversation that you are having
on behalf of the American people, I want to say thank you. Thank you
for your courage, for your conviction, and for your tireless leadership
in speaking up today on behalf of all that is going on across America
and around the world but especially what is impacting your
constituents.
If I am not mistaken, Senator Merkley, it has been nearly 20 hours
that you have been on the floor now, speaking to the American people.
[[Page S7678]]
Now, I like you. I am proud to be a U.S. Senator. I know, the way you
speak about Oregon, I am always battling with you on whether it is New
Mexico or it is Oregon. Which is more beautiful? I still believe it is
New Mexico, but that is not my question today, Senator Merkley.
I am so proud to represent the people from New Mexico, and every day
I am reminded that the work that we do here doesn't just impact our
homes. The work that we do here touches every corner of the United
States of America.
For the last 3 weeks of this Republican shutdown--and the reason I
say that is that the American people know that the House of
Representatives has a majority of Republicans; that the Speaker of the
House is a Republican; that the majority in the U.S. Senate is
controlled by Republicans; that the majority leader is a Republican;
and that the President of the United States is a Republican.
Now, as I visit with constituents from across New Mexico--and last
night, Senator Merkley, I had a townhall, a telephone townhall. We had
thousands and thousands of New Mexicans who were on this call. They all
told me that they were worried about what would happen if their health
insurance premiums doubled, even tripled. Every news article I read
this morning and those that I saw on television or on social media
today had similar stories from constituents about concerns about maybe
losing their healthcare.
Now, Senator, you know, as well as so many people across New Mexico
and a few across America, that 3 years ago I survived a stroke. When
someone has a heart attack or a stroke or some other chronic episode
like that, you learn that time is not on your side. You are not
thinking about how expensive those hospital bills may be. All you are
hoping is that you can get to see a medical professional who might be
able to save your life. By the grace of God, by the love of my family,
Senator Merkley, I am here. I am alive today. I healed, and it is quite
miraculous, but a big part of that was because I was fortunate enough
to have health insurance. I was fortunate to get to a facility quickly
enough. On the way there, a local paramedic and an EMT from Santa Fe
County Fire Department helped to prepare me before I got to the
emergency room. They helped to save my life.
Well, right now, across the country it is not just the concern of
health insurance premiums doubling or tripling so that millions of
people could lose coverage; under this thing called the Big Beautiful
Bill, my Republican colleagues here said: Well, we are going to have
the largest cut in Medicaid funding since the program has been created.
In addition to that, how about my Republican colleagues saying: Well,
let's also go after food programs, and the largest cut to food programs
across America were included in that bill.
The reason I bring up Medicaid is that, in New Mexico, we had a
Republican Governor who actually embraced Medicaid expansion. So New
Mexico was one of the States that had the most uninsured people per
capita and became one of the most insured. Because of that expansion,
people were able to get care and help.
As for those rural health clinics that also provide care to so many
of our Medicaid beneficiaries in New Mexico, all of a sudden, when
Federal Medicaid dollars go away, they might close.
So I am going to go back to my stroke.
Time is not on our side. If someone has to travel hours to try to get
into a medical facility because the rural health clinics have closed
that might be able to stabilize them in the way that that EMT and that
paramedic did for me at the local fire department, they might not heal
or, worse, they may not live.
Now I am going to get back to one of the conversations we are having
right now: How can we work as Democrats and Republicans and work with
the President to ensure that health insurance premiums will not double
or triple for the American people?
One of my constituents told me, Senator Merkley, that it is almost
like they are reaching into our pockets and just stealing money. What I
mean by that is, in New Mexico, if these tax credits go away, it is
going to cost people about $7,000 a year--7,000 bucks--for hard-
working, middle-class families. That is taking from their pockets.
In addition to that, when they go to the grocery store--well, let me
even back up a little. Remember when the President said, when he was
running as a candidate, that, on day one, he would lower prices for the
American people just like ``that''? Well, at the grocery store, things
are getting more expensive. Everything seems to be getting more
expensive. Well, that is taking money out of the pockets of the
American people--our constituents--who are hard-working families just
trying to get by, who are trying to leave better lives for their kids
than they had for their own if they are blessed to have children.
Many are worried about how they will even put food on the table now
that the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program is delayed or even
this program called WIC. You know, there are acronyms all over our
Nation's Capital. WIC is the program for Women, Infants, and Children.
How are we going to make decisions across the country to make sure
that we are going to provide food for the most vulnerable in the
richest Nation in the world? Everyone seems to be worried about that
except for President Donald Trump.
The reason I say that, Senator, is, this week, all President Donald
Trump seems to care about is breaking ground on this $250 million
ballroom.
Some constituents have reached out to my office and have asked: Well,
what does that mean?
I have told them: Well, the President allowed a bulldozer to go and
knock down part of the White House so he could build a $250 million
room to throw some parties in. That is essentially what is happening.
I mean, heck, in New Mexico, Senator, if someone is going to do some
remodeling of their home, they have to go pull local permits and get
permission and follow the rules and all the rest--not this guy. At a
time when people are about to have their health insurance premiums
double or triple and when food programs are getting taken away, this
President says that his priority is to build a $250 million party room.
That is a lot of money. That is more money than most people will see in
their lives. I mean, heck, $1 million is one of those numbers.
In addition to that, President Trump decided to throw a picnic
yesterday for some of my Senate Republican colleagues who wanted to be
there. I was told that he gave away thousands of dollars of his own
personal Trump swag. What is that--hats? signed bags? pens? I don't
know what else was in there--watches? maybe a pair of his shoes?
Instead of working to end this shutdown that they started, they decided
to have a picnic.
It is my understanding that President Trump may even be leaving the
country this weekend. He is leaving for a week as opposed to bringing
people together?
I am reminded, Senator Merkley, that President Trump said not too
long ago in an interview: If there is a shutdown, it is up to the
President to bring people together to prevent the shutdown.
I think, in that same interview, the President said something along
the lines of, if there is a shutdown, it is a bad mark on the
President. It sounds to me like the President should be bringing people
together.
Last night, one of my constituents from Albuquerque, NM, shared with
me that she had been furloughed as a Federal employee. She told me she
didn't know how she was going to pay this month's bills without a
paycheck. She felt that President Trump was doing nothing to end the
shutdown, and she didn't know how she could continue handling all the
stress of not being paid. That is something else that we are not
talking about here--all of the stress and mental health challenges that
families are going through.
One of my constituents in Las Vegas, NM, has four children, a
mortgage to pay, and his family lives paycheck to paycheck. He said,
with all the stress and hurt that is being caused by the Republican
shutdown, he doesn't know if people will be able to afford their
healthcare if it is taken away.
This week, people across America are watching Donald Trump tear down
the east side of the White House to make room for that $250 million
ballroom.
[[Page S7679]]
There is a story that I just saw coming in, Senator Merkley, about
President Trump and that it looks like he is trying to shake down the
Department of Justice to get 230 million bucks for himself. And here is
the kicker: The person who would actually have to sign off on giving
President Trump $230 million in taxpayer money from the Department of
Justice is a guy named Todd Blanche. Anyone who knows who this person
is knows that Todd Blanche was Donald Trump's personal defense
attorney. He didn't do so well because he got convicted, but he is the
guy who would have to sign off.
So I will sum it up this way, Senator Merkley--and I have a question
for you, sir. My colleague from Hawaii said it perfectly yesterday.
Here is the quote:
There is enough money to bail out Argentina with $40
billion.
By the way, for people who don't know what that means, to all the
cattle ranchers in America, President Donald Trump said he is going to
bail out Argentina and buy $40 billion of their beef. What is that
going to do to American cattle producers?
Now back to the quote:
There is enough money to bail out Argentina with $40
billion.
``There is enough money to buy Kristi Noem,'' who is the Secretary of
Homeland Security, ``a $173 million [personal] jet,'' just to fly a
little more comfortably.
There is enough money to renovate that ballroom for 250 million
bucks, but there isn't enough money for you, the American people. It
seems to me the priorities are clear.
So will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. MERKLEY. Yes, I am yielding for your question.
Mr. LUJAN. Senator Merkley, how are Americans supposed to trust an
administration that seems to be so focused on giving things to
themselves when Americans are worried they won't be able to afford
basic necessities like food and health insurance?
I yield to the Senator.
Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you so much for your question.
You have laid out so many points here about kind of the mismanagement
of America's funds, and we could add a few more to them: the craziness
of spending more money than it costs to buy a Presidential jet--to
rehab a jet that was given to the President so that he could actually
send it on to his personal library after he leaves office. It is
profoundly disturbing, and I appreciate the way you framed it.
There is enough money for luxury glitz--for a megaballroom. I can't
even imagine how anything could cost that much to build. Maybe there
will be an eighth-inch of gold on every surface or something--I don't
know--but that doesn't serve the American people. It doesn't make one
single person in America have better healthcare or a better education
or a decent home in a decent community or a better job. It doesn't give
you quality of opportunity. It doesn't tackle any of the environmental
issues.
It is simply a gross display by the President, who has constructed
his entire administration on the basis of a theory to govern, which is
``families lose, and billionaires win.''
Families lose their healthcare so there can be massive tax breaks for
billionaires.
They lose their Medicaid on top of their ACA healthcare in order to
fund massive tax breaks for billionaires.
They lose their nutrition assistance to fund tax breaks for
billionaires.
Then, over the next 30 years, their bill runs up $30 trillion in
additional debt to fund these tax breaks for billionaires. Maybe I
should say ``trillionaires'' now. You think about how that debt, that
additional $30 trillion in debt, how much that would compromise the
ability to have future programs for healthcare and housing and
education.
Folks in my State--probably the same thing with folks in your State--
last Wednesday--the information come out a week ago so people could
look on the exchange and see what their policies are going to cost. We
don't have a new, comprehensive analysis. The preanalysis, the
projection, was that the average cost would go up not 5 percent or 10
percent or 15 percent but about 68 percent. That is because the premium
goes up, the tax credits come down, and costs become massively more
expensive--now maybe a lot more because the average across the country
is that premium payments would go up 114 percent--more than double.
How do you explain to anyone that you slashed their healthcare
affordability to fund a giveaway of $20 to $40 billion to Argentina or
to fund that new ballroom? I mean, that is insane. I mean, that is,
well, just like the rich rubbing our nose in it, for ordinary
Americans: You won't be able to afford healthcare, but, wow, we got
that new jet, that jet you talked about, for Noem--I hadn't heard about
that one. We got the new ballroom. We got the tax breaks for the
richest people.
This government by and for the billionaires ties into the
authoritarian perspective, because if you are a regular leader of a
democracy, you feel you are accountable to the people, and you would
never ever pursue a bill that defunds healthcare for ordinary families
to put more dollars in the pockets of the already richest Americans.
But if you are an authoritarian--and the entire time I have been on the
floor has been to ring the alarm bells. Ring the alarm bells.
Authoritarianism is here now. I am told that each time I say this, lots
of bells are posted online. So just for my team's fun, ring the alarm
bells. I want that to be heard all across America, that we are way off
track. This is the wrong way to go.
In a democracy, you want to have the foundation for families to
thrive because you are accountable to the people, and the people that
run the operation. But in an authoritarian government, boy, that is not
the case at all. Instead, it is like the leaders feel like the people
are accountable to them. So if they have to do without, well, too bad.
As the phrase goes, let them eat cake. If they don't have bread, oh,
let them eat cake.
So there we are. And our responsibility is to say to the American
people that the way to stop this authoritarian takeover is to have very
significant, robust demonstrations across America, like we had on
Saturday. The citizens have to make a big deal. Protest outside our
offices. Write to us. Phone us. Give us a hard time. Tell us we should
be doing more. It is that feedback that really caused me to say I need
to try to do more to ring the alarm bells about where we are headed
and, thus, to be up here all night and now through the morning and into
the afternoon.
I am getting a little unsteady on my feet, but if we collectively,
through this dialogue, are bringing attention to people in saying: Yes,
7 million people were out there in the streets--next time, we need 10
million. Do your local demonstration with those who went. Hear about
what they did, and spread the word that this is not normal, this
destruction of our rights; this weaponization of the judiciary to go
after political enemies; the effort to open the doors so that the
President can deploy, with the court's approval, the military into our
cities when there is no rebellion, no insurrection, and no invasion. So
that is our responsibility--to call it out and to carry on the fight.
I believe the American people are starting to understand just how
much their freedoms are being crushed, and that is why we need to be in
partnership, to steer this country back and save our Republic.
Mrs. MURRAY. Will the Senator from Oregon yield for a question?
Mr. MERKLEY. I see the Senator from Washington State is on the floor,
and I would be very happy to yield for a question.
Mrs. MURRAY. I thank the Senator from Oregon.
First, let me just commend you for what you are doing here throughout
the night, throughout today, calling attention to a really critical
issue in this country.
So many people have come up to me, you know, because we go back and
forth to the west coast all the time--how many people walk up to us and
say: What can I do about this? And each one of us has to say: Here is
what I can do.
I want to thank you for doing what you are doing today because you
are going above and beyond to point out to people that, as your chart
says, authoritarianism is here, and it is here now. We can ignore it,
or we can speak out.
You have spent all night long and all day standing on your feet at, I
am sure,
[[Page S7680]]
great personal sacrifice to fight for everyone in this country and to
sound the alarms, as you have been talking about. So I just personally
want to thank you.
I want to reiterate something that you have said for all of these
hours and, actually, many times to me over the past few months--the
fact that Trump is using his place in government to control every
aspect of our lives, whether it is what our schools are teaching or not
teaching; it is whether or not he is prosecuting his enemies, which he
is doing; it is cutting off projects and funding to punish the
political opposition.
You and I both know--we represent blue States, but we have a lot of
red counties and cities and neighborhoods. Even within all of our blue
districts--you can't just randomly say ``I am hurting blue'' without
hurting the red because these are all Americans. But he is using his
power to do that.
We are seeing him, as you know well in your home State, deploying
troops to intimidate Democrats. I listened to you late last night talk
about what is happening in Portland. The misuse of this kind of power
should be frightening to every single American. We need to stand up,
and we need to call it out, which is what you are doing today. Even
dictating what late night TV hosts are doing is part of this whole
picture that you have been describing.
But I came to the floor today as your partner on the Appropriations
Committee. We serve on that together. We all know in this body how
important that committee is because we decide where the funding is
going to go in the country.
I have been out on this floor, I have been at home, and I have been
everywhere talking about the power of the purse, which sounds kind of
like this quaint little phrase, but it is really important. For anybody
who has a family, you know that the person who writes the checks in the
checkbook decides where the money is going to go. Well, that power of
the checkbook--that power of the purse, as it is called--lands on this
side of the White House and the Congress. We have the power of the
purse. Why is that? Because we represent our constituents from across
the country--I, from Washington State; you, from Oregon. People from
Illinois and Alabama and Florida all come here to be a voice for their
constituents on where their tax dollars are going to go.
Within this country, the power of the purse means we have the ability
to decide where the money is going to go because we represent our
constituents. That is what they call on us to do.
I am seeing Trump do an all-out assault on Congress's power of the
purse, so I wanted to come here today and ask you your thoughts on how
this President is undermining the power of the purse and how it plays
into your ringing the bells about authoritarianism.
Ringing the alarm bells for the authoritarian takeover.
The power of the purse is one of those fundamental ways that, in
fact, the President is concentrating his power.
The difference between a democracy is that--in a democracy, the
legislature says: Here are the programs, here is how we want to run
them, and here is how we are going to fund them. It brings together the
collective wisdom of a large group that comes from every portion of the
Nation, like we do here--100 Senators from 50 States. We not only bring
our geographic differences; we bring our life differences and our life
skills. All of that helps us form a pretty complex set of decisions
about the programs that need more support because of the challenges we
are facing as a nation at that moment and those that can do with less
support. That is our responsibility. But all those voices together are
just so central to that.
In an authoritarian nation, all of that responsibility--design the
program, fund the program, choose whether the program will live or
die--is all transferred to the executive. So we are thinking,
authoritarianism is over here, and the power of the purse is with the
executive; democracy is over here, and the power of the purse is with
legislature.
Russell Vought, the current head of OMB, is a well-trained, clever
man, and he is saying: Well, let's see how we can actually take the
power of the purse. You passed a bill for fiscal year 2025, and now we
are in--we are no longer in fiscal, but let's say we were. Well, maybe
I can just slow-walk the funds for the programs I don't want to fund.
That way, the decision is transferred to the Executive. Maybe I can
freeze them. Maybe I can impound them, basically permanently take them
off the table, see if I can get away with that. Maybe I can send over a
request to have Congress formally undo the programs they have funded.
They did send one of those over, and it was voted on. It needed a
majority vote in both Chambers. But the problem with that is you have a
bipartisan vision to serve the entire--these desks to me are now
representing the geography of the United States--to serve the entire
breadth and depth of our Nation, with all of our differences. Then, on
a partisan basis, meaning half the room, they decide what programs to
cut. That means a deal was done in the beginning between Democrats and
Republicans, and then it was undone. The programs that were cut were
the programs, by and large, the Democrats had advocated for. How do you
do the next deal in that situation?
Then we have Mr. Vought saying: What I will do is pretend I am going
to spend it, but then in the last 45 days, I will send a notification
that I would like Congress to undo it. But there is a waiting period,
so therefore I know what I have done is set it up so that before those
45 days are up, the end of the fiscal year comes, and that bucket that
goes to that program goes poof into thin air.
That is the fancy term that is used, ``pocket rescission.''
So here we are saying to our Republican colleagues: If you negotiated
in good faith to serve the interests and concerns that all hundred
Senators bring here, than a bill forged in that bipartisan manner can
only be done in a bipartisan manner.
We do rescissions in a bipartisan manner. We do undo funding. We take
1-year, 2-year, 3-year funding that turned out not to be needed or
better spent elsewhere, and we pull it back, and we put it into a
different program. But we do that readjustment in the same bipartisan
way we did the initial program.
We are saying to our colleagues across the aisle, if the power of the
purse means something--and it does: the difference between an
authoritarian government and a democracy--then work with us to defend
our Constitution, defend that what we have done together cannot be
undone by the Executive.
So far, we have not received a ``Yes, we will defend the
Constitution.'' What I hear is mainly ``Yeah, President Trump would
never go for that.'' When you hear that, you know you are trapped in
authoritarianism because the vision of our Nation is that we the
Congress will forge these programs and decide how to fund them, how
much. And when it is like ``Can't do that because Trump would be
upset,'' well, that just confirms that we are in authoritarianism now.
And it is not just the power of the purse, of course; it is an attack
on due process; it is an attack on free press; it is an attack on
freedom of speech; it is the weaponization of the Department of
Justice; it is the ignoring the laws that apply to the Executive
completely, like firing all of the IGs and getting rid of all of the
referees.
In the book that I really spent the night trying to use as a
framework in order to say, hey, experts have studied how democracies
die--they don't die with people with guns anymore; they die with people
who get elected, and then they follow the authoritarian playbook on how
to basically undo the checks and balances and amplify the power.
And another piece of that, that we should be very concerned about in
the Northwest right now--more in Portland, but who knows what happens
in Seattle--is trying to carve a path in which Trump has court
rescissions that say he can put troops into the street whenever he
wants. And that is a massively dangerous amplification of authoritarian
power, and that is why what we do this year makes such a difference.
And we have to protest and say this is not normal. We have to ring
the alarm bells. We have to praise the 7 million people who got out
there and said: No Kings in the United States. And that is such a
beautiful, short way of saying: No authoritarianism; we
[[Page S7681]]
want our Republic back, and we are going to fight to make that happen.
Mrs. MURRAY. And we want our voices to be heard. That is what you are
doing, and I thank the Senator from Oregon for all he has been doing
for so long, for so many years, but especially for the last 20-plus
hours that you have been on the floor--
Mr. MERKLEY. Too many.
Mrs. MURRAY.--too many hours on the floor, reminding us all of why
this is so critical.
Mr. MERKLEY. I note that my colleague from Delaware is on the floor.
Ms. BLUNT ROCHESTER. Yes, I am.
Mr. MERKLEY. I would welcome a question if you have one.
Ms. BLUNT ROCHESTER. Will the Senator from Oregon yield for a
question?
Mr. MERKLEY. I will yield for a question.
Ms. BLUNT ROCHESTER. First let me say thank you, Senator Merkley, for
your tenacity, your energy, your compassion, and your love for this
country. I mean, really, that is what this is about. That is why you
have been standing on this floor for over 20 hours, and I want to say
thank you on behalf of the American people.
And I want to say, Mr. President, we are now 21 days into this
Republican shutdown and well over 200 days into the Trump
administration.
Costs for housing are up, food prices are up, energy costs have gone
up, and we are about to see our healthcare costs skyrocket for millions
of Americans--all while the President pushes this country to the
literal brink of a constitutional crisis.
So let's recap. The Department of Defense is trying to censor the
press. This administration is offering deals to universities to teach
Trump priorities, taking away independence and academic freedom. They
tried to push dissenters off airwaves.
But this is America. And Senator Merkley--you and I know--here, the
people have the power, and the power of the people matters. Here, the
voices of our communities hold weight, and that is why I stand with you
as you ring the alarms.
The people are standing up, they are speaking out, and they are
saying: Enough is enough.
What does that look like? It looks like journalists, from MSNBC to
FOX News, handing in their DOD press badges, choosing to stand up for
their First Amendment rights rather than bowing to the whims of the
Secretary of Defense. It means universities are refusing to play ball,
declining the offer. It means Americans use the power of their purses
to say you will not silence someone like Jimmy Kimmel and he was
reinstated.
But it doesn't stop there. It is an unprecedented move by Federal
judges appointed by Democrats and Republicans alike that are speaking
out on an impending judicial crisis over the Supreme Court's emergency
orders.
State governments are joining compacts to protect access to public
health for citizens as this administration rips away access to
vaccines. Airports across America are refusing to play this
administration's propaganda videos. And perhaps most importantly,
millions of Americans from across our country have made their voices
known and heard.
Seven million Americans did what I think was truly a part of the
American spirit by using their voices in a peaceful way, assembling,
doing it in a way that was both joyful but also patriotic--and
demanding that we in Congress also stand up.
So we are standing up for our communities. And thank you again,
Senator Merkley, for doing so. And we are fighting for families across
America who are about to see their healthcare coverage go up or maybe
even be eliminated.
In this moment, we don't need a King. The people need a President for
all of the people--not a $20 billion bailout for Argentina, not a new
White House gold ballroom when people can't even afford to pay their
rent or to buy a home on their own--and not a Justice Department
bailout--all while November 1 is fast approaching and tens of millions
of Americans face this healthcare crisis: rising cost or a total
elimination of their healthcare or medical debt. Costs are already
high--and now this. It is time to do the right thing and to take a
stand.
And with the President poised to leave town, we ask that he stay and
pull together the partners--the House, which has been out of session.
And I came from the House. I don't think I ever saw anything like this
where they literally have been missing in action for weeks. As a matter
of fact, for our August break, they left in July. This is
unprecedented, and we need them back at the table. They need to do the
work.
And so my question to you, Senator Merkley: In light of what the
President wants to spend money on and what the American people need,
does the President have his priorities straight? Are his priorities
right on behalf of the American people?
Mr. MERKLEY. Well, thank you so much to my colleague from Delaware.
That question rather answers itself after listening to all the points
you were making, which were right on.
How can it possibly be the right priorities if you are spending your
money on tax breaks for billionaires while cutting the tax credits that
enable families to buy insurance at an affordable price? How can it
possibly be the right thing to do that you are cutting child nutrition
while you are spending a huge amount on a ballroom--undoubtedly a
Trumpian gold-style ballroom. How much was it: 200 million or 300
million? Some crazy, crazy sum. I can't even imagine how you could
spend that much on a room.
And you mentioned this $20 billion bailout--20 billion with a ``b''
bailout--for Argentina. Now, that one came out of nowhere. I don't
remember a bill on the floor here saying that we are passing a spending
bill that has in it a 20--and the President said maybe as much as a $40
billion bailout.
Is there some authority I don't know about, maybe? I don't know. The
books are complicated. But I doubt it because what this President is
doing as an authoritarian is just saying: I am going to do what the
hell I want. I am in charge. The bank account of America is mine. Hell,
I am going to build a glitzy ballroom, and I am going to try to
refurbish a jet for Air Force One that will only be workable for a few
months, if that, before I send it off to my Presidential library--a
huge waste of our money.
And this bailout for Argentina--you know, earlier I was talking to a
colleague from Washington State who said a lot of soybeans are shipped
through Washington State but they are normally bought by China. Well,
China isn't buying a single bean this year because of the tension and
the argument between our two nations over tariffs. One moment, the
President put a 50-percent tariff on China; and the next moment, they
are saying they are not going to send out any strategic minerals,
critical minerals. Next: Well, I will put a 100-percent tariff on you.
I mean, nobody makes an investment in the United States of America, a
factory here, when we are in tariff chaos. There is nothing about this
that does anything except throw people up and down, and everyone gets
hurt. They don't know if the tariffs are going to affect what they
sell. They don't know if they are going to be able to affect the inputs
of the things they manufacture. They don't know what they should plant
if they are farmers.
And where are all these beans--unsold soybeans--going to go this
year? Where are they going to be stored? Are they going to be wasted?
Are they going to be plowed back into the ground for fertilizer? I
don't know.
But I do know this chaos is terrible for America. And the small
business world came and talked to me yesterday, the representatives--
maybe you had them in your office as well--and they said: Main Street
is Pain Street. And I did hear that--I am going to note that Senator
Markey may have been the first person I heard that from. But I thought
that was a way to describe it.
And they certainly said: Yes, there are two components of that pain.
One is the loss of the credits to buy healthcare--because small
businesses don't have big plans with big insurers. They provide some
help, and folks go and buy on the exchange. And they said, second of
all, the tariffs.
So Main Street is Pain Street. That is not a good future for America.
And families with no health insurance, that is a terrible look for
America. And by ``look,'' I don't mean the atmospherics of it; I mean
that is the wrong mission in a republic.
[[Page S7682]]
And the connection I have been drawing between Trump's authoritarian
personality and tendencies is that an authoritarian feels that people
are accountable to him so he can do any damn thing he wants and control
anything without advice or controls or checks from anyone. And he has
hated it every time checks were applied in the past. He is going after
some of those folks now who applied those checks in the past.
And the leader of a democracy says: I am accountable to the people.
The people need healthcare, housing, education, good-paying jobs,
investment in infrastructure, quality of opportunity, and let's take on
some of those environmental problems. That is what a leader of a
democracy does.
So here we have this authoritarian President crushing our freedoms,
trying to steal the power of the purse from Congress to concentrate it
in the Executive, proceeding to spend money wherever he wants.
That $20 billion, I would love to see--I am not being coy. I would
rather have all of the Senators right here and say: Let's pass a bill
right now and say ``hell no.'' You know, a lot of that $20 billion is
going to the debt that has been built up in Argentina, and friends of
President Trump have reportedly bought that debt at a huge discount. I
didn't see how much of a discount. But what that means: If you buy a
dollar of debt and you buy it at, say--let's make the math easy--25
cents, then you get a 400-percent return if the money goes to Argentina
and they pay off the debt at face value.
That is not about making America first; that is about making Scott
Bessent and his friends--at least I have seen Scott Bessent's name in
some of those articles--and his friends, who are connected to buying up
Argentine debt. I am not sure if Scott himself bought it or not. But,
the point is, make some billionaires richer. It is another make a few
friends of the President and friends of his Cabinet members richer--
that $20 billion--or possibly $40 billion, the President said.
Think about that--20 billion. That is $50 for every single American
tossed in a pot to hand out to a strongman in Argentina. Forty
billion--$100 a person, handed out to a strongman. Every one of us,
take $100 out of our pocket.
Ms. BLUNT ROCHESTER. Will the Senator yield for one more question?
Mr. MERKLEY. I will yield for another question. Thank you.
Ms. BLUNT ROCHESTER. As you talked about the small businesses,
Senator, I was reminded that, as we look at who is actually purchasing
this healthcare in the marketplace--a lot of people don't even know
they are on ACA and receiving the tax credit--that half of them are
small businesses.
I come from Delaware. We are urban, suburban, rural, and coastal. And
so we also know that a quarter of farmers and ranchers are getting
their healthcare this way. And then we think about the fact that this
issue is disproportionally affecting red States, not just blue States.
All Americans are going to be hurt. This is why your ringing the
alarm is so important. And I would ask a very simple question: Is there
a connection between the healthcare crisis that we are in and an
authoritarian regime?
Mr. MERKLEY. Well, there is, absolutely, such a powerful connection
because the authoritarian doesn't care about the fundamental programs
for the people because they don't feel they are accountable to the
people.
So just as our authoritarian President is weaponizing the judiciary
to go after his opponents, he is using the power of the government over
licenses and mergers in order to try to control what broadcasting does
to attack freedom of speech, trying to control what our universities
teach by threatening the collapse--threatening and taking away the
research grants and telling them they can't have foreign students that
are essential to their revenue streams.
All of those authoritarian pieces--the stealing of the purse--but
then there is this piece, the philosophy, and the philosophy is: The
people owe me, the authoritarian; not I am accountable to them.
So, therefore, it is totally legit to go for legislation that slashes
the programs that are fundamental to families to make the rich richer.
And I want to go back to that picture that I had up earlier of the
billionaires standing behind President Trump at the inauguration. And
at that point, maybe we didn't know for sure that he had campaigned on
helping families. But we didn't see champions of families behind him.
We saw the billionaires behind him.
That is exactly what has happened. The philosophy is: Families lose
and billionaires win. And our effort, as those in a democracy, is that
we are fighting for the vision that families thrive, and the rich and
powerful pay a fair share.
Mr. SCHUMER. Would my colleague yield for another question?
Mr. MERKLEY. I would yield for a question. Yes.
Mr. SCHUMER. I thank my colleague from Delaware. Before I ask my
question, I just want to thank the great Senator from Oregon for his
strength, his fortitude, his integrity, and just shining a spotlight on
this erosion of democracy under Trump in so many different ways.
I have been to the floor earlier, and we talked about it. But now I
would like to ask a question about one of the most serious threats that
our American people face, which is the healthcare crisis, a dramatic--a
horrible--crisis that is going to leave millions without any health
insurance at all, that is going to raise premiums to people from $500
to $1,000 a month--not a year--that will close rural hospitals, that
will kick people out of nursing homes, where they will have nowhere to
go.
And I remind my colleagues that this President, instead of
negotiating a way out that addresses the crisis with Leader Jeffries
and me, is going away for 6 days. It is outrageous for him to leave on
a foreign trip while the American people are suffering and we get
closer and closer and closer to the time, starting November 1, when
people are going to have to make that awful decision: Do I leave my
family with no healthcare at all because I can't afford it?
It is a horrible, horrible decision. And yet, this President--Leader
Jeffries and I asked the President to meet with us before he left. He
refused. The reporting is that Johnson and Thune and he were on the
phone and agreed they wouldn't even talk to us. And, instead, he is
going away while people are suffering. He ought not to do that.
And what is he spending his time on instead? Eroding our democracy,
doing these faux ads, screwing up, forcing networks and TV stations and
media to bow to his whim, using the Justice Department as an attack dog
against his enemies, arresting people, as my good friend from Oregon
has pointed out repeatedly, on the streets arresting people, whoever
the hell they are. They have no identification, and the people are
arrested without even being told why they are being arrested and who
knows what the heck is going on. He is spending all his time on eroding
democracy, taking away our rights.
The people expect him not to go on a foreign trip--this President who
fancies himself a King--but, instead, to do the people's business and
help us, sit down with us, negotiate a way out of this healthcare
crisis.
We all know--I think, and I would ask my colleague, he knows, I
believe--that before Donald Trump leaves the country, he should at the
very least sit down and negotiate in a serious way and address the
healthcare crisis that affects the American people.
Shouldn't we be working to lower people's premiums, to keep rural
hospitals open, to prevent people from being kicked out of nursing
homes, to ensure that research that saves lives continues? Shouldn't
the President listen to the cares of the American people and their
desperate need on healthcare rather than taking a foreign trip?
Jeffries and I asked him yesterday--we demanded, really--that he sit
down and talk to us and negotiate, not just talk to us but negotiate a
serious approach to avoid all the devastating things that will occur.
And he said 4 hours later, after conferring with Thune and Johnson, no,
he wouldn't.
Well, that is a disgrace. So I would ask my colleague--I would ask
him: Shouldn't the President be spending time addressing the healthcare
crisis rather than spending all this time eroding our democracy? If he
negotiated a fair treatment of people with
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their healthcare, he would be doing some good. And when he erodes our
democracy, he is doing something evil.
So his priorities are wacky and misplaced and awful and so
detrimental to what the American people want.
So my question to my colleague is this--and one more thing, doesn't
my colleague--and there are a bunch of questions here--agree that Trump
is the focal point of this healthcare crisis, that Johnson is paralyzed
because of the divisions in his caucus, that Thune just goes along,
that the President--this Trump, this President Trump--is the person who
could get the Republicans to pass a decent proposal, a fair proposal, a
proposal that helps the American people out of this crisis, and the
President is the focal point because he can get Jeffries and Thune to
act, and there is probably no one else?
And yet, he is flying away, ignoring this issue facing the American
people after he has eroded our democracy as the Senator from Oregon has
pointed out? He is flying away and abandoning the American people.
Isn't it correct--does my friend from Oregon agree--that the
President's priorities are so detrimental to the American people, are
really perverse in that he seems to enjoy eroding democracy and doesn't
even give a damn when the American people are suffering?
So I would ask my colleague to answer that series of questions.
Mr. MERKLEY. My colleague from New York, the minority leader, is
absolutely right. The Trump priorities are absolutely perverse. Well,
here we are in a structure of the Senate, and what is the Senate about?
Coming together and saying here is where I want to go; where do you
want to go? How can we make those two things work together to make
America better?
We can't always find the answer, but I will tell you one thing is
damn sure: You can't find the answer if you can't sit down and have the
conversation. And here with are with the House on vacation for over a
month. I guess they are getting paid.
And here we are in the Senate without an agreement to just sit down
and talk to each other about the framework because it appears that the
key, as you have suggested, the lynchpin is they will not sit down and
offer ideas and work out a deal without Trump in the room or Trump
guiding the outcomes.
So he is the factor.
So as he jets off--and in Oregon, last week, people, a week ago
Wednesday, they saw what their prices are going to be. The premiums are
higher; the credits lower. They have got to fill in the gap in between.
And are they going to be able to afford insurance? Are they going to be
able to make that decision by January 1? They are stressed about this.
I had small businesses in yesterday, representatives from Oregon, and
the vision there is ``Main Street is in Pain Street'' because of the
tariffs and because of the fact that many of them--a large share of
them--buy their insurance on the exchange.
And this man who runs a small company--it is a lighting-for-events
company--and I think he said he had four employees. I talked to three
of them, and three of them said: We are not buying insurance.
Mr. SCHUMER. Right.
Mr. MERKLEY. We can't afford it. We looked at the new prices. We
can't afford it. We are going to go without insurance. We all know the
huge calamity.
Well, when the Speaker of the House that I saw on the boob tube--on
the television--says there is nothing to talk about, I think
immediately: There are 20 million reasons to talk about. Those 20
million are the 20 million Americans seeing these huge increases. Many
of them will not be able to buy insurance at all.
Let's add to that, since the bill, also, is just 15 months out now
from slashing in a devastating fashion our Medicaid Program, which in
combination with the effects on the Affordable Care exchange will put
15 million people out of healthcare, 235,000 in my home State of
Oregon--and 70 percent of the kids in my rural areas are part of the
Oregon Health Plan and are on Medicaid. I can just not even conceive of
the carnage that will be done to the quality of life without healthcare
available to so many people.
Isn't that a hell of a number of reasons to sit down and brainstorm
together? You can't get to a common purpose if you can't even talk to
each other. You are here. Your office is open. You are available to
talk. You are inviting them to talk. They are saying no. That is a
travesty in our Republic.
Mr. SCHUMER. So to renew my question succinctly: Does my friend from
Oregon believe, as I believe, that before the President jets away on
this foreign trip, shouldn't he sit down with Leader Jeffries and me,
as we wanted him very much to do--demanded he do--and negotiate a
solution that addresses this horrible crisis, which my colleague from
Oregon has addressed in so many ways, whether it is ACA premiums or
Medicaid or nursing homes or community health centers or scientific
research? All of those need to be addressed, and this President is
flying away. Isn't that appalling?
Mr. MERKLEY. That is horrific that he is flying away. He absolutely
should be sitting down right now and holding a conversation with you
about how we solve this problem for millions of Americans.
Mr. SCHUMER. Let me thank my friend from Oregon for his amazing,
strong, persistent efforts.
I yield back to the Senator from Oregon.
Mr. MERKLEY. I see my colleague from Vermont on the floor. I will
take a question if he has one.
Mr. SANDERS. Will my colleague yield for a question?
Mr. MERKLEY. I will yield for a question.
Mr. SANDERS. Let me thank Senator Merkley for today pointing a finger
at one of the great crises our country--one of the greatest crises our
country has faced, I think, since the Civil War; and that is that,
every day, we have a President who is moving this country into an
authoritarian form of society.
You know, as a nation, what we have always expected in our democracy
is that if you disagree with me, we debate the issue. You don't think I
am a good Senator? Run against me. You think I am wrong on an issue?
Write a letter to the editor. Do a podcast. Be critical of me in any
way you want.
But what very few people in America believe is that we should give
more and more power to a megalomaniac who sits in the White House, who
disrespects every day the Constitution of the United States and the
rule of law.
And what saddens me very much is when we think back on the history of
this country, going back to the extraordinarily brave men and women who
put their lives on the line and sometimes died during the Revolutionary
War. Tens of thousands of Americans took on the greatest military power
on Earth, led by the King of England, in order to say: We are tired of
your rule. We want to rule ourselves.
And then, in 1789, these brilliant people came up with the
Constitution, and the essence of that Constitution--having learned
their lesson from the King of England, who had absolute power--is what
they said: We are going to create a Constitution that will never give
absolute power to any one person or one entity.
So they created an executive branch, the President, the legislative
branch, Congress--House and the Senate--and a judiciary whose function
is to provide checks and balances on each other. It is a rather
extraordinary document--1789.
Since then, we have had so many millions of men and women putting
their lives on the line and sometimes dying in order to defend that
Constitution, to understand that what freedom is about is the right to
disagree, that we do not have to live under the control of one person.
In an unprecedented way--and I know my colleague from Oregon has been
talking about this--every day, there is another attack on basic
American freedoms.
The First Amendment--not the Second, not the Third; the First
Amendment to the Constitution--is freedom of the press. And that was
not an accident. They understood that in order to maintain a free
society, you have to have the right of people to express their point of
view, to write what they wanted to, to rally people around their point
of view.
Yet we have in an unprecedented way a President who has sued one
major media after another--ABC, CBS, Meta;
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defunded PBS; defunded the NPR. This is a President who does not want
to be criticized.
Well, guess what, Mr. President. In a democracy, you will be
criticized, I will be criticized, and the Senator from Oregon will be
criticized. That is what a democracy is about. And if you don't like
criticism, get out of the White House, get out of politics.
We are not going to sit back and allow one media after another to be
intimidated, frightened. And if they stand up alone and run a story
critical of the President of the United States, oh my God, they may be
sued.
You have an FCC chairman, I think, I say to my friend, who, during
the Jimmy Kimmel episode, was threatening to rescind licenses of
networks if the White House did not like some of the content that was
coming out. That is not the America we love, not the America we are
prepared to defend.
But it is not just the media. You have a President who is suing law
firms. And what was the crime of these law firms? What did they do that
was so terrible? Well, they had clients who went to court against the
President. Gee, the last thing I heard, that is what happens in a
country, you know? People go to court. And we don't then try to
blackmail and intimidate law firms by saying: We are going to sue you.
You better not have clients who are going to attack me.
We have a President now who is going to war against universities,
trying to break freedom of speech, freedom of dissent on college
campuses. You stand up. You protest.
Hey, we are going to take away money from you. We don't like the
content of your courses. We don't like your teachers, the faculty, the
president of the university. Your views on gossip? Sorry, you are not
going to get Federal funding.
We have a President who is usurping the powers of the U.S. Congress.
Every fourth grader understands Congress has the power of the purse.
The President, if he likes it, signs the bill, but when you sign that
appropriations bill, that money goes out. You don't have the right to
say: Oh, California, New York, Vermont, you voted against me. You ain't
going to get the money that was appropriated.
That is not what this country is about, and it is not what the
Constitution is about.
A few minutes ago, Senator Blunt Rochester asked I thought a pretty
profound question, and that is, what is the relationship between
authoritarianism and the healthcare crisis that we are in right now?
As the Senator from Oregon has mentioned, when Trump was inaugurated,
sitting right behind him were the three wealthiest people in the world.
Remember that, the Senator from Oregon?
It was Mr. Musk, Mr. Bezos, and Mr. Zuckerberg. And right behind them
were some 14 or 15 other billionaires.
There is Mr. Zuckerberg, Mr. Bezos, Mr. Musk, and a couple other
billionaires there as well.
I was at the inauguration, kind of up front, and as I listened and I
saw what was going on and heard Trump's speech, I was thinking about
Abraham Lincoln in Gettysburg, one of the pivotal battles of the Civil
War to end the abomination of slavery. Lincoln gets up a few days, I
think, after that terrible war, blood still on the ground, and he says
to the American people a few days after that battle:
These brave soldiers--in so many words--did not die in vain because
they died in order to maintain a government of the people, by the
people, and for the people--not as Trump would have us: a government of
the billionaire class, by the billionaire class, and for the
billionaire class.
Senator Blunt Rochester asked the question, what is the connection
between authoritarianism and healthcare? I will tell you what the
connection is. Right now, under the Trump administration, the
billionaire class has never ever had it so good. These guys sitting
right behind Trump at his inauguration are now a combined hundreds of
billions of dollars richer. They donated to Trump's campaign. They have
given him gifts since. They are doing phenomenally well, while, at the
same time, 60 percent of our people--working-class people, low-income
people--are struggling to put food on the table, pay for childcare,
send their kids to college, pay for the basic necessities of life, pay
for housing, et cetera. The billionaire class, under Trump, never ever
had it so good, and then we have a working class in America struggling
to survive.
In particular, let us never forget--and I know the Senator from
Oregon has mentioned it many times--that the reason Trump and his
Republican friends made $1 trillion in cuts to Medicaid to throw 15
million people off the healthcare they currently have--and studies, by
the way, suggest that when you throw 15 million low-income and working-
class people off of their healthcare, some 50,000 people a year will
die unnecessarily.
So why did Trump and his friends do that? Well, the answer is
obvious. In that same terrible bill, they gave $1 trillion in tax
breaks to the 1 percent, to the people sitting right behind the
President when he was inaugurated.
Does anybody in America really believe that it makes sense to give $1
trillion in tax breaks to the richest people in America and at the same
time throw 15 million working-class people off of their healthcare?
As the Senator from Oregon indicated, right now in Vermont and all
over this country, people are receiving notices from their insurance
companies. In my State, a few days ago--the southern part of the
State--it wasn't a doubling of their premiums; it was a quadrupling of
their premiums.
So at a time when we are already paying the highest prices in the
world for healthcare by far, people are going to look at these bills
and think it is insane. And, again, in Vermont, we are seeing now
families are going to be paying 45, 50 percent.
I say to my friend from Oregon, 50 percent of their income on
healthcare--how do you survive when you are spending 50 percent of your
income on healthcare? What do you have left for food or for anything
else?
What the connection is between authoritarianism and oligarchy is that
these billionaires not only don't want to pay their fair share of
taxes, they want tax breaks. Not only do they want to, with impunity,
be able to break unions and throw workers out on the street, but they
want in many ways what existed in the 1700s, what our forefathers
fought against: They want the divine right to rule.
The King of England thought that they had a God-given, divine right
to rule. These guys think that as multibillionaires, they have the
right to do anything--no accountability. They are bringing forth
hundreds of billions of dollars right now, investing in AI and
robotics, which will, if we don't deal with it, have a devastating
impact on the working class of this country. They are going to have
more factories in America. But do you know what? Ain't going to be
human beings working in those factories.
Elon Musk--I don't agree with Musk on anything. But just the other
day, Musk made it clear--he said: Hey, AI and robotics are going to do
away with jobs. There are not going to be any jobs. They don't need
jobs in America.
Well, that is great if you are worth a couple hundred billion
dollars. But if you don't have a job and you are a working-class
person, how do you feed your family? how do you afford healthcare?
Do you think anybody at the White House will stay up nights worrying
about you when you lose your job? I don't think so.
So we are in an unprecedented and difficult moment in American
history. And I want to thank the 7 million people just this Saturday,
all over this country, who came out and said loudly and clearly: No
more Kings. And we are going to keep that movement going. And I don't
care if you are a conservative, a progressive, a socialist, a Democrat,
whatever you may be, we understand that what makes our country great
is, in fact, freedom, the right to dissent, the right to argue, and I
don't care what your politics are, that is what we have to maintain.
I want to conclude simply by expressing a very great deal of
disappointment in my Republican colleagues, with few exceptions. The
vast majority of Republicans in the Senate and the House are not
authoritarians. They believe in the Constitution. They believe in the
rule of law. But they, at this moment, at least, with very few
exceptions, simply do not have the courage to stand up to this
authoritarian President.
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How many times have the Senator from Oregon and I heard that our
Republican friends believe in small government, in federalism, in the
right of the local government. They don't want that big, bad Federal
Government overruling the needs of cities and towns in the States. And
now you have a President of the United States sending Federal troops
into Portland, OR, and Chicago, IL, usurping the rights of Congress,
threatening to impeach judges who rule against them.
So this is a very difficult, unprecedented moment in our history, but
I have every confidence that when the American people stand together
and they do not let Trump and his friends divide us up by the color of
our skin or where we were born or our sexual orientation; when we stand
together, defend the Constitution, and defend American democracy, we
will prevail, and we will defeat authoritarianism, and we will defeat
oligarchy.
I would simply ask my friend from Oregon a profound question: Do you
agree with me?
Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you to my colleague from Vermont. I appreciate
your points, and I do share them, yes. You expressed them thoroughly
and compassionately. And thank you for your advocacy.
I see that my colleague from Virginia is on the floor. Would my
colleague from Virginia consider asking a question?
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, will the Senator from Oregon yield for a
question?
Mr. MERKLEY. I will yield for a question, yes.
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, I am going to ask two questions. I am going
to tell a story about something that happened recently in Virginia and
ask my colleague from Oregon what he thinks about it, and then I am
going to hand my colleague from Oregon a picture and ask my colleague
what he thinks about it.
To begin with the story--and the story deals with a topic that may
not seem that sexy or something but that I think is pretty important:
U.S. attorneys and the rule of law. Virginia has two U.S. attorneys,
Western District of Virginia and the Eastern District of Virginia.
And those two U.S. attorneys who were put in office by President
Trump have both recently been forced out of office--forced out of
office because they wouldn't engage in political persecution of Donald
Trump's enemies.
Let me describe the situation to my colleague from Oregon. When the
Trump administration began, the two U.S. attorneys who had been
recommended by President Biden and voted on, confirmed by the Senate,
both stepped down, as is the norm.
The Trump administration then elevated in the Eastern District of
Virginia an individual by the name of Erik Siebert. First, the
Department of Justice appointed him for 120 days, and then that was
followed by an appointment by the judges of the court. But his initial
appointment into the role was by the Trump administration.
Mr. Siebert began his career as a DC police officer and then served
for 15 years as a prosecutor in one of the most important positions in
the U.S. Attorney's Offices nationally.
Senator Warner and I interviewed candidates, and we recommended Erik
Siebert to the Trump administration. So they had put him in as the
interim, and then he had been confirmed as the acting. We recommended
him to the Trump administration. The Trump administration nominated
him, and the Judiciary Committee--in an overwhelmingly bipartisan
vote--reported him to the floor of the Senate.
But before the Senate could act on that bipartisan vote by the
Judiciary Committee, Erik Siebert was forced out of office, and he was
forced out of office because he refused to prosecute, to indict, former
FBI Director Jim Comey and New York attorney general Letitia James. He
said there was no evidence to support an indictment in the case, and so
this individual who had been put in office by the Trump administration
was forced out.
In the Western District of Virginia--which covers more of Virginia's
land mass but a smaller portion of the Virginia population--Senator
Merkley, we had a process like you do in Oregon, and Senator Warner and
I recommended two candidates to the White House, and one was a
gentleman named Todd Gilbert. Todd Gilbert was a Republican member of
our House of Delegates from Shenandoah County, VA, who was the leader
of our Republican caucus in our House of Delegates, a strong supporter
of President Trump, and he had even been speaker of the house when the
Republicans held the majority of the Virginia General Assembly. A very
solid individual, very much with Republican bone fides, and supporting
President Trump.
But he applied to be the U.S. attorney. He had been a local
prosecutor but also a local defense attorney. President Trump installed
him as the interim and nominated him for the position.
Before the Senate Judiciary Committee could take him up, the Trump
Department of Justice pressured Todd Gilbert to fire the chief deputy
who had been the deputy in that office leading criminal prosecutions
during multiple Presidential terms. Todd Gilbert refused to do it, and
Todd Gilbert was forced to resign as a result.
Subsequent reporting by the New York Times laid out the facts that we
believe to be true; that the Trump administration wanted to push out
the assistant because the assistant was unwilling to issue indictments
that were political in nature against Trump's political enemies and,
for that reason, they pressured Todd Gilbert to fire his assistant.
Todd Gilbert, who had given up his position in the Virginia General
Assembly to take this position, within a month, walked out of the U.S.
Attorney's Office rather than succumb to a politically motivated firing
of a long-time, dedicated prosecutor.
In two instances, the chief Federal law enforcement officials in
Virginia, installed in their positions by the Trump administration,
were forced to leave because they wouldn't agree to bend the knee and
genuflect to a politically motivated persecution campaign.
And so my question to my colleague is, You are talking about creeping
authoritarianism. What does it say when the Executive makes moves on
law enforcement officials, Republican law enforcement officials,
because they won't bend the knee and politically persecute people
against whom there is no actionable claim?
Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you so much, my colleague for Virginia, for laying
out this story, which is then quite presented because of its
extraordinary nature, to have U.S. attorneys basically fired in short
order because they stood up for the principle of the rule of law,
rather than agree to be part of a political persecution or prosecution
team.
And I must say they are candidates to go up on my wall of heroes. And
I so respect--now here, as you said with Todd, he wasn't coming from
the blue side of the aisle. And he wasn't just a newbie to the house.
He was the leader of the house Republicans. When they were in charge,
he was the speaker.
Now, I was the speaker as well. I have a little affection for the
speakers, but I know how difficult it can be to run a chamber. So you
have to be deeply, deeply connected to your colleagues and your caucus
as you manage that process.
So this individual, just by that resume, clearly, was coming with a
set of values deeply rooted in the Republican Party. The value he
didn't have was to screw over innocent people. And thank goodness we
still have people willing to stand up for justice not, if you will,
injustice.
Because that is what we are seeing. We see it in the form of the
enemies list that the President is going after, but we also see it--and
more hidden normally--the firing of individuals, the tossing of
individuals who aren't willing to take a loyalty test. Their loyalty is
to the Constitution, not to the President.
So I think it says a tremendous amount about how far we are into the
authoritarian state. This is kind of standard operating procedure for
an authoritarian. You mentioned kind of creeping authoritarianism. I
would say we are on full-stream authoritarianism because so much is
happening in terms of the firing of employees who are failing the
loyalty test; the decimating of programs at the whim of the President,
rather than by the laws being passed here; ignoring laws that apply to
the Executive, like the fact that you can't fire inspectors general
unless it is for cause and 30 days.
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The attack on due process and free speech and free press, the
weaponization, in general, of the Justice Department--which is kind of
a facet of it--and then the effort to get court decisions that enable
the President to deploy the military in the streets, when there is no
insurrection, no rebellion, and no invasion.
And this last piece, I think, is extraordinarily dangerous, not yet
an issue that has come to your home in Virginia, but it has come to
Southern California and to DC and to Portland, OR, and to Chicago, IL.
And there will be others because the whole intent is to have the court
decisions resolved that provide the precedent for deploying troops when
and how the President wants, according to his definition of what a
rebellion is or an insurrection is, as opposed to the realities. So
there are no checks on that use of military.
These are all so many things happening all at once. Remember, we are
simply 9 months into this administration. Wow. I mean, it is
breathtaking. You had to have--the team had to have a careful plan,
ready to roll, things that were going to be done every day. And that is
why they had Project 2025. That is why they have Russ Vought at the
head of OMB, being the engineer of that Trumpian trainer.
And we are in big trouble, so we are ringing the alarm bells. You are
ringing the alarm bells. The people--they are 7 million strong on the
weekend--were ringing the alarm bells in the biggest demonstration in
U.S. history in a single day, but that is so important right now if we
are going to save our Republic.
And thank you for being a core part of the rescue team.
I yield for a possible additional question.
Mr. KAINE. Mr. President, might the Senator from Oregon yield for
another question?
Mr. MERKLEY. Yes, I will yield for another question.
Mr. KAINE. Thank you. And I will tell a quick story. In fact, I am
going to hand you this picture now because my question is going to be
for you to describe it. But I will tell a quick story on the
authoritarianism front, and this is a very Virginia story, and then I
am going to ask my colleague to describe the picture that I just handed
him.
So Virginia is an unusual State. Fifty States have mottos; all States
have mottos. Almost all States have mottos that are positive:
``Excelsior,'' ``Onward to the Stars Through Adversity.'' My favorite--
because it is so random--positive motto is Michigan's. It is Latin, but
the translation is: If you seek a pleasant peninsula, look about you.
How random. I wasn't looking for a peninsula, but I would rather it
be pleasant than unpleasant.
Virginia's is the only motto that is not positive. The Virginia motto
was designed by the framers of the Virginia Constitution, who were
meeting in Williamsburg when the Framers of the American Constitution--
not the Framers. The Declaration of Independence was being drafted and
voted on in Philadelphia.
The Declaration voted on in Philadelphia, July 4, 1776. July 5, 1776,
in Williamsburg, the Virginia ``B team'' that weren't in Philadelphia,
they did four really cool things: They passed the first Virginia
Constitution. They enacted the first Virginia bill of rights, which
became a model for the national Bill of Rights. They elected Patrick
Henry the first Governor.
But the fourth thing they did was they had a four-member committee
appointed that spent 4 days in the library of William and Mary to
design a state seal. And the State seal, which I am wearing. I wear
this all the time. It is an unusual one. It is a woman amazon,
representing virtue, standing atop a deposed Monarch whose crown has
fallen off.
And the State motto, the only one that isn't a positive, the Virginia
motto is a warning. It is a rebuke. It is Latin: ``Sic Semper
Tyrannis''; thus be it always to tyrants.
And the framers picked the future verb tense. They didn't say: Down
with tyrants. We don't like tyrants. We have defeated tyrants. They
used the future verb tense because they believed that tyranny wasn't a
form of government; it was a fact of human of nature. It was a fact of
human nature that would not go away, and we would always need virtue to
be able to defeat tyranny.
And so as you are talking about authoritarianism and where we are, I
am just reminded of the fact that Virginians predicted in 1776 that the
Nation would need to always be on guard against tyranny.
And in the formation of the Constitution--and my colleague has done a
great job of looking at provisions of the Constitution--we invested a
lot of power in the hands of an Executive, but then we put checks--
Congress, the courts, a free press. You shouldn't go to war without a
vote of Congress. The appropriations power was for Congress, not the
President. We put all these checks in place to stop the reality of
tyranny.
And as we round the corner into 250 years of American democracy, we
are a nation looking in the mirror and asking ourselves the question of
whether we still believe in democracy over tyranny. Do we still believe
it?
In 1776, 30 percent of Americans were for monarchy. When we tell the
story of the Revolution, it wasn't that 100 percent of Americans
believed in democracy. Thirty percent were for tyranny and monarchy. It
was what they knew or they had a financial tie or a family tie to
England or maybe they were worried that democracy would be too messy.
It wasn't a foregone conclusion that democracy would be the choice.
Every generation has to answer the question for itself: Do we still
prefer democracy over tyranny?
And as we face the 250th anniversary of the Nation's birth, we are
confronted with that.
I have handed my colleague a photo. I had hoped to have it on a
poster, but the photo was taken today, and I didn't have time to turn
it into a poster. But I want to ask my colleague from Oregon to
describe what it is you see in that photograph.
Mr. MERKLEY. Well, thank you for the question. I thought when you
were going to hand me this I was going to have a Rorschach test or
something of that nature. But I knew within seconds what this was, as
soon as I realized it was machinery and not parts of a bridge. But this
is the demolition at the White House to prepare for some $300 million
ballroom. At least that is what I am nominating as my answer, and I
would yield to you a question if you would like to follow up.
Mr. KAINE. I would love to ask a followup question, if the Senator
would allow.
Mr. MERKLEY. I will indeed allow a question.
Mr. KAINE. You know what a metaphor is. A metaphor is something that
not only stands for itself but it stands for something else.
As you look at that picture of the White House being demolished
today, at the very time as you were standing on this floor talking
about authoritarianism hurting the institutions that were put in place
250 years ago, what is your feeling about the true significance of this
demolition project going on at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue?
Mr. MERKLEY. You are asking such a cerebral and philosophical
question here as I am in the 20-whatever hour of the day.
But here we have evidence of the President tearing down a symbol of
our Republic and building a symbol that is really a symbol about
authoritarian power, about a government that serves the rich.
Just the fact that we are spending money on a $300 million ballroom--
which I can't even imagine how it cost that much--when at the same
time, the President will not come as requested by the minority leader
in the House and minority leader in the Senate and sit down and work on
it. I am sure they are willing to go to him, sit down, and work on the
fact that we are facing 20 million people who are going to have their
healthcare costs doubled. But instead of addressing that, the President
is tearing down part of the symbol of our Republic, a President, and
building a symbol of a King.
I yield the floor.
I thank my colleague from Oregon for this important conversation and
for your stamina and patriotism.
Mr. MERKLEY. My stamina is getting a little shaky. I see my colleague
from California standing behind me. I will get out of the way. I ask if
you would care to ask a question.
Mr. SCHIFF. Yes. Would the Senator yield for a question?
[[Page S7687]]
Mr. MERKLEY. I will yield for a question.
Mr. SCHIFF. I thank the Senator for yielding and for your
extraordinary speech and all that you have elucidated today and for
your powerful advocacy on behalf of our democracy.
I think there are any number of signs of when a democracy is in
trouble, when a country is descending into a kind of dictatorship.
Books have been written about this subject. No one account, I think,
can comprise all of the elements of the deterioration of democracy, but
there are certain telltale signs that I think we are seeing all too
clearly.
And my question goes to some of the things that we are witnessing
that I think are hallmarks of the decline of a democracy and that ought
to be sounding a three-alarm fire for the American people. Let me begin
with a few of them.
First is the misuse of the military at home and abroad. When a
President begins to use a military for unpurposeful purposes, when a
President deploys American forces in violation of the law to American
cities, when a President assembles top leadership--flag officers,
generals, admirals--and tells them that our cities are to be military
training grounds, that there is an enemy within, it is as sure as
anything a sign of a democracy in trouble, of a democracy in decline.
When troops are repelling in Black Hawk helicopters, not in Somalia
but in Chicago, it is the most visible sign of a democracy in trouble.
This is, as we all know, in violation of the law which prohibits the
use of our military for domestic law enforcement purposes.
Likewise, the misuse of the military abroad, without the
authorization of Congress, is another sign of the deterioration of our
democracy.
When a President arrogates to himself the power to blow up ships in
the Caribbean or now in the Pacific without any authority, in violation
of law and Constitution, it is another sign of the President arrogating
the military power to himself--to the person of himself, not to the
Constitution, not to his core responsibilities, but to himself.
No. 2, among the dozen or so most virulent signs of the decline of
our democracy, at the risk of an authoritarian regime taking hold of
this country, are the attacks on our universities. We see this in
Hungary and elsewhere. When rulers start to attack the independence,
the academic freedom of our universities, it is a sure sign of a
democracy in trouble. When a President tries to dictate by withholding
Federal funds--the lifeblood of research universities--and withholds
those funds unless an academic institution agrees to adopt his cultural
agenda or fire certain faculty or allow it to have some kind of a
monitor, some kind of a Big Brother overseeing what takes place in our
universities, it is a sign of a democracy in decline.
No. 3, when an administration, when a ruler goes after the right of
representation by attacking lawyers, law firms, legal professionals and
says: Thou shall not represent this cause which is deeply unpopular to
me, you shall not take on this client who is antagonistic to me, you
shall not hire this lawyer who is a personal enemy of mine--that is
antithetical to the history of our democracy and all democracies.
John Adams, prior to becoming President, took on one of the most
unpopular cases in American history, representing British soldiers who
had participated in the Boston Massacre. Why did he do that? Why take
on such an unpopular cause? Because he understood the importance to a
democracy of the right of representation.
No. 4 of the signs that our democracy is in deep, deep trouble is the
abuse of the Justice Department to go after the President's enemies and
to protect his friends. It is in actions like, in the State of
Virginia, the firing of a U.S. attorney who believes that a prosecution
is not warranted, notwithstanding the personal injunction of the
President that ``thou must prosecute these people.'' That prosecutor
was fired and another was brought in to implement the President's will
to go after his enemies.
But it is also, likewise, a sign of the loss of democracy when the
powers of the Justice Department can be used to protect the President's
friends, when a Justice Department can be told: You shall not look
further into the $50,000 in bribe money taken from a top White House
official; close down that investigation. You shall look no further into
the corruption of the mayor of New York; close down that investigation
because that mayor is useful to the administration politically. That is
as sure a sign as anything that we no longer have an independent
Justice Department but one in the thrall of the White House.
No. 5, suppression of free speech. Suppression of free speech,
something not just in any amendment but in our First Amendment. When an
administration uses its power to force ABC to pay him personally or to
force CBS to pay him personally for the right to continue its broadcast
license or for the opportunity of its parent to have a merger, these
are overt efforts to censor the press.
When it uses its regulatory power and threats to try to take off the
air a comedian or two comedians, it is a sure sign of the loss of press
freedom.
And, equally, we see in other requests of regimes an effort to
concentrate power, to concentrate the media itself in the hands of
friendly oligarchs or to create a kind of state-run media, which we are
deeply at risk of and see in the development of TikTok, and the course
of power of the government to decide who the future owners of TikTok
will be, to make sure they are of the same political persuasion as the
President; or we see reflected in the oligarch control of Twitter or
now X; or we see in organizations that are buying up stations like
Sinclair and using its vast power for the purpose of censorship.
Next, in a declining democracy, in a budding autocracy, we see the
demonization of vulnerable communities. And what could be more visible
in America today than the demonization of immigrant communities by this
administration or the demonization of the other, the false portrait
that people who come to this country are all murderers and rapists and
drug smugglers? The demonization of some of the most vulnerable people
in America are also in the LGBTQ community and the trans community. We
see this time and time again in history in countries becoming
dictatorships, that they build their power on the backs of people they
dehumanize.
You are seeing at home another powerful sign of a budding
authoritarianism--a growing authoritarianism--and that is the use of
propaganda, the use of taxpayer money for propaganda. You see banners
with the President's glowering face now on public buildings in
violation of law. You see Kristi Noem doing Hollywood-looking produced
ads that are played at airports, falsely blaming Democrats for the
shutdown--political propaganda paid for by you, the taxpayer; or
highly-produced immigration videos featuring Kristi Noem thanking the
President--more political propaganda.
Another sign of the decline of our democracy, of the growth of our
authoritarian regime, is the corrupt use of government power for self-
enrichment. This we saw from the very first days of this
administration: the meme coin dinners in which the premises of the
White House are used but private donors are encouraged to buy the
President's meme coin, a cut of which the President gets; using the
power of the prestige of that office--sometimes even the venue of that
office--to enrich himself; the receipt of aircraft, a $400 million
aircraft from Qatar, a nation that has a keen interest in U.S. policy;
the President acquiring a plane in plain violation of the emolument
clause; soliciting private donors for ballrooms; real estate deals in
the Gulf; the rampant conflicts of interest with crypto money coming in
from the Gulf to the First Family; the use of government power and
position for corruption and self-enrichment.
Another powerful sign of a democracy in decline is the usurpation of
Congress's power of the purse, the illegal withholding of funding, the
impoundment of funding, the illegal rescission of funding, the illegal
termination of grants, and, I would say beyond that, the mass firing of
Federal employees--the lawless firing of Federal employees--the use of
Congress's power to appropriate money, one of the most important
powers--arguably, the most important power we have--now taken by the
administration and without a fight in this body, certainly not
[[Page S7688]]
a bipartisan fight. That is surely a sign that we are losing our
democracy.
The undermining of elections and voting is another key ingredient in
dictators around the world. Cementing their position and power is the
undermining of the foundational right to vote. We see it in its various
forms now. We see it in this push to engage in gerrymandering around
the country. But we see it in closing down polling stations in urban
areas. We see it in efforts to suppress the vote of certain
communities. We see it in the purging of voter rolls. We see it in
affirmative efforts to discourage people from voting. We see it in the
demonization of election workers, the interference with election
boards.
Finally, although the list is much longer, I would end with this: the
attack on truth itself, the attack on facts, the attack on science, the
purging of people from our scientific agencies, the rabid falsehood,
the firehose of falsehood coming out of the White House and our
Agencies, daily--provable, palpable falsehood, eroding the very idea of
truth and fact.
If you can persuade people that nothing is true, then what are we to
use to decide who should govern?
If there is no shared experience, then how do we decide what the
policies should be?
How do we avoid just falling back on political tribes or, worse,
political violence, if there is no truth? if there is no fact? if there
is no accountability?
So I thank Senator Merkley for shedding light on the risk--the risk
to our precious democracy and the risk to this incredible inheritance
from our Founders.
Part and parcel of saving our Republic and part and parcel of saving
the country is to understand the dangers so that we can confront them.
Future generations are going to ask what we did in this hour when our
democracy was most vulnerable. Our parents and their parents went off
to world wars to protect our democracy. Our task is far easier, on the
one hand, but no less important on the other.
So I ask you: Are you seeing these same signs I am seeing of the
danger to our democracy, of the degradation of our democracy, and what
do you feel we can do to save this inheritance?
(Mr. SCHMITT assumed the Chair.)
Mr. MERKLEY. Well, I so appreciate the question from my colleague
from California.
I must say this is a pretty comprehensive list you put forward, and I
was checking them off in the order of issues that I have been raising
over the many hours through the night last night, but I think the one
that I didn't have that I actually agree with very much is your final
point of the firehose of falsehoods, because we are just adrift in a
sea of misinformation and disinformation. Then added into that toxic
brew is a whole lot of just basic propaganda in a place it doesn't
belong.
When you go out to the Portland airport, you will not hear the tape
that Noem wants played. She wanted it played in airports all around the
country, and a group of airports, led first by Portland, OR, said: No.
It is breaking the law. It is breaking the Hatch Act; it is breaking
the Anti-Lobbying Act; and it is breaking some other act on the list.
In a situation where the administration does not care what the law
says, the philosophy is this: We are the unitary executive. We are in
charge, and we can do whatever the hell we want--a ``take us to court
if you don't like it'' attitude. Then we see the deliberate crushing of
rights, and we see the deliberate grabbing of the power of the purse
from Congress.
The difference between an authoritarian government--and there are
many differences, but one way to describe the difference between an
authoritarian government and a democracy is, in a democracy, the
representatives of the people decide what the programs are, how they
will be funded, and how they will be run. In an authoritarian
government, all of those powers--``What are the programs? How much
money will we put into them? How will they be run?''--transition to the
executive, the all-powerful executive.
So every time we hear Trump or his Cabinet members saying, ``I am
canceling that grant'' or ``I am defunding that program because it
doesn't act consistent with the priorities of this administration,''
that is an authoritarian statement, and we are deep into this
authoritarian crisis.
The poster behind me says:
Ring the alarm bells.
I thank you for helping to ring these alarm bells in a very cogent
and extensive way.
I thank the 7 million people who went out and protested on Saturday
for ringing the alarm bells because what we know is that, if we do not
confront tyranny in its first year and if we do not find a way to have
a strong rebuttal in the next election, then it becomes entrenched, and
it is our responsibility--our oath to the Constitution--to not let that
happen.
Thank you.
I notice we have a colleague from Vermont on the floor, if the
colleague might be interested in asking a question.
Mr. WELCH. Will the Senator yield for a question?
Mr. MERKLEY. I would yield for a question.
Mr. WELCH. How are you managing to do this? You have been up all
night and your staff too. It is really, really quite extraordinary.
Mr. MERKLEY. Well, thank you for that question. I am on the verge of
falling over.
Mr. WELCH: And the staff.
Mr. MERKLEY: But I have got an hour more before we are going to wrap
up this effort.
I am so pleased that so many have been able to come from the caucus
and help ring the alarm bells, because this is the most perilous moment
for our Republic since the Civil War, and never did I expect it to be
in my time. I thought, yes, we argue over housing policy, and how can
we best have a decent home in a decent community? Yes, we argue over
education policy, and how can there be a pathway for every child to
have a full and productive life? All of these are foundations.
Mr. WELCH. Will the Senator yield for another question? I will ask
another one.
Mr. MERKLEY. Oh, another question. I would yield for another
question. Yes, I would.
Mr. WELCH. All right.
Mr. MERKLEY. Make it a long one.
Mr. WELCH. I will make it a longish one, but I want to join my
colleagues in expressing our gratitude for this incredible physical
effort that reflects not just your intellectual engagement but your
compassion and the care you have for Oregonians, whom you have been
serving so well for so long. It has really been, just for me, a
wonderful opportunity to be a new Member of the Senate, along with
Senator Schiff, who I know feels the same way to be working with
somebody like the Senator from Oregon, who is just honest and true and
totally grounded in his commitment to the people whom he serves and the
Constitution that all of us serve. It is just a gratifying experience
for us to be your colleagues.
You know, one thing that I wanted to talk about was tariffs and who
has the authority to impose tariffs and what the implications are,
because what I am seeing is that our farm economy is really being
devastated by tariffs.
Let's talk about Midwest farmers. They are proud folks, like the
dairy farmers in Vermont, and they used to have markets. The thing they
loved to have is purchasing power that they earned by tilling the land
and having family farm operations that would be passed on from
generation to generation. They really didn't want a lot of government
involvement or interference. They wanted to be able to grow their
crops. And what I am seeing is that the Trump administration's embrace
of tariffs has resulted in the total collapse of the markets that used
to be available to our Midwest farmers, including the China market.
You know, last year, our farmers sold about 30, 40 percent of their
soybean crops to China. They haven't sold a bushel, OK? They haven't
sold a bushel. There is now talk, by Trump, of taking revenue from the
tariffs to pay farmers a subsidy. I get it--the farmers need it--but
wouldn't it make more sense to let farmers sell the crops that they
grow rather than have a tariff that prohibits them from selling to
markets they have had?
Then the second thing I noticed--and I really am interested in this
because rural America is the heart of America, you know, with the
wonderful community values folks have--family values--
[[Page S7689]]
hard work, service. We have got a billionaire who is the Secretary of
the Treasury. In my understanding--I don't know how. I guess, if you
are a billionaire, you own lots of things in lots of different places,
but he, apparently, owns lots of farmland in the West. But his major,
new initiative is to take $40 billion of our money to bail out the
Argentine peso.
So maybe you can explain to me how that is going to help our Midwest
farmers--a stronger, bailed-out peso from Secretary Bessent--and how
the Bessent policy on tariffs is going to give any kind of lifeline to
those family farms that have been so much a part of our heritage, who
do so much for the well-being of our country, and whose prosperity is
so essential to the well-being of our whole country.
Farmers like to feed people. They like to work hard. They don't want
a bailout, and they don't want a handout. We have got the tariff
policies that are wrecking the markets, and then we have got a bailout
that is going to Argentina that is going to further erode the ability
of our farmers to sell their product because, oh, by the way, the
Argentinian farmers are now going into the markets we are helping them
create that have been opened up as a result of denying access to those
markets for our Midwest farmers.
So perhaps you could explain to me how this makes sense.
Mr. MERKLEY. Well, I appreciate the question from my colleague from
Vermont.
I must say soybeans have come up several times today, as has
Argentina, and this is so troubling.
Now, I will tell you, when I met with my Farm Bureau, everyone has a
little bit of queasiness even if tariffs haven't touched them yet, but
the tariffs are changing all the time. So how might it suddenly affect
the market if another tariff change is inputted and so forth?
Everyone in the agricultural world is terrified that, if they lose
their market, even temporarily, those relationships deteriorate. When
new relationships are forged, it is hard to get people back. If you
have let people down once, then what happens next?
So this is the situation--this double deal, I guess I will call it,
with Argentina--with our, well, having a trade war with China. So China
doesn't buy a single thing. You said not a single bushel, and I have
heard, yep, nothing, nada.
Senator Murray of Washington was down here, saying: We have got all
of these beans that normally travel through Washington State before
they get exported. Where the hell are they going to be stored?
I don't know, but what I do know is that a lot of folks may not have
a place to store them. I look forward to learning more about what is
going to happen to this massive crop that there is no customer for
because China went to Argentina.
Then you mentioned a second part of the Argentina deal to which the
President says: Do you know what? I want to bail out this far-right
government down there because they are in trouble--and we don't want to
let a far-right government be in trouble--with $20 billion and maybe
$40 billion.
Think of how much money that is. That is $100 for every single person
in the United States of America. You know, if I went door-to-door in
Oregon and personally asked everybody, ``Would you like to give $100 to
Argentina?'' do you know how many takers I would have?
Mr. WELCH. I think I know the answer.
Mr. MERKLEY. I think I would get zero takers.
By the way, where is the legislation that gives the President the
power to give $20 billion or $40 billion to Argentina?
I haven't looked it up yet. I am going to look it up, but I think it
is exactly a feature of an authoritarian government that he wants to
self-help a fellow authoritarian government but with a twist. The twist
is that, apparently, a group of well-placed colleagues--maybe friends
of the Treasury Secretary, I believe, that I may have read, but I won't
say that definitively--bought up some of the debt in Argentina. They
bought it at a discount. That is my understanding.
Again, I have not double-checked this. So I am saying it with some
caution.
But what happens when you do that, and then there is a bailout, and
you get face value?
Let's say you pay 25 cents on the dollar. When you get face value
after a bailout and you make a 400-percent return, well, that is great
for the richest of whoever they are in America whom Trump wants to help
out.
Mr. WELCH. Will the Senator yield again?
Mr. MERKLEY. I will yield, but it has to be in the form of a
question. I will yield for a question.
Mr. WELCH. So here is my question:
Is this really a bailout for the financiers on Wall Street who bought
this debt at 20 cents on the dollar but may get paid $1 on the dollar
or is this just flat-out enrichment? They didn't lose. They are winning
as other people suffer. So is this really a bailout or just a flat-out
``Hey, fellas. Here is $40 billion. I love you, Donald Trump''?
Mr. MERKLEY. Well, thank you for that question.
I must say it reminds me of a townhall because, every now and then, I
realize I am way over my head in what I actually know to be the facts.
So I am going to stop before I dig a bigger hole because I have not
personally researched it or read up on it.
I have heard a variety of comments, almost in passing, from
colleagues who were so disturbed about this arrangement, disturbed
about what is going to happen to soybeans, disturbed that China is
buying them from Argentina, disturbed that we are sending a bailout to
Argentina, and disturbed that they have heard that a lot of that money
may come back to some very rich people in the United States of America.
But I do not know the details, and I am going to leave it as a bit of a
conjecture, and when we talk soon, I will have the answers.
Mr. WELCH. Well, I appreciate that.
I yield to the Senator.
Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you.
I notice my colleague from Illinois has returned to the floor. If he
would like to, I would be happy to entertain a question, should he have
one.
Mr. DURBIN. First, I thank my colleague from Oregon for his endurance
and determination in hanging in there.
He is bringing up a critical issue and subject for America at a
critical moment, but I would like to return to an issue we discussed
this morning when I was visiting, and that is the issue of the
militarization of our Federal Government and its impact on States like
yours of Oregon and mine of Illinois.
What I am finding as I read the newspaper accounts is that the ICE
operation from the Department of Homeland Security in Illinois
continues to intimidate people who live in the city, in their
neighborhoods, and all around, and bring fear to parts of the city of
Chicago. Little Village and Pilsen are the ones most well known.
Mr. MERKLEY. I am going to interrupt you for just a moment because
the protocol team is not sure whether you asked me if I would yield for
a question.
Mr. DURBIN. It is a legitimate point.
Will you yield for a question--
Mr. MERKLEY. I will yield for a question. Thank you.
Mr. DURBIN.--for the Chair?
The point I am trying to make is there are areas of the city of
Chicago and I am sure in your State of Oregon where the intimidation
factor has reached a point where people are worried about literally
going to church, going to work, taking their kids to school. It is a
genuine problem.
Just last week, an individual took his child to daycare, left the
motor running in his car and took the little toddler into daycare. He
came out the door and was arrested and detained and removed from that
scene, specifically, while the motor was still running in his car. That
is the kind of thing that is happening. It isn't as if they are
targeting criminals; they are going after people who look like they are
Hispanic. There are many who live in our city, and I am glad to have
them. They are wonderful people.
I would like to ask, in your State, what kind of intimidation, if
any, is taking place through this military operation of the President?
Mr. MERKLEY. I thank the Senator of Illinois for the question.
As you are telling this story, I was thinking about a story from
Oregon in which a woman who has been there for a long time--she has
legal status in the United States. Her mother visits from
[[Page S7690]]
Honduras, and her sister lives in Canada.
There is a park on the border between Washington State and Canada
where people can go into the park and meet. They have to leave by the
same entry they came in.
They have done this before, and so her mother gets to be with her,
and then with her sister, the three of them and four children--7-year-
old triplets and a 9-year-old, I believe. And the children are U.S.
citizens. So they do what they have done before: They go up to meet the
Canadian sister in this park. While they are hugging, she gets
arrested. Arrested why? For smuggling her sister into the United
States. But they are in this park that is set up for that purpose.
She is still being held. The children were released, and they are
with a family friend. And the grandmother was released, the mother's
mother, but the mother, Jackie--mother of the four American children--
is still being held. We keep protesting, writing, calling, and she is
still being held.
The case against her was dropped. Why? Because you can't arrest
somebody for hugging in a park set up for that purpose. This is my
understanding of the case.
But think about how that story says everyone is at risk all the time.
Everyone is at risk. So there is fear and trepidation.
Individuals who have other documentation are afraid that they may
make a move that may lead to some extended family member or someone
else who has documentation being arrested, just like this woman had
documentation. So it is a regime of fear.
The argument Trump made was that when someone is here and
undocumented and they do a violent act, they are going to be deported.
I don't think many Americans would argue with that. But we should also
recognize that our immigrants commit violent acts at a lower rate than
native-born Americans. Portraying immigrants with this false story of
being criminals, rapists, murderers, and so forth, is simply, well, to
quote a district judge on a different topic, ``untethered to the
facts.''
We are in a deeply disturbing period where more children are being
separated, and communities are being terrorized.
I think how you have brought forward time and time again that we
needed to resolve the status for Dreamers in a more solid way, put
bills forth, and we fell short how many times? Six times? I am not
sure.
Mr. DURBIN. Or more.
Mr. MERKLEY. Or more. And this body can't even come together and
address children brought here through no fault of their own, who know
no other country, who speak no other language, who grew up here and are
productive citizens. Many of them, when we first started--the first I
was aware of it so long ago--they might have been little kids. Now they
may be out of high school, out of college, fully employed in the
community, and still we haven't resolved their status so they can kind
of feel like fully productive members of our community.
Mr. DURBIN. If the Senator would yield?
Mr. MERKLEY. I would yield for a question.
Mr. DURBIN. Over the course of my service in the Senate, one of the
things that I was proudest of and am still proud of was the formation
of the so-called Gang of 8--four Republicans and four Democrats who sat
down to write a comprehensive immigration reform bill. Senator McCain
led the effort on the Republican side, and Senator Schumer joined me
with others on the Democratic side. We produced a measure that had the
support of business and labor and Democrats and Republicans.
We brought it to the floor of the U.S. Senate and passed it with over
60 votes. It was a glorious day and a great celebration. What was it
all about? It was all about the 11 million undocumented people in the
United States coming forward and registering with this government who
they are, where they live, and they pay a fine for coming to this
country without documentation. They then don't automatically become
citizens, but they are allowed to work. They wouldn't be deported, and
they can live a normal life, paying their taxes and doing what people
who are in this country do normally.
It was an attempt to try to regularize the information, to account
for the 11 million, and to say that was going to be an accounting,
which would give us some stability in this country on the issue of
immigration. The fact is, it would have done just that.
Unfortunately, it was never taken up by the Republican leadership in
the House of Representatives. We passed it here in the Senate. It
included the Dream Act, and it was a step forward.
I contrast it today with what we are faced with: full-scale battles
and war over immigration in cities across this country. It is
unnecessary. There are ways to resolve this fairly, humanely, and in an
American fashion. I hope the Senator from Oregon agrees with me.
It is time for us to sit down and do this. Hiring more ICE agents is
not going to resolve the issue of immigration. Having a law that is
enforceable, rational, humane, and American in its nature is the best
way, as far as I am concerned.
I ask the Senator for his reaction.
Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you, Senator. I not only agree, but I so admire
what you accomplished. It is so frustrating. Why can't we accomplish
that again?
I know one of our Members worked hard with my colleague across the
aisle to do a bill that may have been a slimmer version, and President
Trump--then-Candidate Trump--said don't take that immigration bill
forward last year because he wanted to keep this as an election issue.
If people want to keep chaos rather than to solve problems, how are
we to address a better path forward for our Nation, a more productive
path?
So I hope what you accomplished can be reinvented. I am not sure that
I have any confidence that it is possible. It may be harder now than it
was then, but let's try. And you have my full backing in that effort.
Mr. DURBIN. I would like to just make one last comment, if I can--
Mr. MERKLEY. And I will yield for a question.
Mr. DURBIN.--in the nature of a question.
Just a few feet away from where we are in the Chamber is my Capitol
office, and on my credenza behind my desk is my mother's naturalization
certificate for all to see. I am a proud immigrant.
She came to this country at the age of 2. Her mother did not speak
English but brought three children on a boat from Germany to Baltimore
and ultimately to Illinois, where I grew up and my mother spent her
life. It was an indication of the American dream, as far as I am
concerned. Her son not only got a government job but was elected to the
Senate, so good things happen.
But I think it is a story of immigration--a story that is repeated
over and over again by families that come into this country, determined
to succeed. It makes us a better nation and always has.
Has the Senator run into that in the State of Oregon?
Mr. MERKLEY. I must say, Senator, I don't think there is an
individual we have in the Senate who is not the descendent of
immigrants. So shouldn't we all be able to identify with our family
stories and bring those to bear to solve this challenge and actually
restore a framework?
Just let me take one piece of this. The process for being able to
have an asylum hearing has a backlog of about 6 years. That is a piece
that we can find a rational way to address. The Dreamers--we can find a
rational path to bring the Dreamers fully into our society, as you have
laid out in the past. We can proceed to, I think, find a deal on border
security, what we pay. But there are many pieces that will never get
solved unless people are sitting down, like you did with your Gang of
8, bringing people together, and saying: Let's iron this out. So that
is my hope and prayer.
Mr. DURBIN. In the nature of a question, I ask the Senator from
Oregon, is he aware of the fact that we have approximately 700
immigration judges facing that backlog you just described, and the
Trump administration has dismissed 100 of them? So instead of adding
more judges so we can expedite the hearings and resolve them, the
opposite has been the case. Was the Senator aware of that?
Mr. MERKLEY. I was not aware of that, no, and that is insanity.
Mr. DURBIN. It certainly is.
[[Page S7691]]
I would also ask the Senator, when it comes to--
Mr. MERKLEY. I yield in the nature of a question.
Mr. DURBIN. In the nature of a question, when it comes to the issue
of due process, the question is whether or not we can, in this country,
offer due process to the people who are asking for their fate to be
resolved. That has been part of our Constitution applying not only to
citizens but those who are in our country petitioning to become
citizens.
Does the Senator agree with me that due process is a critical part of
our democracy?
Mr. MERKLEY. Absolutely.
Mr. DURBIN. We face this reality now with children. I just described
it earlier. The question I would ask you is this--
Mr. MERKLEY. I yield for the question.
Mr. DURBIN.--does the Senator believe that these unaccompanied
children need to have humane treatment at all times?
You told the story earlier of going down to the border and watching
what happened under previous administrations. Would the Senator recount
that story at this point?
Mr. MERKLEY. Yes. I think you asked me to recount the story. The
story involved the fact that I read a speech by Attorney General
Sessions. Attorney General Sessions was delivering this speech at I
think it was called Freedom Park in Southern California, on the border.
As I read the speech, I said out loud to people around me: It sounds
like he is planning to separate children deliberately from their
parents in order to have that trauma be a deterrent for people coming.
I said: There is no way any American administration--not blue, not
red--would ever deliberately harm children as a political policy
strategy.
A member of my team said: There is one way to find out. Go down to
the border.
I checked, and I had that weekend free, so I went down to the border.
I go into this warehouse, and in this warehouse, there are all these
basically what we would call in Oregon cyclone fence cages, wired
cages.
I stopped in front of one of them, and it had a group of boys, lined
up from the smallest to the tallest. The smallest was just knee high to
the grasshopper, as we would say, just a little tyke, maybe 4 years
old.
I see these kids looking out across the warehouse because in other
cages inside that warehouse were groups of women or men. My impression
was they were looking to see, where did my mother go? where did my
father go? where is my sister?
I said to the Customs and Border Protection agent: Were these
children separated from their parents?
He said: Yes.
I said: Where do you do that?
He said: We bring the family in through that door--the door was maybe
25 feet away--and we say: Children, come with me. Parents go with that
person. And, boom, they are separated, and they stayed separated.
What happened as that unfolded is the administration--this is under
Trump 1--said they were keeping careful records of the children to be
able to have a reunion with their parents, but they were not.
So we ended up with extraordinary efforts, including tons of
volunteer lawyers and researchers, trying to get children back unified
with their parents. A few hundred, I believe, were never reconnected to
their parents. They could never be found. Whether they returned to a
small village in a faraway country, I don't know, but it was profoundly
disturbing.
I went outside, and the press had a little huddle. They said: What do
you see? I said: Children being separated from their parents.
Of course, the story immediately blew up. And then I went up the
road. I heard that there were hundreds of boys being held in a former
Walmart. And my team member is like: Well, we asked, but we didn't get
permission to get in.
I said: Well, let's go knock on the door.
And so we go up. And he is doing a live feed--what is that called--on
one of those social media--live Facebook feeds. I go up and I knock,
and I say, yes, who I am, and we were in the area, and we heard there
were a lot of operations here. Can you give us a tour? Can you have the
executive director come out?
And they got back to me. And by the way, I was--since I was doing a
live feed, I said: Call me on my phone number. My phone number went out
to the entire world at that moment. And so I enjoyed having hundreds or
thousands of people, seemed like, called for weeks about this.
But they didn't come out. What they did is they called the police to
have me arrested. And the police declined to arrest me but did escort
me and my staff member off campus. They did not want there to be a
tour.
And I had been told there might be--I think it was--1,000 boys, and
there were some almost 1,500 boys in this. And because of the publicity
of that live feed, the next week, the administration had to open it up
to the press. And the week after that, I went back and took some
legislators and saw it.
But this vision of deliberately harming children in order to deter
immigration, that is a horrific thing. And it did stop. The outcry was
massive. It did stop, thank God. But all these other now circumstances
are--people are being hurt in all kinds of ways right now.
Mr. DURBIN. Would the Senator yield for another question? It would be
my last question.
Mr. MERKLEY. Yes, I will yield for another question.
Mr. DURBIN. Is the Senator aware of the fact that 2 weeks ago ICE
offered to children under the age of 18--and they were children--an
option of a $2,400 reward if they would leave the country and go back
to the country of their birth? Children were being asked to sign a
contract to give up any claim to citizenship in the United States, and
the $2,400 was available to an adult that they would identify in their
country who would meet their airplane.
With all of the trafficking that has been going on, it was a
ridiculous idea to take children and ask them to make that decision and
to give them a financial reward if they went along.
Was the Senator aware of that?
Mr. MERKLEY. I had heard a reference to some kind of a payment
program being tested, but I didn't know the details.
Mr. DURBIN. That was the detail.
I am going to yield the floor and thank the Senator.
Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you very much, to my colleague from Illinois.
Thank you for being a champion.
And I noticed that we have a Senator from Washington State? No, we do
not.
We do have a Senator from Oregon who has arrived. Would the Senator
from Oregon like to ask a question?
Mr. WYDEN. I know you have to ask permission. I just want to say that
today has been an extraordinary day for Oregon and for the country. We
look forward to continuing this discussion. And would the Senator
yield?
Mr. MERKLEY. Yes. Thank you for the protocol. Thank you for asking
me. And, yes, I would yield for a question.
Mr. WYDEN. Would the Senator be willing to continue this discussion
in the days ahead? Because I think this has been extraordinary. It has
begun to lay out the implications of what this is really all about in
terms of authoritarianism. It is important for our State. It is an
important debate for the country.
Would the Senator be willing to carry out further kind of
discussions? And it might not necessarily be here on the floor of the
Senate, but elsewhere as well?
Mr. MERKLEY. I thank my colleague. As long as that discussion is not
taking place in the hours that I might be sleeping tonight, absolutely.
And I do feel like this is so fundamental to our Nation. That is why
everyone who has come down to the floor, everyone here who has asked
questions today and made solid insights as they prepared their
question, we are collectively ringing the alarm bells. We are ringing
the alarm bells because authoritarianism is not down the road or around
the corner or next month or next year; it is here right now.
And it has been so astounding to hear all of the mentions that have
been highlighted by individual Senators about how this tyranny is
taking shape. And in every possible way around the world where
authoritarians have developed a strategy, they are all
[[Page S7692]]
being done here. It is like, all of them: Rig the next election. Yes.
And then proceed to pressure the newspapers. Yes. And pressure the
broadcasters on what they can put out. Yes. And weaponize the Justice
Department. They are doing it.
And the list goes on and on.
And for us in Oregon, certainly, the one that is on everyone's mind
is striving to have a pathway to legally send in the military when
there is no rebellion, no insurrection, and no invasion. And that one
terrifies me.
The administration is hell-bent on getting a judicial thumbs-up, a
green light, to be able to move troops where they want in this country
when none of those things are happening.
Mr. WYDEN. My colleague has richly earned a few hours of sleep
tonight, but I am going to make sure that here in the Senate and across
the country, people understand that this is the beginning of further
discussion, not the end.
I want to thank my colleague for taking this time today to play out
what this is really all about in terms of this issue.
Mr. MERKLEY. I am checking to see if any more colleagues would like
to ask a question.
Would the Senator from Michigan like to ask a question?
Mr. PETERS. I would, thank you. Thank you, Senator Merkley, for
yielding to me.
I do have a question for you. Certainly, I appreciate all that you
have been saying over all of these hours. You are right; we are in a
real crisis here in this country.
Mr. MERKLEY. Before you go any further, can you just say these
magical words: Would you yield for a question? And I will say that I
will yield for a question.
Mr. PETERS. Would you yield for a question?
Mr. MERKLEY. I will yield for a question, yes.
Mr. PETERS. Thank you. I appreciate that. And again, thank you for
bringing this to the attention of the American people in such an
eloquent way.
First, I would just like to ask my colleague about how President
Trump is pursuing a dangerous and authoritarian practice of basically
picking winners and losers in government. Clearly, he is acting just
like a King. As we have seen, he has picked winners and losers by
illegally refusing to spend money that Congress has directed. He is
picking winners and losers by withholding Federal grant funding for
programs like disaster relief and medical research unless people
basically bend a knee to his draconian demands.
He is picking winners and losers by firing nonpartisan experts in
programs that he doesn't like, and he is replacing them with people
whose only qualifications are that they are loyal to the President--the
only qualification he cares about.
And in a classic authoritarian playbook, he is covering all this up
by removing independent watchdogs that conduct oversight of Executive
functions. One of the most egregious examples of this power grab is the
ongoing effort to illegally withhold funding that Congress has
authorized and appropriated, with bipartisan support, for critical
services. He is withholding it. President Trump froze funding that
helped Michigan communities build new radio towers, prepare for natural
disasters, and construct safe and modern infrastructure.
And when the President breaks the law to give a windfall to some
States and some communities but not others, he is picking winners and
losers.
We have also seen how President Trump has picked winners and losers
among the employees who work on critical government programs and
protect our national security.
President Trump has fired tens of thousands of nonpartisan Federal
employees, all because they carry out a function that the President
simply doesn't like.
And just this week--just this week--President Trump's Department of
the Interior fired hundreds of workers who protect the health and
safety of the Great Lakes, an economic and ecological gem for Michigan
and all the States that surround those lakes.
At every turn, President Trump has instituted policies that increase
his power and sway so that he can more easily pick winners and losers
among the Federal workforce. He has made it so that the only
qualification for being a Federal worker is someone who voted for him,
whether or not you actually do the job. In fact, he is taking us back
to the spoils system of the 1800s. And it is not only politicizing our
nonpartisan, expert civil service; it is jeopardizing our government's
ability to deliver crucial services to the American people.
And like authoritarians in the past, President Trump doesn't want you
to know about his illegal actions, so he is covering them up by
undermining independent oversight at every single turn.
And when it comes to picking winners and losers, we know that
President Trump always chooses himself as the winner. He blatantly uses
the Office of the President to promote the sale of his own meme coins.
He accepts large investments and gifts from foreign governments without
regard for national security concerns or Federal ethics laws.
Meanwhile, his family and friends peddle influence and make deals to
enrich themselves and the President. And what do all these efforts to
enrich himself add up to? It is no surprise that his net worth has
risen by $3 billion in the past year.
So I would like to ask my colleague from the great State of Oregon a
question about these decisions to basically unlawfully pick winners and
losers. What do you believe that means for the future of our country?
Mr. MERKLEY. I so appreciate the point that my colleague from
Michigan has been making. And if we think about the fundamental
difference between a democracy and an authoritarian government, one way
of describing that difference is that in a democracy, elected
representatives of the people, like folks who are gathered here right
now, work together, bringing their diverse life experiences, their
knowledge of their individual States, and together find a strategy that
will address their collective challenges so that each and every part of
the country is represented and things are addressed that are important
to every part.
That design of the programs and how they will operate and how they
will fund happen in a democracy, in a Chamber like this.
In an authoritarian President--an authoritarian system--it is all
happening on the Executive side. The Executive is saying: Here are the
programs that are going to be funded; here are my priorities and what I
will do. Here are the grants I will cancel and the ones that I will
redirect. Here is the way we will run these programs.
And that is exactly what the Trump administration is trying to do.
They are trying to move the responsibility we have under the
Constitution to design programs, decide how much they should be funded,
resolve questions about how they will operate, and move that
responsibility over to the Executive.
And the head of the Office of Management and Budget, he was very
upfront about it. He said: I believe in a unitary Executive, where all
power rests with the President. And that means the President can cancel
programs at will.
And I was shocked when I heard him say this. This is before we had
the hearing in the Budget Committee, probably about the same time you
were holding a hearing on Russell Vought.
And I said: You know, that has already been adjudicated by the
Supreme Court. There was an effort in 1996 to do a line-item veto and
allocate to the President the ability to say ``these programs go
forward, these programs fail,'' and the Supreme Court said: Hell no;
you can't do that. The Constitution assigns the responsibility to the
legislature to decide what gets funded, and the Executive has to
implement that plan.
And when the question of impoundments came up at an earlier date,
where in a different strategy Nixon said: Hey, I think I will just not
forward the funding; I will impound it so certain programs won't be
funded--again, that had gone to the Supreme Court.
And again the Supreme Court said no. But Mr. Vought sat in my office,
and he said: Well, I believe we will get this issue through the Supreme
Court and the Supreme Court will back the unitary Executive, strengthen
the Executive powers of this country.
[[Page S7693]]
I just shook my head. I am like, that can't possibly happen. But what
happened just a short time ago? A piece of this went to the Court and
in their shadow docket. The question was, Could the administration
slow-walk funding to the last 45 days of the fiscal year and then bring
over a request for us to undo that funding--it is called a rescission--
and then, because it was a 40-day, 5-day grace period, pause, the
fiscal year expires and the funding authorization goes proof, and
suddenly the President has killed the program. And the Court, in their
preliminary response, said: Yeah, we think you can do that.
So Russell Vought certainly seems to have a better grip on where the
Supreme Court is.
But I just feel like we have to do everything we can, therefore,
legislatively to stop that. Our spending bills need to say that if we
have a bipartisan spending bill, that decision to undo that program can
only be done by a bipartisan bill in the future, which is the way we do
rescissions now.
We have money that is left over from a program or this program, and
we say that money can be brought back in, that it is not needed, but we
do it in a bipartisan manner, not in a manner that gives the power of
the purse to the President of the United States.
This is a collective effort that all of our Republican and Democratic
colleagues should be involved in. I mean, collectively, we need to be
defending our role in the Constitution. And this is central to the
separation between authoritarian power and a democracy.
I have been on the Senate floor to ring the alarm bells for a long
time--since somewhere around 6:25 yesterday--and I want to thank the
people who have been here with me the whole time, people who made this
happen.
My Team Merkley staff, and I see a few of them--quite a few of them
are here. I appreciate the support.
I thank the Capitol Police who had to stay through the night and the
Democratic and Republican floor staff who had to stay and go forward
without being, if you will, the center of attention. They had to make
sure everything went right, and they did.
The Senate pages who have come and gone through the night--but I
think it is cool that you were here. Every now and then, when I was a
little lonely, I would look over, and I would see some heads peeking
around the corner over on this side and this side. That was great.
The page program is extraordinary, and I hope all of you will think
about how you find a path in life to build a better world. There is no
better mission for a soul on this planet than to find a way to build a
better world--a million ways to do it.
The Senate Doorkeepers, thank you. I so appreciate you all.
Senate Parliamentarians, oh my goodness. I don't know what kind of
flowers I can possibly bring, but I will be in your debt for a long
time. Thank you.
The Presiding Officers. So many of my colleagues from across the
aisle had to come. And I know how hard it is to sit in that chair. I
did my 100 hours in that chair, plus quite a few. And I know it is
awfully hard to be there and not even be able to respond when maybe
someone disagrees profoundly. Yet you are here making it possible that
I could carry this conversation, ringing the alarm bells about
authoritarianism. It couldn't have been done if you all hadn't come and
held the floor, so thank you.
All of you colleagues who came to give a little dissertation and ask
a question and sometimes a longer dissertation, thank you. Thank you. I
appreciate that so much.
We are in the most perilous moment, the biggest threat to our
Republic since the Civil War. President Trump is shredding our
Constitution. Our Nation has spent 250 years striving toward a vision
of equal justice. Of course, we had our Declaration of Independence. It
took a few years to get our Constitution that we now have in place--
1787. But we have been striving toward this vision in which everyone is
empowered in this country.
I always think about how the foundation of the law is carved into the
facade above the Supreme Court pillars, and it says ``Equal Justice
Under Law.''
You know, the very first political act I took was when I was a junior
in high school and I read an article in the evening paper--back when
there was often a business paper in the morning and a labor paper in
the evening--in the Oregon Journal. The article said that Vice
President Agnew had been convicted of bribery, convicted of taking
$100,000, the article said, and he had been given a fine of $10,000.
I was like, what? For the rich and powerful, they get to keep 90
percent of their proceeds? So I fired off a letter to the Oregon
Journal and said: This is not right in a nation that values equal
justice under law. And they printed it. They are long out of business.
I would like to get a copy of that. Long out of business.
But the vision Trump is putting forward is unequal injustice. It is a
huge assault on the foundation for our Nation. What we have is a nation
in which the Founders--and many of you spoke so eloquently to this--a
nation in which the Founders said: We do not want to have a King. We
want to have government that flows up from the people, not down from a
monarch.
So they put together their best ideas. They wrestled with it at the
Constitutional Convention. They went through many versions of what the
Senate would look like and even what our terms would look like--at one
point, 12 years; at one point, lifetime. Right now, I wish it was a
little less than 6 years myself.
But the challenge we have is that that vision of a separation of
powers, of checks and balances, is being steadily destroyed by
President Trump.
In the book that I was using as kind of a framework for discussing
these issues, it says that most people even today think it is still
that republics die with men wielding guns. It is essential that we
understand that is not the way most republics die today. Most republics
die because someone is elected who starts working systematically to
reduce those checks and balances. Then perhaps they are aided by a
rubberstamp Congress, and perhaps they are aided by a Supreme Court
that vests more power in the Executive's key decisions, and, of course,
it takes that aggressive authoritarian personality.
We have all three. We are fully in the authoritative moment right
now. The President believes that he is the King of this country and
that he can control everything, regardless of what the law says or what
we send him. We have to collectively--and it should be a bipartisan
effort--collectively say: Hell no.
We took an oath to the Constitution, to the division of government by
and for the people, not government by and for the powerful. And we are
going to keep fighting to restore that vision.
Today, so many of you highlighted so many pieces of what is going
wrong in our country in terms of erosion--a President who wants to tell
universities what they can teach and is holding research grants over
their heads; a President who wants to tell law firms who they can give
pro bono help to and has forced them to--various firms--chuck up a
billion dollars to do pro bono work on the places and organizations
that Trump wants them to spend it on; a President who is using every
tool available to try to get court decisions that will allow him to use
both the National Guard and the troops to be able to go where in the
country he wants them domestically even if there is no insurrection, no
rebellion, and no invasion; a President who is weaponizing the
judiciary to go after person after person coming off his enemies list.
Whoever it might be that is next--one of us may be next. One of our
colleagues has certainly been publicized by Trump as being on Trump's
enemies list. And this is just not to be allowed in government by and
for the people.
There is the crushing of due process. And I appreciate the comments
of my colleague from Illinois about due process and all of the
challenges regarding immigration and due process. Let's find a way to
finally pass an immigration bill after coming so close so many times.
Senator Durbin, I know you are retiring, but let's get the
immigration fix done before you leave us, with all of your expertise.
The group of 8 that you put together before did incredibly fabulous
work, and this is way past due, that we have that foundation of law
with many pieces of improvements for justice.
[[Page S7694]]
We saw on day one of this administration Trump down there in the
Rotunda with the billionaires standing behind him, and from that
moment, it was apparent that is what his government was about--by and
for the wealthy and the powerful.
If we had any doubts, then it was resolved when he put forward his
version of the bill, which he called the Big Beautiful Bill and we
often called--many of us--the ``Big Ugly Betrayal.''
Only an authoritarian President who believes that the people answer
to him rather than him being accountable to the people would come up
with a strategy of decimating the healthcare through the ACA to fund
tax breaks for billionaires.
Only an authoritarian President would say: Let's demolish Medicaid
and, between Medicaid and ACA, have 15 million people lose their
healthcare--235,000 projected in my State.
Only an authoritarian would say ``Let's cut child nutrition to fund
even more tax breaks for billionaires'' and then, of course, on top of
all that, put forward a plan that runs up $30 trillion in additional
debt over 30 years--probably the most fiscally irresponsible bill ever
to pass through this Chamber. That $30 trillion of additional debt will
so compromise our efforts to take on the foundations for ordinary
families--for healthcare, for housing, for education, for good-paying
jobs--the four foundations that give families a chance to stand on
their feet and thrive.
So we all have taken an oath to the Constitution, so let's all work
together in every possible way to ring the alarm bells because it is a
fact that if we do not ring the alarm bells, well, the longer you are
in an authoritarian state, it becomes more and more entrenched. So we
have to fight it in every possible way.
I am so proud of the 7 million Americans who took to the street in
every one of our States at those 2,700 different locations all across
the country to say ``No Kings.'' They were ringing the alarm bells.
They were saying that it is absolutely unacceptable to have an
authoritarian government. And that is the largest demonstration in U.S.
history.
For each of those 7 million, they have families, they have friends
who knew that they were doing this, who are becoming educated about the
challenge that we are facing right now.
We have to recognize that the next election is absolutely critical if
we are going to save our Republic because the strategy of an
authoritarian is to rig the elections, and the more time they have, the
more entrenched it becomes.
Already, here is Trump trying to do a national voter registration
file that can be more easily manipulated for the elections next year.
Here is President Trump trying to do massive gerrymandering in a whole
bunch of States in order to offset the balance between Democrats and
Republicans that are representing the House of Representatives. Here is
President Trump saying he will do everything possible to stop the use
of vote-by-mail across the country because--we know why--because vote-
by-mail has such integrity. It can't be manipulated on election day
like precincts can.
In precincts, you can move your location. You can put them where
there is no parking. You can understaff them. The machines can break
down. You can send intimidators. You can proceed to put out fake
information about your location. You can put out information that the
election was last week when it is really this coming Tuesday.
You can't do that in vote by mail. And when we have the majority, we
must pass the For the People Freedom to Vote bill and lock down the
integrity of our elections, so we will not worry for a generation about
the people having a fair voice in our government by and for the people.
I am proud to be colleagues with all of you in this effort. Thank you
very much.
I yield the floor.
(Applause.)
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Moreno). The Democratic leader.
Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, let me express the profound gratitude of
all of us for his amazing tour de force over these many hours.
Jeff Merkley has been the Paul Revere of 21st century America,
literally, figuratively, riding from one corner of this country to the
other, alerting people to the danger our democracy is in with the
would-be King as President.
No one has done it better. No one has done it with more persistence.
No one has done it with more passion. No one has done it with more
effectiveness than Jeff Merkley, not only the Senate, but much more
importantly, all of America owes you a tremendous, tremendous debt.
Thank you.
(Applause.)
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Republican whip.
Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, one of our colleagues just spent over 22
hours on this floor reading from a book, reciting poetry, one poem at
least four times, and talking about renovations currently going on at
the White House.
It was 22 hours of what I can only describe as rubbish. I come to the
floor today to ask a simple question: What did Democrats actually
accomplish?
The government is still closed. Capitol Police officers and Senate
support staffers who were here for the entire 22 hours are still not
getting paid, so let me read from the Record and into the Record an
article published today in the Daily Caller written by Adam Pack.
The headline is this. It is entitled ``Democrat Forces Unpaid Capitol
Police to Stay Up All Night So He Can Rail Against Republicans.''
Let me tell you the title again: ``Democrat Forces Unpaid Capitol
Police to Stay Up All Night So He Can Rail Against Republicans.''
The article goes on:
Democrats are refusing to pay support staff and Capitol
Police during the government shutdown, but still forced them
to work overnight Wednesday so a lawmaker could rail against
the Trump administration from an empty Senate chamber.
To repeat:
Democrats are refusing to pay support staff and Capitol
Police during the government shutdown, but still forced them
to work overnight Wednesday so a lawmaker could rail against
the Trump administration from an empty Senate chamber.
The article goes on:
Democratic Oregon Sen. Jeffrey Merkley took to the Senate
floor for--
As they wrote this--
a 14-hour long--
Now 22--
and counting screed against President Donald Trump beginning
early Tuesday evening. His overnight talk-a-thon, which was
still ongoing at the time of publication, forced floor aides
and Capitol Police to work throughout the night despite
staffers missing their first full paycheck due to the funding
lapse on Monday--and Capitol Police poised not to receive
their salary later this week.
Merkley blasted Trump's decision to deploy National Guard
to Portland, Ore. over the objections of state and local
officials during his marathon speech. He also denied that
violence had occurred outside an Immigration and Customs
Enforcement (ICE) facility in Portland despite at least 195
rioters being arrested outside the building since June.
``Portlanders have responded in a very interesting way,''
Merkley said in the opening hour of his speech. ``They are
demonstrating with joy and whimsy.''
The article goes on:
``They want to make it clear to the world that what Trump
is saying about there being violent protests or a rebellion
in Portland,'' Merkley continued. ``It's just not true.''
Democratic New Jersey Sen. Andy Kim also joined Merkley on
the Senate floor in the 10 p.m. hour, praising the Oregon
senator for shining a light on the Trump administration's
alleged ``authoritarianism.''
``It's important that we don't underestimate the fragility
of our democracy,'' Kim said.
Senate staffers missed their first full paychecks on Monday
after Democrats consistently rejected a House-passed
bipartisan spending bill to fund the government. A wide swath
of federal employees will not receive their salary on Friday
if Democrats do not supply the votes to end the shutdown.
The article goes on:
Merkley and Kim have voted with Senate Minority Leader
Chuck Schumer on eleven separate occasions to keep the
government shuttered during the 22-day long funding lapse.
Just three Democratic Senate Caucus members have thus far
crossed party lines to fund the government, leaving the
spending measure short of the necessary 60-vote threshold to
move most legislation in the Senate.
Republicans blasted Merkley's overnight speech during the
shutdown, arguing the move was unfair to floor aides and
Capitol Police officers working unpaid because Democrats
refuse to fund the government.
The article goes on:
[[Page S7695]]
``The Democrats are going to make Capitol Police and
Capitol support staff--who they refuse to pay--work all night
so they can give speeches patting themselves on the back for
shutting down the government and hurting the American
people,'' Senate Majority Whip John Barrasso wrote on X.
``How ridiculous is that?''
Senators, whose pay is protected by the U.S. Constitution,
received their salaries on Monday.
The Senate is expected to vote on legislation this week
sponsored by Republican Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson to pay
military personnel and federal employees who are reporting to
work during the shutdown.
Democrats are expected to filibuster the bill. Several
members of their caucus have argued that every federal worker
should be paid during the shutdown despite repeatedly voting
against reopening the government.
The article continues:
Merkley's overnight remarks follow other Senate Democrats
staging all-night speeches to protest the Trump
administration this year.
In April--
The article concludes--
New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker delivered the longest Senate
floor speech in history to attack the president and his
policies.
The facts speak for themselves. Americans deserve better than
Democrats' rubbish.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Montana.
____________________