[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 29 (Wednesday, February 11, 2026)]
[Senate]
[Pages S571-S574]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]
DISAPPROVING THE ACTION OF THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA COUNCIL IN
APPROVING THE D.C. INCOME AND FRANCHISE TAX CONFORMITY AND REVISION
TEMPORARY AMENDMENT ACT OF 2025
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Justice). The clerk will report the joint
resolution by title.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
A joint resolution (H.J. Res. 142) disapproving the action
of the District of Columbia Council in approving the D.C.
Income and Franchise Tax Conformity and Revision Temporary
Amendment Act of 2025.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Unanimous Consent Request--S. Res. 605
Mr. MARKEY. Mr. President, I rise today because, once again, the
sitting President of the United States has threatened something
antithetical to our democracy, something patently unconstitutional and
unlawful, something that should give every single American pause.
Donald Trump has now suggested that he might nationalize our elections.
Trump has suggested that the Federal executive branch should take over
elections, which, under our Constitution, belong to the States.
So let me be clear. This is not a policy disagreement. This is not a
gray area. This is not a novel constitutional question. This is,
flatly, outright, unquestionably, unconstitutional. The Framers could
not have been more clear. Article I, section 4 of the Constitution
places the times, the places, and the manner of Federal elections in
the hands of the States, not in the hands of the President, not the
White House, not in an Executive order. There is no clause in the
Constitution or law on the books--none--that allows a President to
commandeer State election systems--no emergency power, no implied
authority, no ``because I just say so.'' The President's role is to
faithfully execute the laws, not to rewrite the Constitution when the
facts or the voters displease him.
Yet here we are. Donald Trump's dangerous threat rests on a familiar
and thoroughly discredited premise that American elections are rigged,
fraudulent, or illegitimate. That claim has been examined exhaustively
and has been rejected everywhere it has been tested. State election
officials--Republicans and Democrats alike--certified the results of
the 2020 Presidential election. Courts across the country rejected
claims of widespread fraud. Federal judges appointed by Presidents of
both parties dismissed these cases for a lack of evidence.
There was no stolen election. There was no massive fraud. There was
no justification, then or now, for the Federal seizure of elections. To
suggest otherwise is not really wrong; it is reckless. And it is
exclusively intended, ultimately, for the President to take over the
elections in November of this year so he can rig the elections so that
Democrats cannot win the House and Senate. That is what is at the heart
of what the President is trying to do.
What is most alarming is not just that Donald Trump spoke those
words, but that so many congressional Republicans have refused to say
plainly what the Constitution requires. Silence in the face of an
unconstitutional power grab is not neutrality. It is acquiescence to
the undermining of the U.S. Constitution. Our system of government
depends on elected officials who are willing to say no, especially to a
President of their own party when the Constitution is at stake.
The Founders divided power deliberately. They placed elections close
to the people. They rejected centralized control because they
understood that democracy cannot survive when the Executive controls
the ballot.
That principle is not optional. It is structural. It is foundational.
It is what the Founding Fathers built into the system to make sure that
we did not have a King, that we did not have a Monarch. They built it
in this way so that the representative government would be selected at
the local level, that the elections would be conducted at the local
level--no taxation without representation.
They were fighting to create a House and Senate. They were fighting
to put checks on King George. They were fighting to make sure that
ultimately no latter-day King George--King Donald--could emerge that
would then seek to impose his will on the people.
And that is why we have a Senate. That is why we have a House of
Representatives--no taxation without representation--ensuring that each
community, each State, has their own representatives selected in
elections conducted by the voters in that State, by the leaders in that
State.
And if the President were to attempt by order, directive, or coercion
to nationalize or commandeer State-run elections, that action would be
unconstitutional; it would be illegal; and it would be without effect.
It would be a violation of the Constitution.
And let me be clear about one final point: Such a brazen attempt
would not merely be unlawful; it would also be impeachable. A President
who seeks to seize control of elections is attacking the constitutional
order itself, and that is precisely the kind of abuse of power for
which impeachment exists, not as a partisan weapon but as a
constitutional safeguard against the usurpation of the electoral
process in our
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country by a would-be King, Donald Trump.
That is what they were protecting against. They anticipated, in
drafting the Constitution, the emergence of Donald Trump, the emergence
of someone who said we should nationalize the elections, the emergence
of someone who said that he could invoke the Insurgency act in order to
put marines--an army--on the streets of America during election times
in order to serve the will of the President so that he would not have
the checks and balances of the leaders of the other party being able to
control the gavels to be able to subpoena him.
So in a moment, I will seek unanimous consent to pass my resolution
expressing the sense of the Senate on these indisputable points.
President Trump cannot nationalize our Federal elections. Our
Constitution prohibits it.
Our Constitution was established in order to make sure that a
President cannot subvert elections at the State level. And if he tried
to, he would be committing an impeachable offense against the
Constitution of the United States, and he would have to have been tried
then in the House and the Senate on that impeachable offense.
This resolution draws a bright line. It affirms what should never
need reaffirming, that elections belong to the States, the Constitution
belongs to the people, and no President--ever--stands above either.
The Senate should speak with one voice on this question tonight. The
Constitution demands the Senate speak with one voice tonight. Democracy
requires that the Senate speak with one voice tonight, that it is an
impeachable offense to nationalize elections which the Constitution
requires be conducted at the State level.
So with that, Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate
proceed to the immediate consideration of S. Res. 605; that the
resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to
reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there an objection?
The Senator from Florida.
Mr. SCOTT of Florida. Reserving the right to object.
Mr. President, I rise today to object to the motion made by my
colleague from Massachusetts.
We don't need to nationalize our elections. My Republican colleagues
and I have been fighting Democrats' attempts to nationalize our
elections for years now.
The States have the ability to run elections. My State of Florida is
actually a leader in election security and timeliness to the point that
my last election was called within minutes of polls closing.
My colleagues are only bringing this to the floor as an excuse to
score political points by attacking President Trump. President Trump
and Republicans are working to deliver on our promises to the American
people: securing our border, protecting communities and elections, and
bringing down the cost of living despite Democrats fighting us on every
turn. This is just another example of Democrat distraction, not serious
policy, and for that reason I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
The Senator from Florida.
Mr. SCOTT of Florida. If my colleague from western Massachusetts
wants to defend democracy and protect elections, I offer him an
alternative that I, and a majority of Americans, would support. There
should be some commonsense, national standards in place to ensure
Americans know their elections are free and fair and that their votes
are not diluted. That includes requiring voter ID, something 83 percent
of Americans support.
You need an ID to board an airplane, buy certain medicines, apply for
jobs and bank accounts, check into hotels, rent a car, donate blood,
and purchase a lottery ticket. Why should voting in our elections have
a lower verification standard than purchasing a lottery ticket? Surely,
we can also agree that requiring proof of citizenship makes sense. And
if a State has a noncitizen on the voter rolls, they should be removed.
Now, the minority leader thinks that is racist to make people prove
citizenship to vote. Just remember, every Member of this body and all
of our friends in the House had to prove their citizenship to take
office. Yes, even my colleague from Massachusetts had to prove he was
an American citizen to take his seat in the U.S. Senate and represent
the good people of his State.
So are the requirements for being elected to the U.S. Congress
racist? I cannot imagine the Senator from Massachusetts believes that
to be true. We are all here to represent U.S. citizens, and we should
be certain that it is only U.S. citizens who are able to cast a vote
for any of us to be here.
The SAVE America Act puts these commonsense ideas into place to make
our elections more secure and fair. I invite my colleagues to support
my UC and pass the SAVE America Act. Why wouldn't we want to make
certain that elections in the United States of America are free and
fair?
President Trump and the American people are all on board with the
SAVE America Act. The House will pass it shortly. We can get this done
today and deliver for the American people.
Passing the SAVE America Act is an essential step to our democracy,
ensuring free and fair elections nationwide. We must get it done.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that upon receipt from the
House, that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of the
House message to accompany S. 1383; further, that the Senate concur in
the House amendment, and that the motion to reconsider be made and laid
upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Is there objection?
Mr. MARKEY. Reserving the right to object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Massachusetts.
Mr. MARKEY. The objection we just heard to my resolution proves
exactly why this resolution that we should be debating is absolutely
necessary in order to ensure that President Trump does not, in fact,
nationalize--or attempt to nationalize our elections.
And this unanimous consent request is not about the SAVE Act. It is
not about voter registration policy. It is not about partisan election
administration debates. It is about something far more fundamental:
whether the President of the United States may unilaterally nationalize
elections that the Constitution places squarely in the hands of the
States. Those are separate issues and no amount of legislative
deflection can change that.
The SAVE Act that the gentleman from Florida is speaking to right now
is a policy proposal, one that many of us oppose because it would
impose rigid documentation requirements, disenfranchise eligible
voters, burden State election officials, and do nothing--nothing--to
address a problem that does not meaningfully exist.
But today, the resolution I am bringing out is not about that
legislation. It is about constitutional limits on Presidential power.
No act of Congress--the SAVE Act or otherwise--would give a President
authority to seize control of State-run elections. That power does not
exist; it cannot be created; and it cannot be exercised by Executive
fiat.
So let us not confuse the issue, and let us not allow anyone to dodge
it. The President suggested nationalizing elections. That suggestion is
unconstitutional; it is illegal; and if acted upon, it would be grounds
for impeachment. The Senate should be able to say that clearly without
diversion, without delay, and without changing the subject.
I urge my colleagues: Do not silence or allow procedural maneuvering
to excuse an assault on the very Constitution itself, and that is what
the motion from the Senator from Florida is intended to achieve, and
therefore, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The objection is heard.
The Senator from Florida.
Mr. SCOTT of Florida. While I am clearly disappointed, this is the
most commonsense bill there is.
So none of us get to vote for the President of France. I would vote
for Macron, but I don't get to. Nobody that is not a U.S. citizen
should be voting in our elections.
And we have to use ID for everything: Board a plane, get a lottery
ticket, go to a doctor, they ask you for your ID. This is common sense.
We don't want
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any fraud in our elections. All we say is just show your ID when you go
vote, make sure you are a citizen to register, show your ID to vote.
So I am disappointed that my colleague doesn't support this. I can't
understand why he wouldn't support some commonsense standard like this,
but I am going to keep working, and we are going to get this passed.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Vermont.
Department of Homeland Security
Mr. WELCH. Mr. President, we are 1 year into President Donald Trump's
second term and 1 year into Secretary Kristi Noem's tenure as head of
the Department of Homeland Security, which includes Immigration and
Customs Enforcement, or ICE. It is time for us to assess and state with
clarity what that 1 year has brought us.
First of all, the deportation policy is not now about border
security--not now. The border is secure, and that is a good thing.
Migrant crossings into the United States from Mexico are at their
lowest level since 1970.
In August of 2024, during President Biden's administration, there
were 107,000 encounters at the southern border, but in August of 2025,
there were only 9,000. The border is much more secure. I support that.
We must maintain it, and we will.
So is the deportation policy now about deporting criminals--something
we support? There is evidence, and the evidence of what the policy is
about comes from a Department of Homeland Security report itself. What
it says is that 14 percent--only 14 percent--of the people who have
been deported are dangerous criminals. No objection to deporting
criminals, but that it is only 14 percent shows that the real purpose
is to inflict on this country a policy of mass deportation.
And the Trump administration is as good as its word. From day one,
with Stephen Miller, it has announced its intention to conduct mass
deportation in the United States. It set quotas. It has moved away from
focusing on people with serious criminal convictions, and instead, it
is focused on getting the highest number of arrests and deportations as
possible, up to 3,000 a day.
Homeland Security got $75 billion from Congress--not from votes on
our side. But it was really what allowed for this mass roundup of
people from workplaces, from farms, from schools--all in service of a
political agenda that is not about protecting Americans but is serving
the political interests of the President and the fiendish design of
Stephen Miller, with the implementation of a reckless Kristi Noem.
So if only 14 percent of those people deported are dangerous
criminals, what are the others? It is about detaining and attempting to
deport students who are here legally but said things that the President
and the administration didn't like on a campus, folks who spoke out
about the war in Gaza: Mohsen Mahdawi from Vermont, Mahmoud Khalil from
Columbia in New York City.
It is about deporting a student who wrote an article in a student
newspaper criticizing the Israeli Government. It is about ripping a
preschooler--preschooler--1,300 miles away from his home to sit in a
detention facility, and it is about using him as bait to get to his
family. That is happening.
It is about detaining a U.S. citizen at gunpoint, on that person's
front porch, without any warrant to go there and then forcing him to go
outside in subfreezing weather wearing nothing but his underwear.
It is about detaining a churchgoer delivering groceries to his
neighbors in freezing temperatures, and it is about denying him the
necessary medication he needed after he had a kidney transplant, while
he was in custody.
It is about a legal permanent resident, Donna Hughes-Brown. She was
locked up for 143 days, threatened with deportation, because she did do
something wrong: She bounced two checks that totaled 75 bucks over 10
years ago.
It is about Steven Tendo from Vermont, an asylum seeker and a pastor.
He was arrested and detained outside the medical center in Shelburne
where he works, and he said it was done brutally and it was done at
gunpoint. This is not a threatening man. He is currently now being
denied medication for his diabetes.
ICE is in such a rush to meet its quotas set by Secretary Noem and
Mr. Miller that they are literally grabbing anyone and everyone they
set their eyes on. What is their accent? What is their color? Where are
they located? And ICE does not care who gets hurt in the process.
Wilmer Chavarria is a U.S. citizen, and he is the superintendent in
the Winooski School District in Vermont. He was detained and questioned
for hours by agents in Texas. His technology was seized and searched.
He described this as ``the definition of psychological terror.''
A 21-year-old man protesting in California was blinded in his left
eye. He told the AP after this he was ``just glad'' to be ``alive to
tell my story.''
A pastor in Chicago, a reverend, was praying out loud at a protest,
and an agent shot multiple rounds of pepper balls in his face, and he
was sprayed by more pepper spray. It was indiscriminate and really
vicious.
So far in 2026, ICE agents have shot eight people. These shootings
happened in Minnesota and across the United States: Arizona,
California, Oregon, Maryland, and Illinois. Officers fired on at least
nine people who were in their cars, much like the horrible case of
Renee Good. Ms. Good, as America all knows, was a 37-year-old mother,
and Alex Pretti was a 37-year-old VA nurse. They were killed in
Minnesota. We all saw it. No justification whatsoever.
We have seen massive ICE deployments in Minnesota and elsewhere:
Washington, DC; Illinois; California. These ICE expeditions, with
massive numbers of people coming in, are interfering with local law
enforcement and creating real terror in the communities.
ICE has raided schools and farms and workplaces, including in my
State of Vermont, that sow fear and chaos on farms like the Pleasant
Valley Farm in Berkshire and construction sites in Hardwick, VT.
DHS is also rounding up so many people, they literally don't have
places to put them. For the first time in our history, more than 70,000
people are in ICE detention. That is an increase of 75 percent from the
previous year. Not surprisingly, the conditions are deplorable. There
was no preplanning of how to accommodate the people that the government
was taking into custody. Detainees are fed food laced with worms. These
are all documented facts. It is not a political argument. This is what
is happening. Many places have toilets that don't flush.
In a detention center in El Paso, a man named Geraldo Lunas Campos
was choked by an officer, and he died. A teen was beat up by officers
and now has hearing loss. Just this week, NBC reported that an 18-
month-old baby who was detained in south Texas was rushed to a hospital
and treated for pneumonia, COVID-19, and RSV in serious and severe
respiratory distress. She was described as being at the brink of dying.
Thirty-five people died in custody last year, and at least 6 died in
detention centers in January of this year alone.
ICE is in such a hurry that many of the officers don't get adequate
training. Their identities are concealed. Most disturbingly, ICE and
Kristi Noem accept no responsibility for the actions of their officers.
We are discussing reforms now in Congress, and the basic reforms that
should be made are that any Federal Agency, including ICE, should have
to abide by the standards that apply in Alabama or in Vermont to our
local law enforcement agencies, where there is training, where there is
accountability, where there are body cameras, where there are
mechanisms in place for training, supervision, and accountability.
But the real question, in my view, is this: Do we want to support a
policy of mass roundups? That is the policy of the administration right
now. When it comes to the question of border security, yes. When it
comes to the question of deporting criminals, yes. But mass roundups
with untrained people that are meeting quotas and where we have seen
the violent overreactions in many cases; where we are seeing suffering
inflicted on people who are in detention because there is no capacity
to provide humane treatment to the people taken into custody by the
government; where we have seen the havoc in communities where there are
raids on our farms that need the migrant
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labor and there are raids in our construction sites; where, when there
is an influx of thousands of agents from ICE, it totally disrupts local
law enforcement; and where so many of these people who are being
rounded up are not a threat to our safety--are not a threat to our
safety--what is the benefit to the American people? What is the price
that our communities are paying? And what is our responsibility as a
U.S. Senate to open our eyes and candidly assess what is the impact of
a mass deportation policy?
My view is that we have an opportunity to move beyond what has been
incredibly partisan rhetoric about the immigration issue. The reason we
have the opportunity is because there is now bipartisan agreement about
a secure border. There is now bipartisan agreement about deporting
criminals.
Isn't it time for us to have the discussion about legal ways to have
an immigration policy that is safe and secure and benefits the American
people, as immigration has benefited us from the onset of our history?
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The great Senator from Alabama.
____________________