Senate
Page S4447 · Official textThe Senate met at 10:30 a.m. and was called to order by the Honorable Alan Armstrong, a Senator from the State of Oklahoma.
Wednesday, August 5, 2026
Vol. 172, No. 128 · 119th Congress, 2nd session
Prayer
Page S4447 · Official textThe Chaplain, Dr. Barry C. Black, offered the following prayer: Let us pray. Eternal Father, we ask that You would shower our Senators today with Your bountiful blessings. Without Your guidance, we are all like ships without rudders, tossed by every wind of opinion and circumstance, but when You are our captain and counselor, You establish our course and enable us to accomplish Your good purposes. Incline the hearts of our lawmakers toward that which promotes peace, liberty, and goodness. Quiet every voice that would lead us away from unity. Inspire our legislators with genuine compassion, steadfast courage, and servant-hearted leadership. We pray in Your marvelous Name. Amen.
Pledge of Allegiance
Page S4447 · Official textThe Presiding Officer led the Pledge of Allegiance, as follows:
Text printed in the Record (174 characters)
I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America, and to the Republic for which it stands, one nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
Appointment of Acting President Pro Tempore
Page S4447 · Official textThe PRESIDING OFFICER
The clerk will please read a communication to the Senate from the President pro tempore (Mr. Grassley).
The senior assistant legislative clerk read the following letter:
Text printed in the Record (292 characters)
Washington, DC, August 5, 2026.
To the Senate:
Under the provisions of rule I, paragraph 3, of the Standing Rules of the Senate, I hereby appoint the Honorable Alan Armstrong, a Senator from the State of Oklahoma, to perform the duties of the Chair.
Chuck Grassley,
President pro tempore.
Mr. ARMSTRONG thereupon assumed the Chair as Acting President pro tempore.
Reservation of Leader Time
Page S4447 · Official textThe ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
Under the previous order, the leadership time is reserved.
Conclusion of Morning Business
Page S4447 · Official textThe ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
Morning business is closed.
Recognition of the Majority Leader
Page S4447 · Official textThe ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
The majority leader is recognized.
Farm Bill
Pages S4447–S4448 · Official textMr. President, America's farmers and ranchers got some good news at the end of last week. After a lot of hard work from members of the Agriculture Committee, Chairman Boozman released the text of a 5-year farm bill, which is slated for a markup tomorrow, and it will, I hope, be headed soon to the floor.
As someone who hails from an ag State who has been part of the drafting of now five farm bills, I know how important the farm bill is and how much work goes into getting it right. As I made clear at the start of this Congress, America's farmers and ranchers are a priority for this Senate majority. That started last year with the Working Families Tax Cuts, which strengthened the farm safety net, bolstered critical farm programs, and delivered tax relief to America's agriculture producers, including relief from the unfair death tax and making the 199A deduction permanent. It continues this year with this farm bill, which builds on the important measures in the Working Families Tax Cuts in order to give farmers and ranchers certainty into the future.
After the Working Families Tax Cuts raised reference prices last year, this farm bill makes further improvements to commodity programs as well as crop insurance--cornerstones of the farm safety net. It modernizes farm loan programs to get America's next generation of farmers and ranchers off to a strong start, and it strengthens other programs that producers depend on. It improves the Emergency Assistance for Livestock Program, so it covers the cost of hauling feed or water and opens the program to producers dealing with drought or other adverse weather conditions.
It includes my CRP Improvement and Flexibility Act, which will make the Conservation Reserve Program a more working lands-oriented option for producers. CRP plays a very significant role in South Dakota's economy by helping to provide habitat for pheasants, but producers in my State have been frustrated for years with how the program is managed--in particular by the fact that its restrictions on land use can be excessive. That is why I introduced the CRP Improvement and Flexibility Act.
My bill allows grazing options, including fencing and water distribution, on all CRP acres. On top of that, it increases the annual CRP payment limits for the first time in the program's 40-year history. This bill will make CRP an attractive option for more producers and open up access for livestock forage in drought conditions.
The farm bill also includes a number of bills I have worked on that make it easier for producers to do business and get their products to market.
It includes a bill that I worked on with Senators Grassley, Klobuchar, and Baldwin that establishes reporting requirements on fertilizer prices, which will bring more transparency to the fertilizer marketplace by helping producers to make more informed and cost-effective choices for their operations.
Another bill of my mine, the Promoting Precision Agriculture Act, will facilitate the creation of industry-led, voluntary standards for precision ag technology that will help more farmers adopt this promising tool.
My Strengthening Local Processing Act gives smaller processors access to critical information and allows more meat products approved by a State inspector to be sold across State lines.
The farm bill is about more than just what happens on a farm or a ranch; it also supports America's rural communities. That includes water infrastructure, rural development, and healthcare, among other critical services. It also includes our continued effort to provide broadband in unserved communities, and I am pleased that this bill will help ensure that broadband dollars are going to communities that need it in places where 90 percent or more of the residents lack access to basic internet services.
There is a lot more I could talk about with this bill--a lot more. This is a bill that will provide real support and certainty for America's farmers and ranchers. That is good news for all Americans who depend on our hard-working producers for food, fuel, and fiber.
Fuel is the final thing I want to discuss this morning. For decades, the seasonal sale of E15 has been a win-win for America's farmers and for the American people. It has strengthened the agriculture economy while providing the American people with an affordable source of homegrown energy.
For many years, it has been a priority for me and for many of my colleagues here to allow E15 to be sold all year. It has taken a lot of work to get here, but I am very proud that this farm bill delivers permanent--permanent--year-round E15. This is something that is going to further help producers and help bring down fuel costs for all Americans.
I want to thank Chairman Boozman as well as Senators Daines, Capito, and Fischer for all of their hard work on this issue. I am looking forward to getting it across the finish line.
I spend a lot of time with farmers and ranchers back home in South Dakota, and they have talked to me about the uncertainty and the headwinds they face. I have listened to their priorities and made them my own. As I said, America's farmers and ranchers are a priority for this Senate majority, and with the Working Families Tax Cuts and now this farm bill, we are making real progress on the challenges facing our producers. But, of course, our work is never finished. There will be more to do in the future to support and strengthen American agriculture, and America's producers can be confident that their needs will always be at the top of my list.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Legislative Session
Page S4448 · Official textThe ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
Under the previous order, the Senate will resume consideration of the motion to proceed to H.R. 6500, which the clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Text printed in the Record (251 characters)
Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 320, H.R. 6500, a bill to extend duty-free treatment provided with respect to imports from certain countries in Africa under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, to extend customs user fees, and for other purposes.
Mr. President, I know of no further debate on the motion to proceed.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
Is there further debate?
If not, the question is on agreeing to the motion.
The motion was agreed to.
Agoa Extension Act
Pages S4448–S4449 · Official textThe ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
The clerk will report the bill by title.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Text printed in the Record (213 characters)
A bill (H.R. 6500) to extend duty-free treatment provided with respect to imports from certain countries in Africa under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, to extend customs user fees, and for other purposes.
(Purpose: In the nature of a substitute.)
Mr. President, I call up amendment No. 6732.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Text printed in the Record (94 characters)
The Senator from South Dakota [Mr. Thune] for Ms. Collins proposes an amendment numbered 6732.
(The amendment is printed in the Record of August 4, 2026, under "Text of Amendments.") =========================== NOTE =========================== On page S4448, August 5, 2026, third column, the following appears: (The amendment is printed in today's Record under "Text of Amendments.") The online Record has been corrected to read: (The amendment is printed in the Record of August 4, 2026, under "Text of Amendments.") ========================= END NOTE =========================
Mr. President, I ask consent that the reading be dispensed with.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
Without objection, it is so ordered.
I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays are ordered.
Mr. President, I have an amendment at the desk to amendment No. 6732.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Text printed in the Record (100 characters)
The Senator from South Dakota [Mr. Thune] proposes an amendment numbered 6736 to amendment No. 6732.
The amendment is as follows:
Text printed in the Record (93 characters)
At the end of the following.
"This Act shall take effect 1 day after the date of enactment."
Mr. President, I ask consent that the reading be dispensed with.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
Without objection, it is so ordered.
I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays are ordered.
Mr. President, I have a second-degree amendment at the desk.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Text printed in the Record (105 characters)
The Senator from South Dakota [Mr. Thune] proposes an amendment numbered 6737 to amendment numbered 6736.
The amendment is as follows:
Text printed in the Record (35 characters)
Strike "1 day" and insert "2 days".
Mr. President, I ask consent that the reading be dispensed with.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I have an amendment to the underlying bill at the desk.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Text printed in the Record (140 characters)
The Senator from South Dakota [Mr. Thune] proposes an amendment numbered 6738 to the language proposed to be stricken by amendment No. 6732.
The amendment is as follows:
Text printed in the Record (95 characters)
At the end add the following.
"This Act shall take effect 3 days after the date of enactment."
Mr. President, I ask consent that the reading be dispensed with.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
Without objection, it is so ordered.
I ask for the yeas and nays on the amendment.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays are ordered.
Mr. President, I have a second-degree amendment at the desk.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Text printed in the Record (100 characters)
The Senator from South Dakota [Mr. Thune] proposes an amendment numbered 6739 to amendment No. 6738.
The amendment is as follows:
Text printed in the Record (36 characters)
Strike "3 days" and insert "4 days".
Mr. President, I ask consent that the reading be dispensed with.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I move to commit the bill to the Committee on Appropriations with instructions.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Text printed in the Record (177 characters)
The Senator from South Dakota [Mr. Thune] moves to commit the bill to the Committee on Appropriations to report back forthwith with instructions with an amendment numbered 6740.
The amendment is as follows:
Text printed in the Record (95 characters)
At the end add the following.
"This Act shall take effect 5 days after the date of enactment."
Mr. President, I ask consent that the reading be dispensed with.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
Without objection, it is so ordered.
I ask for the yeas and nays on the motion to commit with instructions.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays are ordered.
Mr. President, I have an amendment to the instructions.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Text printed in the Record (130 characters)
The Senator from South Dakota [Mr. Thune] proposes an amendment numbered 6741 to the instructions of a motion to commit H.R. 6500.
The amendment is as follows:
Text printed in the Record (36 characters)
Strike "5 days" and insert "6 days".
Mr. President, I ask consent that the reading be waived.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
Without objection, it is so ordered.
I ask for the yeas and nays on my amendment.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The yeas and nays are ordered.
Mr. President, I have a second-degree amendment at the desk.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
The clerk will report.
The legislative clerk read as follows:
Text printed in the Record (100 characters)
The Senator from South Dakota [Mr. Thune] proposes an amendment numbered 6742 to amendment No. 6741.
The amendment is as follows:
Text printed in the Record (36 characters)
Strike "6 days" and insert "7 days".
Mr. President, I ask consent that the reading be waived.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk with respect to amendment No. 6732.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
The cloture motion having been presented under rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
Text printed in the Record (676 characters)
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, do hereby move to bring to a close debate on Collins amendment No. 6732 to Calendar No. 320, H.R. 6500, a bill to extend duty-free treatment provided with respect to imports from certain countries in Africa under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, to extend customs user fees, and for other purposes.
John Thune, Susan M. Collins, Tim Sheehy, Bill Hagerty,
Bernie Moreno, Mike Crapo, John Cornyn, Marsha
Blackburn, James Lankford, Jim Banks, Jon A. Husted,
Tom Cotton, Alan Armstrong, Tommy Tuberville, Cindy
Hyde-Smith, John Barrasso, David McCormick.
Mr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk with respect to Calendar No. 320, H.R. 6500.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
The cloture motion having been presented under rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
Text printed in the Record (645 characters)
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, do hereby move to bring to a close debate on Calendar No. 320, H.R. 6500, a bill to extend duty-free treatment provided with respect to imports from certain countries in Africa under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, to extend customs user fees, and for other purpose.
John Thune, Susan M. Collins, Tim Sheehy, Bill Hagerty,
Bernie Moreno, Mike Crapo, John Cornyn, Marsha
Blackburn, James Lankford, Jim Banks, Jon A. Husted,
Tom Cotton, Alan Armstrong, Tommy Tuberville, Cindy
Hyde-Smith, John Barrasso, David McCormick.
PROTECT COLLEGE SPORTS ACT OF 2026--Motion to Proceed
Page S4449 · Official textMr. President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 449, S. 4668.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
The clerk will report the motion.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
Text printed in the Record (241 characters)
Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 449, S. 4668, a bill to protect the name, image, and likeness rights of, and provide protections for, student athletes and to promote fair competition among intercollegiate athletics, and for other purposes.
I send a cloture motion to the desk.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
The cloture motion having been presented under rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
Text printed in the Record (658 characters)
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the motion to proceed to Calendar No. 449, S. 4668, a bill to protect the name, image, and likeness rights of, and provide protections for, student athletes and to promote fair competition among intercollegiate athletics, and for other purposes.
John Thune, Ted Cruz, Cynthia M. Lummis, Eric Schmitt,
Bernie Moreno, James Lankford, Kevin Cramer, Mike
Rounds, John Cornyn, John Barrasso, Thom Tillis, Chuck
Grassley, Pete Ricketts, Shelley Moore Capito, Bill
Hagerty, Todd Young, John R. Curtis.
EXECUTIVE CALENDAR (Executive Session)
Pages S4449–S4450 · Official textMr. President, I move to proceed to executive session to consider Calendar No. 914.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
The question is on agreeing to the motion.
The motion was agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
The clerk will report the nomination.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read the nomination of Todd Blanche, of Florida, to be Attorney General.
Cloture Motion (Executive Session)
Page S4450 · Official textMr. President, I send a cloture motion to the desk.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
The cloture motion having been presented under rule XXII, the Chair directs the clerk to read the motion.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
Text printed in the Record (511 characters)
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate, do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the nomination of Executive Calendar No. 914, Todd Blanche, of Florida, to be Attorney General.
John Thune, Ted Budd, Tom Cotton, Mike Crapo, Katie Boyd
Britt, Tommy Tuberville, Tim Sheehy, Kevin Cramer,
Shelley Moore Capito, John Barrasso, Roger F. Wicker,
John Boozman, Bill Hagerty, Bernie Moreno, John Cornyn,
Marsha Blackburn, James Lankford.
Recognition of the Minority Leader (Executive Session)
Page S4450 · Official textThe ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
The Democratic leader is recognized.
U.S. Department of Justice (Executive Session)
Page S4450 · Official textMr. President, Todd Blanche's Department of Justice continues to let criminals off the hook so long as they are loyal to Donald Trump. Yesterday, Trump's DOJ forced a judge to throw out the charges against eight members of the radical extremist Oath Keepers, who were convicted of seditious conspiracy for plotting the January 6 insurrection--horrendous. Doesn't get any more un-American than this. Doesn't twist America's values into a tortured knot.
Trump already gave the insurrectionists clemency. Now he is wiping their records clean, but there is no erasing what the Oath Keepers and the rest of the mob did at Trump's command on January 6.
I saw them in this building. They were not on a tour. They were aimed at destruction to maim and even in a few cases murder. We can't afford to forget what happened that day.
Now, Trump has sent the country a clear message: There are no consequences for sedition, no punishment for attacking police, no repercussions for ransacking the Capitol to steal an election, so long as you do it in Trump's name.
No wonder his numbers are so terrible. No wonder the American people are turning against him. No one in our history has done things as bad as this.
Trump won't just give you clemency for committing a crime on his behalf; he will give you a reward. The whole purpose of Trump's $2 billion MAGA slush fund is to funnel taxpayer dollars to the Oath Keepers and other Trump cronies. Just the other day, Trump himself defended his slush fund describing it "a reimbursement for the pain that [January 6th insurrectionists] suffered."
Donald, what pain have these insurrectionists suffered? You let them off scot-free.
Republicans don't get to yap about being the party of law and order when they are handing out pardons and cash rewards like candy to convicted cop beaters--convicted cop beaters. Do Senate Republicans want to give a promotion to Blanche, the same guy who came up with the idea of these reparations for rioters?
There is still no legal guardrail stopping Trump and Blanche from giving payouts to January 6 insurrectionists at the taxpayers' expense. That is unacceptable. The only thing these criminals deserve is a cold cell, not American's hard-earned taxpayer dollars.
Trump Administration (Executive Session)
Page S4450 · Official textMr. President, now Trump is going to Nevada today to tout his disastrous economic record. His going is an insult to every Nevadan reeling from higher costs. If there is one place where Americans know how to spot a losing hand, it is Las Vegas, Donald Trump. They see your losing hand. Nevadans know better than anyone that Trump's economy has gone bust. Does Trump want to brag about how Nevadans are paying 4 bucks and 80 cents for a gallon of gasoline because of his war? Will Trump tout how more than 36,000 Nevadans have lost their health coverage because Trump cut a trillion dollars from our healthcare system to give billionaires another tax break? Nope. While grocery prices continue rising, will Trump explain to the more than 78,000 hungry Nevadans who have lost food assistance that his policies are working exactly as intended? Or maybe Trump wants to thump his chest about the $3,100 extra Nevadans are spending because of Trump's failed policies that have wiped out any extra tax refund they saw this year. Trump can't bluff his way out of the economic disaster he has unleashed on the American people. Nope. He can have all the bluff and bravado and lies he wants. It is not going to wash because people are experiencing the hurt that Trump has inflicted on them.
Iran (Executive Session)
Page S4450 · Official textMr. President, on Iran, Trump seems to think that opening his mouth and opening the Strait of Hormuz are the same thing. Once again, Trump is making big claims that a deal to reopen the strait is imminent. How many times have we heard that? Whenever Trump says there is a deal, it means one of two things: Either the strait is still staying closed or it opens for a couple of days and then it closes again. None of his deals have come to fruition, and gas prices continue to rise. At this time, there are rumors he is willing to give up even more control of the strait to Iran to open. If that is true, Donald Trump has put himself in such a difficult position in Iran, blundering his way into a war with no goal, with no preparation, with no future. He is stuck. He is going to try to get out of it, but mark my words, he will surrender to Iran, in a sense. He will have to sue for peace, and the Iranians will emerge stronger and America weaker. It is his only way out. Once again, Trump is doing all of these things. Which one will it be this time, Donald, when it comes to the strait? How many days after you say the strait will open up will it close again? When are you going to get out of the way and let real diplomats negotiate an end to the war that ensures the free flow of shipping through the strait? Americans can't fuel their cars on wishful thinking and empty promises, and Senate Democrats have now forced 13 votes on the Iran War Powers Resolutions to end Trump's disastrous war. We will keep forcing votes as long as it takes until Senate Republicans help us bring our troops home, end this war, and bring costs down.
Government Funding (Executive Session)
Page S4450 · Official textMr. President, on the CR, Senate Democrats have been unequivocal: We want to work across the aisle to keep the government open. The CR gives us the maneuvering room we need to hash out a budget that makes life more affordable for the American people and reins in the Trump administration's chaos and corruption. Throughout these negotiations, Senate Democrats are fighting for working families. And thanks to Senator Patty Murray's efforts, we have fended off Trump's harmful effort to hold hostage Federal grants that would support communities stretching from one end of the Nation to the other. Trump has this amazing philosophy: If you are a red State, you deserve the taxpayers' money. If you are a blue State, you don't. And he totally skews our grant-giving to help his friends and to punish his enemies when it has no basis in law, fact, justice, fairness. The American people are counting on Congress to come together and deliver, and that is what Senate Democrats are fighting to do every day. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Sheehy)
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant executive clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Waiving Quorum Calls (Executive Session)
Page S4450 · Official textMr. President, I ask unanimous consent to waive the mandatory quorum call with respect to the Schwartz nomination and the en bloc nominations.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Democrat Party (Executive Session)
Pages S4450–S4451 · Official textMr. President, today's Democrat Party has been taken over by extremists. It is happening all across the country. Extremists are winning Democrat primaries all across the country, from east to west.
The minority leader, who spoke a little earlier today, seems to be very happy about it. Just yesterday, when talking to the press, the minority leader said this. He said these extreme candidates make their party stronger.
Well, Senator Schumer may be thrilled with the direction that his party is taking, and now look what happened last night in Michigan. The Democrat candidate for Senate winning the primary yesterday in Michigan is truly an extremist--radical, extreme, dangerous, and, in my opinion, scary. He has been endorsed by Senator Bernie Sanders, and just recently he hit the campaign trail with a leftwing activist, a political activist who blamed 9/11--we are almost near the 25th anniversary of the attacks on 9/11 on the United States of America--blamed those attacks on America and the American people.
This is a Democrat Party that has a manifesto and a mantra. They have a radical set of beliefs, and they are clearly those of the Democrat nominee in Michigan.
The driving force in the Democrat Party today wants to abolish prisons. The driving force in the Democrat Party today has endorsed any and all efforts to release dangerous prisoners from the jails onto the streets of communities all across the country. The driving force in the Democrat Party is calling to defund the police. The driving force in the Democrat Party is calling to eliminate Immigration and Customs Enforcement in this country. They don't want borders, don't think we ought to have borders. They want ICE completely eliminated. Democrats want to go back to the dangerous Biden years when it comes to protecting our borders, and 10 million illegal immigrants flooded into this country. The Democrats want millions and millions more to come into America.
What do they want to do in terms of funding for these things? Well, the Democrats want to have hard-working taxpayers pay for healthcare for all the illegal immigrants who come here. Radical ideas like that were once the fringe of the Democrat Party. No longer. No, no. That fringe now controls the Democrat Party.
As a senior Senator who is a Democrat said, who sits right over there--he said it is a sign that the Democrat Party is "alive and well." Senator Schumer said yesterday it makes their party stronger. It doesn't make America stronger. It makes America weaker. It makes America more vulnerable.
That is where we are today. Democrats seem willing to tear up the Constitution and tear down America. If you listen to some of these candidates, it sounds like they hate America. They want America to fail. That seems to be what they are aiming for.
Well, Republicans are not going to allow that to happen--no. We are going to continue to fight the extremists, and we are going to continue to fight for freedom, for liberty, and for continued American greatness.
Nomination of Todd Blanche (Executive Session)
Page S4451 · Official textNow, Mr. President, on a separate matter, Senate Republicans are confirming individuals who will keep the American people safe. Last week, I met with Todd Blanche. He has been nominated to be the next Attorney General of the United States. I support him. He clearly is the right man for the job, and it is time for the Senate to move forward and confirm him. Todd Blanche has led an impressive legal career. He belongs in this job. He brings to the job a decade of experience at the very Department of Justice. That includes his current service as the Acting Attorney General. Under his leadership, the Department of Justice is focusing once again on its core mission, and that is the mission of fighting crime and upholding the rule of law. Today, Americans are safer. Murder rates have fallen dramatically under this administration. So have deaths from drug overdoses. And Mr. Blanche has fought forcefully for the safety and security of the American people. Today, the Department is prosecuting drug cartels. It is dismantling gangs of violent criminals. Mr. Blanche has also been a key leader in Republicans' war against fraud. He helped establish a new Division in the Department of Justice to do exactly just that, and it is already, today, succeeding. Mr. Blanche knows what it takes to lead the Department of Justice. It takes integrity. It takes accountability. And he is going to lead with both of those characteristics. That is why his nomination is supported by former Department of Justice officials, by so many attorneys general from States, and by law enforcement. Former Attorney General Bill Barr is one such supporter. He recently praised Todd Blanche in an editorial in the Wall Street Journal. He said:
Text printed in the Record (129 characters)
Throughout his career [Todd Blanche] has shown the personal determination, discipline and thick skin [that the] position demands.
That is exactly right. Todd Blanche is dedicated to the rule of law. He is fearless, he is focused, and he is fair. As Attorney General, he is going to provide candid advice even when it is not easy. He is going to stand up for the United States, and he will keep America safe and protect the American people. It is time to confirm him as Attorney General. I yield the floor. I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant executive clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to deliver up to 15 minutes of remarks before we proceed to the vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Executive Session)
Pages S4451–S4453 · Official textMr. President, colleagues, there is a lot going on in the country right now--actually, a lot going on around the world. And I rise today not to address specifically the cost-of-living challenges that so many working families are struggling with. That is certainly a topic of news these days--rightfully so. I am not here to focus on what families of deployed servicemembers must be feeling right now, although that is certainly worthy of our thoughts and consideration and empathy, particularly the family members and the loved ones of the 18 servicemembers that have lost their lives in this unauthorized war with Iran that the President has brought us into.
I want to focus on something that about a year ago was really dominating the evening news and a lot of our social media feeds--immigration, and specifically this administration's cruel, often violent tactics as part of their mass deportation agenda.
Families are still being torn apart. Tens of thousands of immigrants are currently being detained in detention centers around the country. Loved ones of those killed by Federal agents in broad daylight are also still hurting, including the family of Johan Sebastian Guerrero, the 25-year-old father and immigrant from Colombia who had work authorization, who was driving in his car last month when a Federal agent opened fire, shooting him in the head and killing him.
I hope you remember the story. It wasn't that long ago. If you followed the story, you will know that his partner and his 3-year-old daughter, still dressed in her Bluey pajamas that morning, were there at the scene because it was so close to their home.
According to witnesses, Johan's last words were:
Text printed in the Record (16 characters)
I tried to stop.
I raise this because whenever there is a tragedy like this that happens, under this administration, we quickly hear from Department officials, from the White House, and MAGA supporters that all these victims had to do was to follow instructions, as if it was their fault they were being shot and, in some instances, killed. Well, that is exactly what Johan was attempting to do. Yet he was killed anyway.
I know we don't have all the details of exactly how this tragedy unfolded. In large part, we don't have all the details because some people say "Well, let's go to the video; let's go to the body cam footage and see exactly what happened," but despite receiving billions and billions of taxpayer dollars, which included funding for body cameras, these officers weren't wearing any.
But there are a couple of things that we know for certain. First of all, Johan Sebastian Guerrero's daughter should still have her father. Second--and this is publicly reported--the man who took his life should never have been given a badge and a gun. And that is not just coming from me; that is coming from Tom Homan--that is right--President Trump's "border czar," who recently said in a TV interview:
Text printed in the Record (50 characters)
I don't think he should ever have cleared vetting.
From what we have learned, this is a man who verbally, emotionally, and physically abused not just one but two ex-wives and once threw his 13-year-old daughter through a glass coffee table. So Mr. Homan is absolutely right when he says that this man's hiring was a failure of the Agency's vetting process.
But it is emblematic of a much larger failure within the Department of Homeland Security. ICE has rushed, this last year, to put as many officers as it could into communities as quickly as possible--something pretty hypocritical, by the way, from an administration calling for the revetting of previously vetted refugees and other immigrants.
But I digress. In less than a year, ICE has hired more than 12,000 officers, a 120-percent increase in staffing--huge increase in a small amount of time. In part, they were so eager to hire up that they were offering $50,000 bonuses for people who signed on to the Agency. Along the way, they also lowered recruitment standards to try to hire as many people as possible, and they shortened training--shortened training--for law enforcement officers before deploying them into the streets.
Anybody with history and experience with State and local law enforcement knows what happens when you do this. It is a bad combination, a recipe for disaster when you hire too quickly, shorten training, and lower recruitment standards. Now the Federal Government is seeing the consequences of those bad decisions.
How many more unqualified individuals who have not been sufficiently vetted or trained are now in our communities, not just armed but armed as if they are going to war--that is not the job they are doing--and, along the way, violating constitutional rights; using excessive force; risking innocent lives; and, worst of all, facing no accountability?
Colleagues, accountability isn't an inconvenience for law enforcement; it is imperative in a society where we entrust law enforcement officers with the power to take our lives, our liberty, or our property when warranted. Accountability is what gives law enforcement the legitimacy in a democracy, but that is not what is going on today.
Just a couple of weeks ago, it was reported that the FBI will no longer investigate confrontations with immigration enforcement agents. Instead, Homeland Security will do the investigating to determine whether officers or agents have broken the law. If true, how is that supposed to inspire confidence or legitimacy? After all, it has been 6 months since the killing of Alex Pretti and Renee Nicole Goode, and still nobody has been held accountable for those deaths.
Let me repeat their names: Alex Pretti, Renee Nicole Good, Ruben Ray Martinez, Silverio Villegas Gonzalez, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, Joan Sebastian Guerrero.
God, I pray there is not more to come.
How many more need to die before this administration recognizes, acknowledges, and admits that something is deeply wrong?
Another important point I want to make today is that these failures don't end on the streets in our communities; they are also happening inside the walls of detention facilities, where as of yesterday, at least 54 people have died since the beginning of this administration.
The year 2025 was a record year--not a good record--the most deaths in ICE custody in a calendar year, and we are on track to exceed that in 2026. At this moment, more than 67,000 people are being held in overcrowded and understaffed facilities, where many are denied access to healthy food, clean water, even basic medical care--forget about lifesaving care for people with extreme conditions, folks that I have seen and talked to personally, suffering from injuries they sustained when being taken into custody because of the cruelty and the violence of how it is being done.
And reporting just this morning from the Associated Press shows us more than 50 parents and spouses of Active-Duty servicemembers have been detained since the beginning of the second Trump administration, and at least six have been deported.
Think about that. Their sons and daughters, husbands and wives are willing to put their lives on the line for this country during wartime, no less, and the Trump administration is rewarding their service by detaining and deporting their family members.
Yet, despite all this, Donald Trump and those around him keep repeating the lie that they are only going after "the worst of the worst."
It is not true. Even Federal courts have found that the conditions in these detention facilities, by the way, are unacceptable. A Federal district court judge in California just ordered improvements to basic needs like access to clean water, nutritious food, and medical and disability care in the Adelanto ICE Processing Center, basic standards of humanity that are both Federal law and international law.
In February, a similar order to provide access to medical care was issued regarding the large detention center in California, the one located in California City. But just last week, we learned from a neutral court-appointed monitor that ICE is failing to comply with that order.
This administration just doesn't care.
Despite these deaths, despite these conditions, and despite the enormous human toll, the administration is actually doubling down. ICE arrested 51,000 people in the month of July, the largest in a single month in DHS history. And again, the vast majority are not dangerous, violent criminals.
So we have a historic number of arrests coupled with a historic number of deaths in ICE custody, and this administration has the audacity to ignore court orders to provide basic care and dignity to the people that it is cramming into these detention facilities.
And on top of all that, the Republican majority in this Congress has given ICE and Border Patrol more than $150 billion with no accountability, no safeguards required. So they don't even have to come back to Congress to justify their funding requests and answer questions for the next 3 years.
ICE is now expanding detention facilities while continuing to carry out these mass enforcement operations across the country.
They are failing. They are failing the humanity test. They are being ordered by Federal courts to do the job right. They are doubling down and growing their operation.
And we now know that over 300,000 Haitian immigrants are now facing arrests and deportation after the Trump administration has ripped away their temporary protected status.
Colleagues, how many people need to die at the hands of ill-trained, unqualified, and unaccountable Federal agents and inside inhumane detention centers before we as a Congress--at least the Senate--say: Enough.
Before we call for accountability and demand commonsense reforms, what is it going to take? Because our proposals are out there, like my VISIBLE Act which says immigration enforcement officials have to have very clear, very visible identification, something that is standard for law enforcement Agencies nationwide.
If a group of masked individuals in unmarked cars runs you off the road, jumps out of their cars with guns drawn, and starts screaming in your face without any way to easily and quickly know that they are Federal agents, of course somebody is going to panic.
We just saw that exact scenario play out in Houston a few weeks ago. Lorenzo Salgado Araujo was driving in his van on his way to work when two unmarked cars without sirens or lights began chasing him, eventually blocking his car on a small side street.
As he was trying to turn around, they shot him and killed him. Without any clear identification, how could Lorenzo know that these cars chasing him belonged to law enforcement?
As one expert reviewing the footage of this chase from public cameras said, it "looks more like a carjacking attempt than it [is] a police stop."
And we wonder why some people panic.
That is exactly why we need basic standards for Federal law enforcement like those called for in Senator Booker's Federal Law Enforcement Standards and Accountability Act.
And for the protection of agents and civilians alike, law enforcement needs to have the body cameras and to have them turned on, which the FOCUS Act would require. These are the kinds of basic safeguards that Democrats have been proposing over and over again, but the administration and the Republican majority doesn't want to act on it.
Now, we have a lot of policy debates here in Congress, but too often, we lose sight of the people behind the headlines and the people behind the statistics that are impacted by these policies.
Joan Sebastian Guerrero was one of those people, as are thousands of others living in fear today: mothers, fathers, sons, daughters, brothers, sisters. They are our friends. They are our coworkers and neighbors, all human beings deserving of basic dignity and humanity.
Last month, Joan Sebastian Guerrero got into his car expecting just a normal, regular day, and now his daughter will grow up in a world without him in it. She carries his memory with her for the rest of her life--not only of him, but how he was taken from her. She will remember that forever.
Colleagues, I implore that we remember as well. Let's learn from it and do everything possible to keep it from happening again because we are a nation of laws that need to be enforced, but a nation of laws includes being a nation of due process, of accountability, and above all, human dignity.
We should never accept an America where Federal agents hide their faces, abuse their authority, or take life without oversight and accountability.
It is a choice, folks, that we are making. What kind of a country are we working toward? It is a choice that this administration and congressional Republicans have made of what we are seeing on the streets. America deserves better. America deserves better.
I yield the floor.
Cloture Motion (Executive Session)
Page S4453 · Official textThe PRESIDING OFFICER
Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The senior assistant executive clerk read as follows:
Text printed in the Record (2,384 characters)
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the
provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate,
do hereby move to bring to a close debate on the nomination
of Erica Schwartz, of Florida, to be Director of the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention.
John Thune, Roger Marshall, Tim Scott of South Carolina,
Jim Banks, Bill Cassidy, John Barrasso, John Boozman,
Cynthia M. Lummis, Jon Husted, John Hoeven, John
Cornyn, Joni Ernst, Bill Hagerty, Kevin Cramer, Chuck
Grassley, Ted Budd.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Under the previous order, the mandatory quorum call under rule XXII has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the nomination of Erica Schwartz, of Florida, to be Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, shall be brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll.
The legislative clerk called the roll.
Mr. BARRASSO. The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson), the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. McConnell), and the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis).
Further, if present and voting: the Senator from North Carolina (Mr. Tillis) would have voted "yea."
Mr DURBIN: I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), the Senator from Hawaii (Ms. Hirono), and the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Klobuchar) are necessarily absent.
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 51, nays 43, as follows:
Armstrong Banks Barrasso Blackburn Boozman Britt Budd Capito Cassidy Collins Cornyn Cotton Cramer Crapo Cruz Curtis Daines Ernst Fischer Graham Grassley Hagerty Hawley Hoeven Husted Hyde-Smith Justice Kaine Kennedy Lankford Lee Lummis Marshall McCormick Moody Moran Moreno Murkowski Paul Ricketts Risch Rounds Schmitt Scott (FL) Scott (SC) Sheehy Sullivan Thune Tuberville Wicker Young
Alsobrooks Baldwin Bennet Blumenthal Blunt Rochester Booker Cantwell Coons Cortez Masto Duckworth Durbin Fetterman Gillibrand Hassan Heinrich Hickenlooper Kelly Kim King Lujan Markey Merkley Murphy Murray Ossoff Padilla Peters Reed Rosen Sanders Schatz Schiff Schumer Shaheen Slotkin Smith Van Hollen Warner Warnock Warren Welch Whitehouse Wyden
Gallego
Hirono
Johnson
Klobuchar
McConnell
Tillis
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Ricketts). On this vote, the yeas are 51, the nays are 43.
The motion is agreed to.
Executive Calendar
Page S4453 · Official textThe PRESIDING OFFICER
The clerk will report the nomination.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read the nomination of Erica Schwartz, of Florida, to be Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
The Senator from North Dakota.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Nomination of Todd Blanche (Executive Calendar)
Pages S4453–S4464 · Official textMr. President, I am nearing the end of my Senate term, and I am reflecting on some historic events which I have witnessed at this table, at this desk. One of the most historic I remember--and specifically the date--January 6, 2021. The reason why that day was important was that the votes all across America had been counted to see who was elected President in the 2020 election, and the process involved certification by the House and the Senate of the electoral votes that were to be counted.
In the past, it has been almost a pro forma event, hardly noticed by anyone. But on January 6, 2021, it was much different--much different. The Presiding Officer of the Senate for that electoral vote count is the Vice President of the United States; in this case, it was Vice President Pence.
There was more security than usual in the Capitol Building. To those who are here today witnessing this session and visiting the Capitol, you are lucky. You are protected by one of the best security forces, police forces, in the Nation, the Capitol Hill Police. Most Americans don't know much about them. Those of us who serve in Congress know a lot about them. These are men and women who keep you safe and me safe in the Capitol Building and make sure that the visitors have peace of mind when they come and go.
We want to maintain the availability of this building to visitors from certainly the United States, but from all around the world. And these men and women--some in uniform, some in ordinary dress--make sure that happens. Well, on January 6, 2021, there was a special emphasis on security. The reason: It was not only a historic event with Members of Congress in their chairs and the Vice President of the United States presiding over the Senate. There was also a rally going on downtown by the outgoing President of the United States, Donald Trump, at the end of his first term.
He had summoned his supporters and friends to come for a rally down by the White House and the Washington Monument that day. No coincidence. It was an attempt to put pressure on Congress not to count the electoral votes.
You see, the President then and now had this fiction in his mind that he actually won the election. He was only off by 7 million votes--that is how much he lost it by. But he kept filing lawsuits and making protests and arguing that he should be President again. At one point, he dispatched the thousands--thousands--of people that he had summoned to Washington to leave the Washington Monument area and to march on the Capitol, and they did.
So we were sitting inside with the knowledge that these thousands of people were coming up to our building here, the Capitol Building, where we did business on this historic day. We didn't quite know what they would do when they arrived. But if you witness the videotapes from that day, draw your own conclusions. They tried to storm the Capitol. They broke through locked doors, crashed through windows to come into the building.
At approximately 10 minutes after 2 o'clock in the afternoon on January 6, 2021, I was seated at this desk. Vice President Pence was presiding, and I noticed something curious: Those doors opened and members of the Secret Service came in and grabbed--literately grabbed--the Vice President to pull him out of that chair; took him out that door. And here we sat with no announcement, nothing, but we knew something was going on outside with this rally that had been directed up this way.
In a few minutes, a representative of the Capitol Police spoke to us in the Chamber and said: Stay calm. Stay where you are. We are going to make the Senate Chamber a safe place for you to stay no matter what happens in the rest of the building. So some of us relaxed in our chairs and looked around and waited for the next development.
The next development took about 10 minutes. Mr. President, 10 minutes later, the Capitol Police came and said: Disregard that earlier alert, leave in an orderly fashion, file through those doors, and follow us to a safe location.
So we abandoned the Senate Chamber and the Capitol and left to go to a building nearby and wait out this ordeal, which was going on in the Senate.
What happened you can witness yourself on videotape. It is all there. About 150 of our Capitol Police were assaulted by these demonstrators--some seriously injured, others pushed to the brink psychologically, which led to their deaths a day or two later. It was a horrible scene. It wasn't until late in the afternoon that we were able to return to the Senate to complete our business with the electoral vote.
What followed from that with the new President was an attempt to investigate what happened that day and who should be held responsible. There was nothing extraordinary about that. Anyone who did damage to this great building or the people in it obviously should be held accountable. And so the largest investigation in the history of the Department of Justice and the FBI started.
At the end of the day, almost 1,500 individuals were charged with a crime, and they were convicted. Some of them paid a fine, some served brief periods of time, and others more serious offenses depending on what they did. That was the reality of what happened.
Fast-forward four years, and what happened next? President Trump was reelected. And with the power under the Constitution to pardon those who committed crime, on his first day in office in his second term, President Trump gave a full and unconditional pardon to every one of the convicted demonstrators who stormed this building.
If you remember the scenes afterwards, it wasn't just an orderly procession of people visiting this building. They crashed through doors. They broke windows. They did their darndest to cause as much damage as possible.
C-SPAN, which televises what happened here, kept the cameras running, and we were able to see them scramble into the Senate Chamber, pose for pictures sitting in the chair of the Presiding Officer, and riffle through our desks. I watched as some person--I still don't know who it was--went through my desk to look and see if there were some things that he could take that day. I don't know whether he did or not.
But that is the sort of thing that went on for 4 or 5 hours while an effort was made to mobilize police and state troopers and others to reclaim the Capitol Building from the demonstrators.
The reason I bring up this event years later is because there is an important issue to be voted on this week by the U.S. Senate, and that is the choice of the next Attorney General of the United States.
The Acting Attorney General is Todd Blanche, who was President Trump's personal lawyer when he was charged with crimes and who has been Deputy Attorney General for months now. He is seeking a full-time position.
One of the items of controversy is pretty easy to explain. President Trump believes--and Todd Blanche believed at one point--that the people who attacked the Capitol, the people who breached the Capitol, who crashed through the doors, broke down the windows, threatened individuals inside, should receive financial compensation for doing it. Financial compensation.
And you say to yourself: They got a full, unconditional pardon by President Trump. Now they want money too? And the answer is not only yes, but, unfortunately, they have done it with some pride.
The Trump administration proposed an Anti-Weaponization Fund. And just to give it a cute little twist, they appropriated $1,776 billion for that purpose. Well, it didn't go over very well with Congress because as we read this decree by the Trump administration, people said: Wait a minute. We are giving money to people who were convicted of a crime of attacking the Capitol, disrupting the business of the Senate, injuring 149 Capitol policemen? We are going to give them not only a pardon, but some sort of financial compensation?
That was the plan: The Anti-Weaponization Fund. And who was the person who executed that plan? Todd Blanche, the person who is seeking to become the next full-time Attorney General of the United States.
The controversy involving that particular proposal is well-known. Not only was there a bad reaction among Democrats to this idea but many Republicans as well.
Some of them kept their opposition behind closed doors. I understand. But others were very vocal about it. In fact, two members of the Senate Judiciary Committee said they want in writing, from Todd Blanche, a promise that he would never create this fund to reward cop beaters and demonstrators in the Capitol on January 6, 2021.
It went forward in the Senate Judiciary Committee and the negotiations between two Republican Senators and Todd Blanche continued until the beginning of this week when it was announced they had reached an agreement. Sadly, that agreement--the so-called agreement not to create the Anti-Weaponization Fund--is written in a way it wouldn't pass law school Contracts 101.
There is no signature on any of these pages of promises when it comes to future activity. They say: We are rescinding the previous order, but there is nothing to stop a new order from taking place. That is a gaping hole in the logic and the effectiveness of any of these documents.
We should have clear indications from the parties to that lawsuit that both sides agree; that would include the President of the United States, who was a party to the lawsuit that led up to this. But they can't bring it together because the President doesn't believe that the Anti-Weaponization Fund should go away. He said publicly over and over again he believes in it, wants to do it, wants to give the demonstrators money. Todd Blanche thinks he has taken care of this problem, but he has not produced any documentation to make that point clear.
Secondly, there was a provision in a lawsuit. Now, here is what the lawsuit is all about: The President sued the IRS and Treasury arguing that they disclosed his income tax returns without his permission.
They arrested the man who actually did it--they caught him--and he was prosecuted, as he should be. He broke the law. He knew he was breaking the law when he disclosed the President's income tax returns.
The President sued the IRS and Treasury for billions of dollars--billions--because they disclosed his income tax return. I have completed quite a few years of public service. I disclose my income tax return every year without fail as a Member of Congress and the Senate. I am not posing for holy pictures; I am just trying to tell you it isn't that big a deal if you follow the law.
Do you know what the settlement of the Trump lawsuit was for disclosing his income tax returns? Part of the settlement said--get this now, and Todd Blanche is the draftsman of this as well--part of it said neither the President, his family, or any of the companies in his Trump empire business can be held for violating any tax crimes in the United States.
How would you like that? Get-out-of-jail-free card. And that was part of the agreement, and it should be contested.
If we say no one in America is above the law, how in the world can you justify doing this for the Trump family and their businesses? And we know this President deals in big numbers when it comes to income.
His first year in office--estimates--between $1.4 and $2 billion in the President's first year in office of his second term--$2 billion. How did he do it? Well, you won't be surprised to know that there are cryptocurrency fingerprints all over this deal.
The President made hundreds of millions of dollars off of a meme coin or some contraption that comes out of the cryptocurrency world. That is the reality.
And who was overseeing this operation? Todd Blanche, the man who wants to be the No.
1 law enforcement officer in the United States of America.
Well, I will tell you, I am not going to go much longer because I see some of my colleagues are gathering, and they want to speak on this issue as well.
This is a serious mistake for the Senate to approve Todd Blanche as the next Attorney General. If there was ever a moment in history when we need an Attorney General above reproach who is clearly dedicated to ending corruption, even at the highest level of our government, it is right now.
The history of this era will be written, and it will be a shameful history for those who are empowering this man, Todd Blanche, to take his personal representation of this President to the highest possible level as he becomes the next Attorney General.
I beg my colleagues on the other side of the aisle: I think I know how many of you feel privately, but I know you are afraid to cross this President. He has been guilty of retribution many times in the past, and he would be on this. But don't be in the history books on the wrong side when it comes to this issue. Come out against corruption; come out for the prosecution of corporate fraud; come out for changing the current situation in the United States to one that is more respectful of the law and more respectful of the families and voters who create this democracy.
I urge my colleagues to join me in opposing the nomination of Todd Blanche as the next Attorney General of the United States.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
The Senator from Connecticut.
Mr. President, I begin with a quote: "I am his lawyer."
"I am his lawyer" is what Todd Blanche said in the course of his confirmation hearing for the Judiciary Committee of the U.S. Senate. "I'm his lawyer," meaning, I am Donald Trump's lawyer.
Now, admittedly, he had no intention of saying it that way. He had no intention of allowing that revelation to slip, but it was a glaring illustration of his mindset. He was, he is now, and he will be Donald Trump's lawyer, his personal lawyer, as he was during the criminal and civil trials--a trusted, loyal consigliere.
He is not an independent lawyer with a law firm; he is in-house. He is literally kept by the President on his personal leash.
You may think I am overstating it, but, in fact, he demonstrated it throughout that hearing, and the through line was he will be guided by blind loyalty to the President and contempt for the law, enabling the President in continued corrupt crypto schemes, as well as condoning and empowering the President to establish a slush fund for January 6 rioters, as well as tax immunity. Even though, purportedly, those agreements were limited, he will enable the President to circumvent the so-called agreements, which are a sham. They are a fraud on the U.S. Senate just as Todd Blanche committed a fraud on the Florida U.S. district court that referred him to the New York bar for investigation in connection with that wrongdoing.
Maya Angelou famously said:
Text printed in the Record (63 characters)
When people show you who they are, believe them the first time.
And Todd Blanche has shown us repeatedly who he is, who his boss is, and whose loyalty he will hold uppermost.
I was a U.S. attorney in Connecticut for 4\1/2\ years, part of the Department of Justice, which I revered--more than just respected; in fact, revered--because it epitomized what lawyers should be in upholding the highest standards of ethics and morality. Even when we made an error, we were supposed to state it--in effect, acknowledge it before the court.
I will never forget the first time I appeared before a U.S. district court judge in Connecticut, a former Federal prosecutor himself. And he asked me: Whom do you work for?
I said: The government.
He said: No. You work for and you represent the United States of America.
Think of it for a moment: walking into a courtroom representing the United States of America, sworn to uphold the Constitution--not any President, not a legislature, but the United States of America.
That is not what Todd Blanche has done as a Justice Department official under Donald Trump. It is not what he will do, as he showed clearly. Nothing epitomizes it better than the answer he gave at one point when he referred to the attack on the Capitol that occurred on January 6, 2021--we all remember it; we went through it; we saw it--the attack on the Capitol which injured and contributed to deaths of our Capitol Police. He referred to it as "events." He couldn't bring himself to refer to it as an attack, as it clearly was, because Donald Trump will not allow any of his nominees to refer to the January 6 riot and insurrection as an attack on the Capitol. It was an attack designed to prevent the lawful and peaceful transition of power, and to call it anything else is disrespectful to the brave Capitol Police who defended us that day and disqualifying for a judicial nominee and for any position of trust in the U.S. Government.
Earlier today, I participated in a press conference with some of the prosecutors--the career prosecutors--who pursued convictions of those rioters for the serious violations of Federal law that they incurred. They made the point that the failure to acknowledge an attack on the Capitol or that President Biden won the 2020 election shows a lack of independence that should be disqualifying.
They have submitted a letter to all of us here. And I ask unanimous consent that it be printed in the Record because they make the point that these statements by nominees for executive office or for judgeships, in effect, perpetuate the Big Lie.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Text printed in the Record (6,451 characters)
August 5, 2026.
To the Members of the United States Senate: We are attorneys who prosecuted cases related to the events of January 6, 2021, when thousands of people violently stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to interrupt the House of Representatives and the Senate's work to count and certify the results of the 2020 presidential election.
January 6 was a violent attack on American democracy. It was also a vicious attack on the brave officers of the U.S. Capitol Police and Washington Metropolitan Police Department, more than 150 of whom were injured during the attack, and five of whom died in its aftermath. Rioters, some of whom were heavily armed, beat and injured police officers and reporters, and threatened the lives of the elected officials and staff members inside, while many rioters stole, damaged, and destroyed property, obstructed a government proceeding, and trespassed.
As career public servants dedicated to public safety and the rule of law, we charged more than 1,500 defendants in connection with January 6, convicting more than 1,270 (including 1,009 guilty pleas) before our work was halted in January 2025.
Unfortunately, President Trump has worked to erase the magnitude and meaning of January 6. On his first day of his second term in office, Trump commuted the sentences of 14 and granted a full, complete and unconditional pardon to all other people convicted of offenses related to events that occurred at or near the United States Capitol on January 6. Further, since President Trump returned to office in January of 2025, his judicial nominees, when asked, have been unwilling to tell the truth about the tragic events of January 6. None agreed that it was an insurrection, only one could bring themselves to use the term attack, and not one of the nearly 60 nominees could acknowledge the full trauma and suffering that the attackers caused that day.
This institutional denial of truth--especially by potential federal judges--is dangerous, yet it's become all too clear that President Trump expects his nominees to provide evasive answers about both the attack of January 6th, 2021, and the results of the 2020 presidential election.
No senator, regardless of party, should vote to confirm a judicial nominee who is
unable to state the most simple facts about the attack of
January 6, 2021. Specifically, no judicial nominee should be
confirmed if he or she cannot identify that (1) January 6 was
an attack on our democracy, (2) the attack was led by
supporters of Donald Trump, and (3) Joe Biden was
legitimately elected in the 2020 election.
For judges nominated for lifetime seats in the judiciary
branch, this refusal to contradict the President's lies is
particularly dangerous, and raises significant questions
about whether, once confirmed, a nominee could act
independently and free from political interference from the
president that nominated them. The truth matters.
We thank you for your consideration.
Brendan Ballou, Special Counsel, Antitrust Division (2016-
17, 2020-25); Adam Dreher, Assistant United States Attorney,
U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia (2022-
2025); Mona Lee M. Furst, Senior Litigation Counsel, United
States Attorney's Office for the District of Kansas (1998-
2022); Alexis Loeb, Assistant United States Attorney, U.S.
Attorney's Office for the Northern District of California
(2013-2024); Jason M. Manning, Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S.
Attorney's Office, District of Columbia (2017-2024); Sean P.
Murphy, Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S. Attorney's Office for
the District of Puerto Rico (2018-2025); Zachary Phillips,
Assistant United States Attorney, U.S. Attorney's Office for
the District of Colorado (2008-2026); Karen Rochlin,
Assistant U.S. Attorney, U.S. Attorney's Office for the
Southern District of Florida, (1989-2025); Michael J. Romano,
Trial Attorney, Crimina Division, Public Integrity Section
(2019-2025); Jacob Steiner, Trial Attorney, Criminal
Division, Public Integrity Section (2020-2025); Andrew J.
Tessman, Assistant United States Attorney, U.S. Attorney's
Office for the Southern District of West Virginia (2019-
2025); Samuel White, Assistant United States Attorney, U.S.
Attorney's Office for the District of Columbia (2020-2026).
Mr. BLUMENTHAL. Election deniers have no place on the bench or in the Department of Justice. And, in fact, in response to my submitted question relating to the 2020 election, Todd Blanche refused to state that Joe Biden won the 2020 election, and he stood by his prior statements perpetuating the Big Lie.
The through line here is whatever Donald Trump says, Todd Blanche does. He will do anything, say anything, conceal anything that serves Donald Trump's interests.
Now, in some ways, the most tragic illustration of this through line is Todd Blanche's treatment of the Epstein survivors. Let's remember, he showed us again who he was when he revictimized those survivors by completely botching the release of the Epstein files. He failed to redact the survivors' personal information and defied the Epstein Files Transparency Act by redacting unnecessary information. Why? To shield Donald Trump.
That was the purpose of the meeting in the Situation Room when the threat to release additional files was to Donald Trump because he was mentioned in those files. And the Situation Room meeting, which is recounted in "Regime Change," a recent book by Jonathan Swan and Maggie Haberman, showed clearly the effort was not to do justice for the survivors but to protect Donald Trump.
He refused to meet with the survivors. He spent 2 whole days with Ghislaine Maxwell. Why? Well, we don't really know because there was certainly no information useful to any investigation that emerged from it. What did happen was that she was transferred to a cushy prison camp and has remained silent.
And when he finally agreed to meet with the survivors, they described it as demoralizing and degrading. In fact, they called it gaslighting.
He protected Donald Trump at the expense of those survivors, and one of the most heinous sexual abuse and trafficking rings in American history has yet to produce the kinds of convictions necessary--the convictions in court, the prosecutions of the coconspirators and others complicit and legally responsible. That is not the conduct of an Attorney General; it is the conduct of Donald Trump's personal lawyer.
I'm his lawyer.
That is the through line. He certainly was acting as Donald Trump's lawyer when he issued two documents recently, supposedly ending the contract that was involved in the agreement on Donald Trump's purported, so-called lawsuit seeking damages from the revelation of his personal tax information. We know that two of our colleagues, Senators Cornyn and Tillis, said that they needed something in writing, but what they got in writing was virtually meaningless in showing that either the slush fund--the so-called anti-weaponization fund--or the tax immunity was in any way materially changed. In fact, the document that purported to say that the slush fund was dead, in reality, is a sham. It is a fraud on the U.S. Senate, just as he allegedly committed a fraud on the court in Florida. The reason is quite simply that there was a contract here. The agreement produced that contract. The agreement was between Donald Trump and the United States. Donald Trump did not in any way forgo or renounce any rights under that contract. It is still binding. He could go into court tomorrow and force it to establish the $1.8 billion thug fund. And, likewise, the immunity agreement, which is unprecedented, worth hundreds of millions of dollars to Donald Trump, tax immunity from audits, in effect giving him a free pass for everything that occurred before this immunity, negotiated by Todd Blanche with only Todd Blanche's signature on it--the limiting of that immunity from tax audits to Donald Trump, his sons, his organization, worth hundreds of millions--unprecedented, unconscionable, and unacceptable from an Attorney General of the United States, dealing with potential tax violations of law, signing away tax liability no matter how serious it might be. It is unprecedented, and no one else but the President would even think of trying to get it in this way, under these circumstances. And he was able to get it only because Todd Blanche acted as his personal lawyer, not as Attorney General of the United States. Senator Cornyn himself put it well at the hearing about this contract for the slush fund:
Text printed in the Record (288 characters)
To be clear, the President of the United States, who was the plaintiff in this lawsuit, has not agreed in writing to delete the weaponization fund, and there's no guarantee that he or one of the other plaintiffs might raise that issue by way of a breach of contract lawsuit in the future.
Todd Blanche answered in the affirmative. He well knows that the document that he prepared and released does nothing to change that contractual obligation. The conversation that Todd Blanche had recently, talking to individuals interested in reproductive rights, I think is extremely revealing and important. In a private call just last week, he said the quiet part out loud; that he would work to restrict abortion in every single State all across the country. He wants to block States enacting their own policies and laws. He wants to make abortion-access States follow the laws of abortion-ban States. In short, he wants to strip Americans of their right to choose and strip States of their right to govern. That is not the conduct or statement of an Attorney General of the United States carrying out and respecting the Constitution; it is fidelity to an ideologue--the President--who wants to impress his base, not represent the American people. Todd Blanche showed us who he was when he ducked and dodged my question about deep-sixing an investigation into possible pay-to-play commutation of a federally convicted felon, David Gentile. David Gentile reportedly paid $2.5 million to a broker to obtain clemency. That clemency robbed his victims of nearly $16 million in restitution. When a U.S. attorney tried to investigate--the Eastern District of New York, U.S. attorney--Mr. Blanche reportedly killed the probe. That is not the behavior of an Attorney General; that is Donald Trump's personal lawyer. So there is a powerful case against this nominee. I am under no illusion. We have seen this movie before. We saw it again when my two colleagues in effect caved--voted for his nomination yesterday. I am not here with rose-colored glasses. I know that Donald Trump will come down hard on any Republican colleague who has the temerity to say: We want a lawyer who represents the people, a lawyer who has fidelity to the Constitution and to the United States of America above the President, an Attorney General who will follow the law and insist that no one is above the law and no one is beneath it, an Attorney General who is true to the trust that we expect and to respect. Todd Blanche might be the President's lawyer, but we don't have to be the President's Senate. I urge my colleagues to vote against this confirmation and remain true to what we should be in upholding the trust and the Constitution of the United States. I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
The Senator from Maryland.
Mr. President, I rise today to oppose the nomination of Todd Blanche to serve as Attorney General of the United States.
The Attorney General is supposed to be the people's lawyer, someone whose loyalty is to the Constitution and to the rule of law, not to any one person--even the President of the United States. But in this administration, the Attorney General and the Department of Justice are focused solely on pleasing one person, one man, no matter the cost to our country.
Lest anybody forget, huge banners like the one displayed here hang outside the Department of Justice, the front door, as pictured here, and the other entrance to the Department of Justice. Every single day, the folks who are supposed to uphold our Constitution and the rule of law walk beneath these banners, reminding them that in this administration, their loyalty is to Donald Trump, not to the people of the United States. One of the people who do that every day and who have demonstrated loyalty to the President over the Constitution is the person whose nomination is pending on this floor today to be the Attorney General.
It is crystal clear from Mr. Blanche's record as Acting Attorney General and before that as Deputy Attorney General that he is still acting like Donald Trump's personal lawyer--a position he held before going to the Justice Department. His record has shown us very clearly that he will continue to put the President's personal interests above the interests of the American people; that when he walks through that door to the great Department of Justice that is supposed to serve justice for the American people, he looks up and he sees Donald Trump.
He was formerly the personal lawyer to Donald Trump, and even now, at the Justice Department, he continues to demonstrate that he puts the President's interests above those in the Constitution and the rule of law.
The Department of Justice has used taxpayer dollars to punish the President's adversaries, to reward his friends, and to pursue the President's personal vendettas.
In a case that I am very familiar with, a Federal judge found that Mr. Blanche's statements about the Department's case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia showed clear evidence of a vindictive prosecution. In other words, the judge found that Todd Blanche and the Department of Justice brought a case against Kilmar Abrego Garcia in a Federal court because he had exercised his due process rights, to punish him for exercising his rights, so that judge threw out those charges.
Under Mr. Blanche's leadership, Department lawyers have resigned rather than participate in blatant prosecutions, like the prosecutions of James Comey and others.
Career, professional lawyers have resigned rather than participate in abuses of power, like the Department's criminal investigation against Renee Good's partner after the shooting in Minneapolis instead of holding accountable or pursuing accountability for those who killed Renee Good. Think about that. This Department of Justice launched an investigation into the partner of Renee Good, who was shot and killed by DHS agents, instead of investigating the shooting itself--again, to please the dear leader in the White House, not to uphold the rule of law.
We also know that the Department of Justice has lost 10,000 employees since the beginning of fiscal year 2025 and nearly one quarter of its lawyers--lawyers who signed up to uphold the rule of law and the Constitution, not serve the dear leader acting through the dear leader's former personal attorney Todd Blanche. Now they are hiring prosecutors with no prior legal experience and asking many of them to sign a pledge supporting not the Constitution but the President of the United States.
We have seen how Mr. Blanche has acted as the President's personal lawyer since he has been at the Justice Department. We know, of course, of the outrageous $1.8 billion slush fund that was created to make payments to the President's political allies. When I asked Mr. Blanche at a hearing if those who assaulted police officers here on Capitol Hill on January 6 would be eligible for those payouts, taxpayer-funded payouts, he wouldn't rule it out. He wouldn't rule that out.
At the same time, he and the Department entered into a sweetheart settlement providing extraordinary tax liability protections to the President and his family and his businesses--essentially a get-out-of-jail-free card for nonpayment of taxes due if that was what had been ultimately found.
Now, after Republican Senators and only after Republican Senators threatened to block his nomination did Mr. Blanche issue an order supposedly rescinding the slush fund and narrowing the scope of those tax protections.
By the way, even if you narrow the scope the way it is supposed to there, the President and his family get essentially a get-out-of-jail-free card for past tax liabilities that may be due.
So this deal is a sham. It is not worth the paper it is written on. It is not written into the law, and nothing prevents the Department from restarting the slush fund once Mr. Blanche is confirmed.
That is not the only example of Mr. Blanche continuing to serve as the President's personal attorney while having the title of "Acting Attorney General." We also see that in his handling of the Epstein files.
During his time at the Justice Department, Mr. Blanche has withheld critical information regarding those files rather than seek justice for the brave survivors who have shared their stories of abuse by Jeffrey Epstein and his associates.
When Mr. Blanche appeared before the Appropriations subcommittee overseeing the Department of Justice, Senator Murray and I both asked him that if we connected him with the Epstein survivors, would he meet with them and hear them out?
His answer:
Text printed in the Record (11 characters)
Absolutely.
He promised he would do so if we connected the survivors to him.
Well, we followed up multiple times. Nearly 2 months later, he had not fulfilled the promise he made in that Senate committee hearing. He had still not met with the survivors.
So Senator Murray and I wrote him a letter demanding that he fulfill the promise he made because that should be a bare minimum for someone seeking this post. And it is pretty clear he had zero intent on keeping the promise made in public at that committee hearing until Senator Tillis said that he would not vote to move his nomination out of the committee until Mr. Blanche met with the survivors.
After that threat was made, the meeting happened, but it was clear from reports about the meeting by the survivors that Mr. Blanche did not do so out of respect for them and out of a genuine interest to hear what they had to say but simply to preserve chances of his confirmation, because according to the survivors, it was nothing more than a check-the-box exercise. In fact, they said Mr. Blanche was condescending, that he was rude, and that he was dismissive. They were interrupted and told to "get to the point."
Well, someone who can tell the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's horrific crimes to "get to the point" is not a person we want defending the American people because a nominee for Attorney General should demonstrate that their loyalty will be to the Constitution and the rule of law and getting justice for everybody in America, including the survivors of Jeffrey Epstein's crimes, not to the President of the United States.
So I hope we will recognize that if we look at the conduct and actions and record of the Acting Attorney General, we will recognize that he is not suited for this position because his record shows he has not been upholding the rule of law and the Constitution. Instead, he has been doing the business of this one man.
This photo was taken today--taken today. These big banners of Donald Trump have been hanging outside the Department of Justice for a long time, and they send an unmistakable message to people who work inside that they better serve the interests of this one person. If, instead, there is a conflict between the interests of the people of the United States and this person, this tells them: Serve the interests of the President of the United States.
That is not the job of the Department of Justice, and it is not the job of the Attorney General.
I urge my colleagues to oppose the nomination of Todd Blanche to be Attorney General of the United States.
I yield the floor.
The ACTING PRESIDENT pro tempore
The Senator from Vermont.
Mr. President, I listened to the presentation by my colleague from Maryland and agree with everything he said.
And the heart of the question is whether the person who has been nominated to serve as Attorney General will serve the people of the United States or will he serve the President to whom he has indicated blind, complete, servile loyalty?
And the recitation of facts about what Mr. Blanche has done in this incredibly important job as Acting Attorney General has made clear what his client is, who that client is.
There is no place at the top of the Justice Department for a person who pledges personal loyalty to anyone other than the American people. But, you know, the reality here is, the President won't appoint anybody to the Attorney General's position who won't act as his personal attorney.
And there is a sadness that I have about this whole story that is before us. It is the story of a person who when he was a young man, a young attorney, Todd Blanche was extraordinarily talented, was very idealistic, was a prosecutor's prosecutor, and who did abide by and uphold the rule of law.
He became a new person in service of a President that I believe is corrupt. Two billion dollars of income to the President of the United States in his first year raises more than a mild question.
And this person now to be Attorney General, in his Acting Attorney General role, essentially provided tax immunity to the President and to all of his children, family, and affiliates. It is totally outrageous. When you say it, you can't even believe the words are coming out of your mouth. It is absolutely unprecedented.
It has nothing to do with the way public business should be conducted. But Mr. Blanche, who has considerable talents, has used those talents to enable and to facilitate and to cover up and to revise and accommodate the corrupt goals of a President who, I believe, is corrupt.
And, by the way, as I mentioned earlier, that is whom the President wants. He wants someone who is going to do his work for him unquestioned, no matter what. But, you know, there is another question that belongs right here in the U.S. Senate. Is there no line that the U.S. Senate will not allow this President to cross?
The Senate confirmed Bondi; it confirmed Hegseth; it confirmed Patel; it confirmed Noem; and we are about to confirm Blanche. The President is abusing his authority, in my view, in every day and in every way. And that is shame on him, but the U.S. Senate is failing to use its authority, its power on any day or in any way. Shame on the U.S. Senate.
Should not the U.S. Senate use its advice and consent authority to demand competence and integrity? Did the Senate do that with Bondi, with Noem, with Hegseth, with Patel, and now with Blanche? Should not the U.S. Senate use its taxing authority to stop tariffs that the vast majority of this body believes is hurting the American people and is not the right of the Executive to impose?
Should not the U.S. Senate use its constitutional power of the purse to stop the invasion by President Trump into the power of the purse? And should not the U.S. Senate use its constitutional authority over the awesome power to declare war and stop this illegal war in Iran that, in fact, President Trump is losing?
The President is abusing his authority. We are failing to use ours. We can stop capitulating today by rejecting this nomination.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
The Senator from Rhode Island.
Mr. President, I am here today to join the chorus of opposition to Todd Blanche's nomination as Attorney General of the United States.
Things that Republicans have purported to care about are disastrous with this guy. Pam Bondi put the blame directly on Todd Blanche for the Department of Justice's foulup with the Epstein files.
That foulup was pretty deadly serious for the women who were victims, who had managed to keep that fact private until Todd Blanche and the DOJ fouled that up and put out their names, put out their addresses, put out their photographs, and in some cases put out photographs with very little clothing on--complete disruption of the lives of the victims of Epstein's depravity, complete incompetence from a document-production point of view.
And on the other side, this guy actually participated in the Epstein coverup. Remember that there was a witness who spoke to FBI agents about having been assaulted by Donald Trump when she was about 14 years old, physically assaulted and sexually assaulted.
She spoke to the FBI at least four times. Those four times were recorded in FBI 302s. A 302 is the FBI name for the witness statement that the agents write up after an interview.
So four times this woman has been interviewed about what had happened to her as a girl. Three of those 302s specifically mentioned Donald Trump. In the disclosure that Todd Blanche made under the Epstein files law, the only one of the four that got disclosed was the one that didn't mention Donald Trump.
That ought to be disqualifying right there. Luckily, some very sharp investigators realized through, like, gaps in Bates stamp numbers that documents were missing and that the three 302s had not been disclosed. And so Blanche was forced to cough those up.
But behind a 302 come the agent notes. And there are still 37 pages of documents relating to that that are still suppressed, that are still covered up, that look to be the agents' notes, which should have been disclosed. So the coverup continued with respect to allegations against Donald Trump. Where else did the coverup continue?
Well, the Treasury Department sent to the Department of Justice what are called suspicious activity reports. A suspicious activity report is what you get when international banking transactions look like something funny is afoot, look like there is, for instance, money laundering going on. In this case, it was money laundering and human-trafficking concerns that provoked the suspicious activity reports.
You don't have to be a genius investigator to look at a suspicious activity report and deduce it might have something to do with some suspicious activity. It is the title of the report, for Pete's sake.
Billions of dollars of transactions were behind those suspicious activity reports. How many were investigated by the Blanche Department of Justice? Zero. Turned a complete blind eye to that whole aspect of the Epstein files, even though the suspicious activity reports were right in front of them.
And then he goes running down to Tallahassee to interview Epstein's comrade-in-crime Ghislaine Maxwell. Did he use that interview to develop any new information, to go after people who were culpable in the Epstein files? No.
He used that interview to extract exculpatory comments from her about Donald Trump. Oh, that he was a perfect gentleman. And the next thing you know, she is rewarded with a transfer to a Club Fed-type prison.
What is the excuse for that? Oh, she was at risk. We felt she was in danger. Well, look, I have been around law enforcement for a long time, and this is the first time I have ever seen a prisoner allegedly in danger be transferred to a less secure setting to solve the problem of danger. Right? You move the prisoner to a more secure setting, not a less secure setting. It makes no sense. So in the Epstein files, Todd Blanche's fingerprints are all over the screwup and the coverup. Then we move on to the slush fund and the Trump family tax fraud amnesty, which was cooked up in a deal surrounding a Federal court proceeding, which was such a mess that the judge in that Federal court proceeding has gone back to look at what the heck happened.
She was looking at whether something happened called fraud upon the court. You probably haven't heard of fraud upon the court. It is unusually rare. It is a thermonuclear ethics accusation. We have looked. In the history of the Department of Justice, fraud on the court has not even been alleged against any senior DOJ official--ever. Ever.
And here you have a court that opened a proceeding, an inquiry, into whether or not there was fraud on the court, and that is still pending.
There is still every reason to believe that Blanche may be found culpable for putting a fraud on the court together to cook up the slush fund tax amnesty scheme. That is pretty unheard of.
Unfortunately, it is not uncommon in this Blanche Department of Justice. There is a cascade of criticism from Federal courts about misconduct by this Department of Justice--misconduct that is unprecedented.
I will tell you that I was the U.S. attorney for the District of Rhode Island. If judges had used words like this about my attorneys' conduct in their courtrooms, there would have been consequences. At a minimum, there would have been staff meetings. There could have been referrals to the Office of Professional Responsibility. There could have been apologies required to the court. There could have been a reboot, internal office discipline of what is going on with this case. But when a judge says that the government's argument is disingenuous, when the judge says that the government's argument is a pretext for something else, when the judge says that the government has engaged in bad faith, each one of those is a four-alarm fire word.
In medicine, there are things that they call never events, things that should never happen in a hospital that you protect against, these are never event words coming from Federal judges. And yet they are commonplace in the corrupted Department of Justice run by Todd Blanche.
As to his complicity in the Epstein files coverup, I ask unanimous consent that a letter from Epstein survivors to Senators Tillis and Cornyn be printed in the Record at the end of my remarks.
With respect to the destruction of the Department of Justice that he has wrought, I would also ask that we add George Will's column called "Against Todd Blanche."
I ask unanimous consent that the article entitled "Against Todd Blanche" be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Text printed in the Record (5,528 characters)
What benefit of norms is owed to someone who disdains norms? There are many sufficient reasons to oppose confirming Todd Blanche as attorney general. Presidents generally are owed some deference in selecting Cabinet members, but "some" implies limits, lest the Senate's advice-and-consent duty be drained of responsibility. And not all presidents are equally owed. Today's president is owed little, given his contempt for the unwritten rules of civility that can lubricate a congenial society's governance.
Eight days after the 2024 election, Donald Trump set the tone of his second term by announcing his beau ideal of an attorney general: Rep. Matt Gaetz. This insult lasted eight days, until Gaetz withdrew as nominee. He had resigned from the House earlier, reportedly to prevent release of the House Ethics Committee's report on his alleged drug use and sexual misconduct, which a woman said included sex with her twice when she was 17.
Trump settled for Pam Bondi as attorney general, with Blanche as her deputy. While Blanche was the Justice Department's second-in-command, the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, a Justice appendage, sought criminal indictments of six congressional Democrats, all with military or intelligence backgrounds. They had made a video.
Made while Trump's administration was killing people on boats (in international waters) suspected of carrying drugs, the video said what the Uniform Code of Military Justice says: Do not obey illegal orders. A grand jury did something vanishingly rare in criminal cases. It refused to indict the six.
Blanche was acting attorney general when the Justice Department took seriously Seashellgate. His department secured a second indictment of former FBI director James B. Comey, this time for posting a photograph of shells arranged on a beach to read "86 47"; "86" is slang for "remove." Trump is the 47th-president. Blanche's DOJ pretended to regard Comey's infantile gesture as a prosecutable threat.
Republican senators now have demanded Blanche's assurances that the proposed $1.776 billion slush fund, for compensating persons Trump designates as victims of Biden administration persecution, is dead. But this grift was incubated in Blanche's DOJ.
Blanche, who serves at the pleasure of the president, signed a memo pledging that the IRS is "Forever Barred" from "examinations" of Trump, certain members of his family, the Trump Organization and "related or affiliated individuals." This "negotiated"--try not to snicker--settlement between the president and the executive branch he heads exemplifies the administration's sludge of self-dealing.
Trump sicced Blanche's compliant Justice Department on Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell, ostensibly about fictitious criminality in construction spending, actually to pressure Powell to resign. With Blanche as deputy, then acting, attorney general, the Justice Department (per the Economist) gave courts inaccurate information "nearly 100 times in Mr Trump's first 14 months."
In April, Blanche became acting attorney general when Trump
fired Bondi. "Nobody has any idea why," said Blanche.
Plausible reports said Trump considered Bondi insufficiently
aggressive about prosecuting his enemies. Blanche has said,
cloudily, that "some" Justice Department prosecutions
"involve men, women, and entities" that Trump "has had
issues with. . . . That is his right, and indeed it is his
duty to do that, meaning, to lead this country."
Blanche said it is "completely false" that the president
targets political enemies. Trump merely "wants justice."
Blanche said he was not "celebrating" Trump's pardons of
almost all the approximately 1,500 Jan. 6 rioters when, to a
gathering of Trump supporters, he praised the "generous"
pardons as one of the administration's accomplishments.
If at most four Republican senators had, in committee or
floor votes, behaved as independently as the Founders thought
senators would, Bondi, Kristi Noem, Tulsi Gabbard, Pete
Hegseth, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and others would not have been
confirmed to offices far above their competences. Children
probably have died of measles, and of hepatitis B passed from
mothers to infants, because of vaccine hesitancy promoted by
Kennedy, who lied when he promised not to indulge in such
quackery if confirmed as secretary of Health and Human
Services.
Now comes Blanche. He received this embarrassingly
backhanded endorsement (in the Wall Street Journal) from
former attorney general William Barr: Blanche "will run the
department as effectively as anyone could under President
Trump." Is this sufficient reassurance for Republican
senators? Or will, at last, a nominee trigger their gag
reflexes?
Once, when someone noted that Sen. Richard Russell, the
Georgia Democrat, had "served under" six presidents,
Russell bristled, saying he "served with" six. It will be a
pleasant surprise if, concerning Blanche, a few Republican
senators become similarly sensitive about those prepositions.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. And with respect to this litany of criticism of the honesty of the Blanche Department of Justice, I would like to add a ProPublica article entitled "Federal Judges Chastise Trump's Justice Department for `Unlawful,' `Unethical' and `Unseemly' Conduct," whose first sentence begins:
Across the country, federal judges are calling out Department of Justice lawyers, questioning in unprecedented ways whether they can be trusted to tell the truth or uphold centuries-old legal norms.
I ask unanimous consent that the article entitled "Federal Judges Chastise Trump's Justice Department for `Unlawful,' `Unethical' and `Unseemly' Conduct" be printed in the Record. There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows: Federal Judges Chastise Trump's Justice Department for "Unlawful," "Unethical" and "Unseemly" Conduct
Text printed in the Record (11,934 characters)
(By J. David McSwane, Pratheek Rebala, and Carla Astudillo)
Across the country, federal judges are calling out Department of Justice lawyers, questioning in unprecedented ways whether they can be trusted to tell the truth or uphold centuries-old legal norms.
From Washington, D.C., to Rhode Island to Oregon, federal judges nominated by presidents from both parties, including Donald Trump, have zeroed in on what's called "the presumption of regularity." It essentially means that judges must presume that the government--whether it be federal prosecutors, an IRS auditor or an FBI agent--did their jobs according to the rules and in good faith.
Until Trump's second term, which has seen an exodus of veteran DOJ lawyers and a transformative shift in priorities from issues like enforcing civil rights to instead defending a mass deportation agenda, this foundational tenet had rarely been discussed in federal courtrooms, former judges, lawyers and scholars say. But as Trump's DOJ exhibits behavior that judges have called "unlawful," "unethical," "unseemly" or otherwise dishonest, adherence to that bedrock standard is now being questioned.
ProPublica reviewed hundreds of cases since Trump retook the White House in which judges criticized the actions of DOJ lawyers and found more than 40 in which they explicitly referenced the presumption of regularity. In many cases, judges have expressed frustration that they can no longer take the government at its word.
"Judges simply don't believe the representations that are being made by United States attorneys, assistant United States attorneys and the like," said John E. Jones, a former federal judge for the District of Pennsylvania, appointed by President George W. Bush.
"I don't think in the annals of the Department of Justice, in the history of jurisprudence in the United States, we've ever seen anything close to this."
In Rhode Island in May, Trump-appointed federal Judge Mary McElroy rebuked federal prosecutors' conduct--saying they withheld information and misrepresented facts--as she quashed their requests for a subpoena in their investigation into a hospital's care of transgender children. The judge alleged the DOJ had inappropriately claimed its investigation was operating out of Texas to secure subpoenas targeting sensitive medical records of patients in another state and that it falsely claimed the Rhode Island hospital hadn't communicated with the department.
"The discrepancy between the honorable conduct expected of federal prosecutors and DOJ's tactics in this case is unsettling," McElroy wrote. "The Court cannot help but share the sentiment that `[t]he presumption of regularity that has previously been extended to [DOJ] that it could be taken at its word--with little doubt about its intentions and stated purposes--no longer holds.' "
Judges have emitted a chorus of condemnations against the legal basis for some of Trump's political agenda, including the mass firings of federal workers, an immigration dragnet that has imprisoned hundreds of U.S. citizens and retribution campaigns against the president's political enemies.
In doing so, federal judges are imbuing forceful language into their orders in a way that scholars say signals to the Trump administration that the third branch of government is losing trust in the Justice Department.
Federal judges rarely grant interviews, and none of the judges who criticized the Justice Department in their orders granted interviews to ProPublica.
In a statement, a spokesperson for the DOJ said its attorneys are "dedicated public servants who represent the United States with integrity, in accordance with their ethical obligations and the law."
"The Department stands firmly behind the professionalism and good faith of its attorneys," said spokesperson Kiersten Pels. The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Federal judges have found that the government filed statements generated by artificial intelligence that referenced nonexistent case law, wrote briefs that ignored facts and filed declarations with inaccurate dates, the ProPublica review shows.
In one case, the government included documentation claiming a detainee had been convicted of marijuana possession in 2009. That detainee, the judge noted, citing what she called the government's persistent "sloppiness," would have been 4 years old.
"This Court will no longer blindly accept statements of fact from [the U.S. government] unless they are made under oath by an individual with personal knowledge," Judge Christine O'Hearn, a President Joe Biden appointee, wrote in New Jersey while reviewing a writ of habeas corpus petition filed by a man who claimed he was unlawfully imprisoned by immigration officers. O'Hearn accused the government of defying her orders when, instead of releasing the man, Immigration and Customs Enforcement transferred him to a different facility in New York.
In Minnesota, the state's top political leaders had publicly clashed with the administration following the violent ICE raids that led to the deaths of two U.S. citizens. Then the administration filed a flurry of subpoenas against them.
Last month, Judge Patrick J. Schiltz, who was appointed by George W. Bush and clerked for Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, slammed the government's actions and "spurious claims," saying the presumption of regularity was being abused.
"Initiating a criminal investigation in order to harass political opponents or to coerce them into taking official action--particularly official action that the federal government cannot directly require those political opponents to take--is a blatantly unlawful and unethical use [of] the grand-jury process," the judge wrote.
The presumption of regularity creates a high bar for those suing the government or defending themselves against it in criminal cases. They often must provide evidence that the government willfully violated a policy or otherwise deviated from its charge--that is, did something irregular--to overcome the standard.
It's a shield the government wields often, with little notice, and one that is almost always successful. But overcoming that presumption has become increasingly common under Trump's second term, according to court watchers.
About half of the cases ProPublica identified as questioning the presumption come from districts, including D.C., Maryland and Virginia, where by proximity and jurisdiction many of Trump's actions are challenged and often heard by Democratic-nominated judges. The Southern District of New York, which has issued repeated rebukes of Trump administration actions, and the Northern District of California, another Democratic stronghold, are other hotbeds of judicial scrutiny.
Last September, D.C. District Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui accused the administration of working around the federal grand jury process, getting an indictment from a state court after prosecutors had failed to get one in his court, which he called "unseemly," if not "unlawful." He fired off one of the earliest signs that the presumption itself could come into question.
"This only deepens the growing mistrust of the actions of prosecutors," the judge wrote. "That is a sentiment that was once unthinkable, but the irregular is now the regular." While the case was largely managed by assistant U.S. attorney Caelainn Carney, according to court transcripts, Faruqui was aiming his frustration at her bosses, including senior prosecutor Jonathan R. Hornok, and the leadership at DOJ. Neither attorney responded to requests for comment.
Pels, the DOJ spokesperson, told ProPublica that Faruqui "was wrong on the law" and noted that after the government appealed to the district's chief judge, his order was overruled. "Judge Faruqui has a long-standing documented pattern of editorializing from the bench beyond the scope of the cases before him," Pels added.
But in recent months, skepticism about the presumption has also come from judges appointed by Republicans, such as McElroy, or in GOP strongholds.
In Indiana, Trump-appointed federal Judge James Patrick Hanlon ordered the release of Salah Sarsour, president of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee and a lawful U.S. resident, from ICE custody in March. Sarsour's lawyers argued the government had targeted him to suppress his First Amendment right to free speech. The DOJ invoked the presumption of regularity and argued his arrest was part of an anti-terrorism dragnet, which the judge threw out.
In the Southern District of Ohio, Judge Michael R. Barrett, appointed by George W. Bush, ordered ICE to release a detainee after concluding the presumption had been overcome because the government hadn't presented a reasonable argument that the man was a flight risk.
News outlets, including CNN, have documented federal judges' ire with Trump's DOJ, and some of the cases under question have been well-publicized, such as the government's illegal deportation of Maryland resident Kilmar Abrego Garcia to El Salvador. In that case, Judge Paula Xinis, a President Barack Obama appointee, criticized the government, saying, "You have taken the presumption of regularity, and you've destroyed it."
Many of the rulings challenged one of Trump's hallmark efforts: immigration enforcement and deportations.
"The presumption of regularity and integrity previously and routinely afforded to the Executive branch and the United States Attorney's Office has been undeniably eroded in this jurisdiction and across the country," O'Hearn wrote in February, noting that the federal government had repeatedly violated court orders in her district and others related to immigration operations.
In another immigration detention case, this one in Washington state, Biden-appointed Judge Lauren King sail, "[t]he `presumption of regularity' is dislodged here by the numerous factual errors in Respondents' filings and by their conflicting representations."
Jeremy Fogel, executive director of the Berkeley Judicial Institute and a former federal judge from California, said what's happening in the courts feels more like a "political conflict" than the normal ebb and flow of the justice system.
"It's really one branch that is really sort of questioning the legitimacy of the other one," Fogel said. "I think the judges are trying to stand up for the legitimacy of their branch"
Just Security, an online law and policy journal, has been tracking cases in which federal judges have admonished Trump's prosecutors, including those involving the presumption.
"We're witnessing a breakdown in the ways in which any administration ordinarily carries out its responsibilities, through the Justice Department in particular," said Ryan Goodman, Just Security's co-editor-in-chief.
The erosion of trust from the federal bench comes as Trump has profoundly shifted priorities at the DOJ to align with his political platform: ending civil rights and diversity programs, deporting immigrants and stripping away environmental protections.
Those who deal with DOJ lawyers have noticed the difference in court.
Mitch Bernard, chief counsel at the nonprofit Natural Resources Defense Council, has faced off on environmental issues with the DOJ many times. Although they may disagree, he said, he always expected his opponents to be "fair and above board."
That dynamic is gone, he said.
"I would call it a transformation of the role of the Justice Department," he said. "There are many different judges in different
jurisdictions not only ruling against the government but
calling the government out for dishonesty and dissembling,
and that's an extraordinary thing."
The result, Bernard said, is that "the government will
lose more cases as a result of the way the Justice Department
is behaving."
Meanwhile, groups such as his are benefitting from the
government brain drain. "We hired 10 litigating attorneys
last year," he said.
Text printed in the Record (11,864 characters)
Of those, eight came from the DOJ.
Judges aren't just losing faith in the DOJ. Some are
pushing to sanction Justice Department lawyers.
This month, Miami federal Judge Kathleen M. Williams ruled
that Trump's lawsuit against the IRS was an improper exercise
in self-enrichment, citing the president's lawyers for a
series of misstatements in the case.
The Obama appointee referred the lawyer who brought the
president's case against the IRS, Alejandro Brito, to the
Florida Bar for potential disciplinary proceedings. She also
forwarded her ruling to disciplinary officials in New York,
who had earlier received an ethics complaint about acting
Attorney General Todd Blanche.
A DOJ spokesperson called the Blanche case "nothing more
than a politically motivated bar complaint, filed by partisan
activists who disagree with this Administration's policies."
Brito did not respond to a request for comment.
In Rhode Island, McElroy referred DOJ lawyers to a review
board for possible discipline for their handling of the
hospital investigation.
"As citizens, we trust that federal prosecutors, when
wielding this awesome power against a state, a company, or
certainly against vulnerable children, will play fair and be
honest with its counterparts and the judiciary," McElroy
wrote. "DOJ has proven unworthy of this trust at every point
in this case."
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. And then this isn't just a problem in American legal communities. There is a global magazine called The Economist magazine, which, by the way, does not run liberal. It is a fairly conservative publication.
The cover story in the July 18 The Economist is a picture of the Department of Justice logo and the title "Degradation in progress."
I ask that The Economist magazine article--there are actually two. One is the opening article that they lead with before they get to the main article; and the second is the main article--the two articles about the degradation of the Department of Justice under Todd Blanche be added to the Record as well.
I ask unanimous consent that the articles entitled "Degradation in progress" and "The rule of one" be printed in the Record.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
The pursuit of enemies grabs all the attention, and for good reason. Markets were shocked to see President Donald Trump set the Department of Justice (DOJ) on Jerome Powell when he was still the chairman of the Federal Reserve. Champions of press freedom cried foul last week when the department issued subpoenas to New York Times journalists for explaining the truth about Qatar's gift of a jet to the president. But Mr. Trump's grievance agenda isn't the half of it.
In a sign of how much he treats the department as his own personal law firm, he wants his actual lawyer to become attorney-general. Senate hearings begin this week for Todd Blanche, who is currently the acting attorney-general. Those on Mr. Trump's enemies list are not the only ones who should be worried. The president is also inflicting less-noticed harms on the DOJ that are as bad as the attention-grabbing ones. The damage is likely to be profound.
The DOJ is the government's lawyer, but it also serves as the guardian of the law, especially since Watergate. In 2019 Bill Barr, then Mr. Trump's pick for attorney-general, said that Americans "have to know that there are places in the government where the rule of law--not politics--holds sway" and that the Department of Justice "must be such a place". Mr. Trump has no time for that. Less than halfway through his second term, he has turned the DOJ from an arm of the law into a muscular limb of the presidency (see United States section).
For a start, he has dramatically redefined the department's priorities, which is legitimate, often by setting goals that blur policy and politics, which is not. Health-care fraud is being chased with particular zeal in states run by Democrats, such as California and Minnesota, where it can be used to discredit Mr. Trump's opponents, including the states' governors, Gavin Newson and Tim Walz.
The DOJ is also an effective tool for pursing his political agenda. Election fraud is consuming ever more of its resources--not because it is a real problem, but because it is a presidential obsession. The DOJ has sued states for access to their voter rolls. In January the FBI seized hundreds of boxes filled with ballots and other documents in Georgia's most populous county, part of an investigation of the presidential election in 2020. More recently, some 260 FBI analysts were dispatched to pore over Georgia's files, with a deadline to review records by July 17th. At the very least, this will shake voters' faith that elections are trustworthy--indeed, that may be its sinister design.
Matters of genuine public interest are left to languish. About a quarter of the DOJ's lawyers have left. Divisions that investigated cryptocurrency fraud and public corruption have withered. Financial-fraud indictments by prosecutors at DOJ headquarters and in Manhattan are down by 30% from the ten-year average. About 300 special agents who specialise in national security have quit the FBI, taking decades of experience in counterterrorism and cyber-warfare with them.
The department has also become more chaotic. Too often, cases encounter problems in court, though it is hard to distinguish sloppiness by DOJ staff from deliberate ill-intent. Nearly 100 times in Mr. Trump's first 14 months, the DOJ supplied courts with inaccurate information. It is quite something for the State to lose the benefit of the doubt in its own courtrooms.
More than 61,000 petitions from detained immigrants have bogged down courts and frustrated judges and federal prosecutors, who have moved lawyers from criminal divisions to help. By September last year, about a fifth of FBI agents had been diverted to immigration enforcement.
Meanwhile, the president's powers are increasing. In Trump v Slaughter last month the Supreme Court ruled that the president could sack leaders of semi-independent agencies, such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). That gives the president the capacity to force agencies to work in league with the DOJ. Imagine a co-ordinated campaign of pressure, in which the DOJ opens an antitrust inquiry, the FTC explores consumer fraud and the SEC investigates corporate disclosures.
Unfortunately, the permanent appointment of Mr. Blanche is unlikely to mark an improvement. He has done as much as anyone to advance Mr. Trump's agenda of prosecuting his enemies and protecting his friends--a powerful combination for encouraging people to comply with Mr. Trump's wishes. Under Mr. Blanche, the DOJ has recently threatened state election officials with criminal prosecution if they knowingly let non-citizens remain on voting rolls.
Democrats and more than 1,200 former DOJ lawyers have demanded that the Senate reject Mr. Blanche's nomination. The Senate now has the choice of confirming him, and thereby seeming to endorse Mr. Trump's broader agenda, or blocking him in a rare rebuke to the president. Unfortunately, a rejection may not accomplish all that much. Mr. Trump can retain Mr. Blanche as acting attorney-general for months or nominate someone just as pliable.
The best Americans can hope for, in the next two years, is that courts stand firm. So far they have generally checked the DOJ's worst impulses. On July 7th a federal judge blocked the department's effort to subpoena the names of election of workers in Georgia. On July 13th another federal judge nullified a settlement organised by the DOJ in response to a civil case brought by Mr. Trump that would have protected the president and his family from tax audits.
Even if Americans elect a president who wants to restore the DOJ, the damage will be hard to reverse. Mr. Trump's acolytes would see the ejection of his partisan lawyers as a witch hunt that justifies the next purge when they take back power. Once the arrival of any new administration routinely entails a fresh round of sackings, professionals who care about the rule of law will think twice about signing up. After Watergate, statesmanship and a bipartisan effort were needed to create the modern DOJ. Today the stakes are as high, and the task is harder.
____
Anyone who has ever worked as a lawyer for Donald Trump makes a bet. There is the possibility that you, too, will run afoul of the law--eight of the president's lawyers have themselves been indicted. Alternatively, your work might pay dividens. Such was Todd Blanche's calculus three years ago when his white-shoe firm gave him a choice: represent Mr. Trump, then a candidate and a criminal defendant, or remain a partner. Mr. Blanche chose Mr. Trump. Now the president has selected him to be America's top cop.
On July 15th the Senate began hearings to consider Mr. Blanche's nomination to lead the Department of Justice (DOJ). Whether lawmakers confirm him as attorney-general will test their willingness to endorse Mr. Trump's legal agenda, but even a rebuke would be only symbolic. The president will still get his way at the DOJ; Mr. Blanche can stay in the job on an acting basis for months and be replaced by someone similar after.
With or without Mr. Blanche, the president will continue to lead a transformation of dramatic scale. With warrants and subpoenas, the DOJ is pursuing Mr. Trump's critics and his hobby-horses, from political adversaries to election fraud to leaks in the press. The number of lawyers has dwindled by 20%; former prosecutors point to an incompatibility between the president's agenda and the fair application of law. The DOJ
is retreating from certain types of criminal enforcement. And, increasingly, judges are telling government lawyers that they cannot be taken at their word.
The DOJ's duties, at least as historically defined, include enforcing the law and defending the government in court. Ever since Richard Nixon urged his attorney-general to intefere with an investigation, politicians of both parties have generally agreed that the DOJ should operate at some distance from the presidency. Mr. Trump has bucked that consensus, claiming that Democrats weaponized the law against him. Joe Biden's DOJ indicted him twice, elected Democratic district-attorneys indicted him twice more and Letitia James, New York's attorney-general, sued him in civil court.
Pam Bondi, Mr. Trump's first attorney-general, was fired in April for being insufficiently aggressive. Mr. Blanche told the Senate this week that he is not the president's "yes man". But shortly after assuming his current post, Mr. Blanche was touting a second indictment against James Comey, a former FBI director and antagonist of the president. Mr. Comey had posted a photo of seashells on a beach arranged like "86 47". To "86" someone means to get rid of them; Mr. Trump is the 47th president. The DOJ contends that Mr. Comey was threatening to kill Mr. Trump.
This prosecution is almost certain to fall, just like the president's cases against Mr. James; Jerome Powell, the former chair of the Federal Reserve; and six Democratic lawmakers. Last month a court tossed subpoenas targeting Tim Walz, Minnesota's govenor, and other Democratic officials in that state. The judge wrote that the subpoenas were "not issued to investigate, but to harass, coerce and retaliate" for the officials' refusal to aid the president's immigration crackdown.
Mr. Trump complements prosecutions of political foes with lenient treatment of his friends, through pardons and dropped charges. Last year political appointees at the DOJ ordered prosecutors to abandon a corruption case against Eric Adams, then New York's mayor. Unlike Mr. Walz, he had agreed to co-operate on immigration.
Text printed in the Record (11,898 characters)
A judge in New York wants to know whether a quid pro quo inspired the DOJ to drop fraud charges against Gautam Adani, an Indian billionaire who has promised to invest $10bn in America.
Mr. Trump had sought to reward allies most explicitly through a $1.8bn fund for supposed victim of government lawfare. Even Republican senators balked at that; in June Mr. Blanche said he had given up the idea. But it loomed over his confirmation hearing, with John Cornyn, a Republican senator, observing that his answers "don't lead inevitably to the conclusion that it's a dead".
The DOJ is vast; last year it charged 81,000 people. Politicized probes mark a radical departure from past norms, but they are not enough to upend that work. Yet broader change is underway, too, with the department itself depleted and redirected, at remarkable speed.
Mass attrition means that some of the most experienced lawyers have left, often for better pay in the private sector, A former prosecutor in the Virginia office hat first indicted Mr. Comey recounts how, after charges were issued, nearly everyone in his unit started looking for new work. "These people have job options." Now the DOJ is struggling to fill its ranks, lowering hiring standards to rake applicants straight from law school and offering some recruits $25,000 signing bonuses.
Units specialising in cryptocurrency fraud and corruption by public officials have been gutted. (As it happens, Mr. Trump made more than $1.4bn from cryptocurrency last year.) The group focused on counterintelligence and enforcing export controls has warned Congress of "unprecedented personnel constraints", with a 40% drop in prosecutors from a year and a half ago. Up to a third of the counterterrorism section has left, says a former prosecutor in that unit. The FBI, which sits within the DOJ, has lost about 300 special agents who worked on national security.
The DOJ's national-security division has expertise that most prosecutors lack, in handling classified information and charging complex statutes. They sift through dozens of FBI referrals and decide which to pursue. "What feels real versus which ones are idle chatter? When is the right time to disrupt a plot? Do we go now? Prosecutors learn that only by working these cases over many years," says one who left last year.
Fewer resources mean less enforcement in some domains. White-collar defence lawyers remark how work has slowed. Last year the number of financial-fraud indictments out of DOJ headquarters and the U.S. attorney's office in Manhattan fell by 30% from the ten-year average. Indictments are a lagging indicator of enforcement activity. Subpoenas of financial firms, which precede them, are "not happening, basically," says a white-collar lawyer in New York, who expects even fewer indictments to come. "Nobody's investigating those things." Cases targeting political graft have largely dried up. Mr. Trump is notably lax about that, having granted clemency to at least 20 politicians convicted of self-dealing over his two terms.
Instead the DOJ has made a big show around the president's bugbears: healthcare and benefits fraud; anything connected to cartels; transgender care; diversity, equity and inclusion; and election fraud. Recently the FBI dispatched 260 analysts to investigate debunked claims of vote-rigging in the 2020 election in Georgia, which Mr. Trump maintains he won. In January the FBI seized records related to that race in Georgia's Fulton County. Last week a judge quashed the DOJ's subpoena seeking names of poll workers there: an "overly broad fishing expedition is bad and is not allowed," he said.
The DOJ will be at the tip of the spear if Mr. Trump attempts to intervene in the midterm elections in November. Ominously, it has all but shut the unit that normally monitors election-related crimes. A prosecutor who left that section last year says he thinks the administration is "taking steps to be in a position to put its thumb on the scale in 2026 or 2028".
Election-year training for FBI agents and DOJ staff, once mandatory, has been cancelled. The department seems to have no intention to stand up the National Election Command Post, which normally monitors irregularities. Instead, election deniers populate the DOJ, including several who worked to overturn the 2020 result. Recently they threatened to prosecute election officials who let non-citizens vote.
No issue has consumed the attention of the Trump administration like immigration. By September the FBI had diverted a fifth of its roughly 14,000 agents to immigration enforcement. What is striking is not that the president has made immigration a priority--he said he would do as much--but the manner in which DOJ lawyers are pursing those cases.
In the autumn Mr. Blanche showed up in Chicago, the site of a surge of agents dubbed "Operation Midway Blitz", and decried "an organised effort by domestic terrorists to actually injure and hurt" those agents. Then his deputy told prosecutors to "go big and go loud" against protesters.
A prosecutor in Chicago who left earlier this year says that every unit there, including ones focused on cyber and national-security crime, was dragooned into protester cases, which became a "dreaded thing". He says the pressure from the front office to file charges was so great that prosecutors had to present a compelling argument not to do so. That is the inverse of how decisions are usually made.
Agents arrested nearly 4,000 immigrants during Midway Blitz. The crack-down in Chicago also became a stark example of how to drive away lawyers. In the U.S. attorney's office, which has seven criminal sections, each chief serving at the start of Midway Blitz has quit. Seven of their 15 deputies and at least a quarter of the 90 or so staff prosecutors have left, too.
Across the country, there have been hundreds of shaky cases brought against protesters. Many collapse before trial. A jury rebellion awaits those that do make it that far. Ten of 13 resulted in an acquittal as of March, according to Steven Salky, a defence lawyer who tracks unusual charging decisions. By contrast, across all federal trials last year, the acquittal rate was 12%.
Some cases have veered into the absurd. A jury took 35 minutes to acquit a man accused of pointing a laser at the president's helicopter. Once unusual practices are more common. In October prosecutors charged six Democratic activists and politicians in Chicago with conspiring to impede a federal agent, in a case known as the "Broadview Six". After a judge reviewed transcripts from the grand-jury sitting--held in secret, without judges or defence lawyers--she said she had never seen such misbehaviour by prosecutors. Among other no-nos, they had dismissed sceptical jurors (including one who called the case "a crock of shit") who might have been unlikely to return an indictment. In May prosecutors dropped the case.
A consequence of all this is that the DOJ is losing credibility in the courts. Increasingly judges are calling out lapses by government lawyers, saying they cannot take them at face value. The judge overseeing the Broadview Six case said she believed that "most government attorneys are doing the best they can to do the right thing". Then she added: "That trust has been broken." More judges are now requiring depositions and documents to verify that the government's claims are true, and threatening sanctions when its lawyers obfuscate or fail to comply. In the first 14 months of Mr. Trump's second term, according to Just Security, a site for legal commentary, the DOJ gave courts inaccurate information in nearly 100 instances.
The problem is acute in immigration cases. The administration's mass-detention policy led to a twentyfold spike in "habeas" petitions by detained immigrants suing for release between 2024 and 2025. Just Security found nearly 800 instances of non-compliance with court orders in habeas cases, and 13 sanctions and contempt-of-court findings against DOJ lawyers. The administration's response has been to label any judge who disagrees with it a "rogue activist". Mr. Blanche has called it a "war" on the judiciary.
Seen one way, that fighting talk reflects something positive: the guardrails in the judicial system holding up, to the administration's dismay. Already the department's alumni are asking what it will take to reconstitute it when Mr. Trump leaves office. A former prosecutor says he and his former colleagues want to return. Still, the appeal of the department diminishes somewhat with the prospect that the next person overseeing it may sack you, or harness the law for their personal ends. For decades the DOJ enjoyed
some protection from the politics that have fractured
America. That era seems over.
Mr. WHITEHOUSE. Last, there is a group called Just Security, which keeps track of what goes on in Federal courts. This is a binder of the cases that they have put together in which a Federal judge is harshly criticizing the integrity or the competence of the Department of Justice.
This binder, frankly, should not exist. This is two-sided, by the way. These many cases--it is just astounding. I am not going to ask that this all be put into the Record. But I will note that if you look at justsecurity.org, you can look at their report published on March 19, 2026. It gets regularly updated.
And if you want to go through it, you can see truly appalling criticisms by Federal judges of every appointment background against incompetence and dishonesty by the Blanche Department of Justice.
Where that really hits the road is with something called the presumption of regularity. You might not know what the presumption of regularity is, but it is a benefit that the government enjoys--that as a matter of policy, the Federal judiciary has determined that the Federal Government is generally so honest and competent that its proceedings will be given the presumption of regularity that the benefit of the doubt will go to the Department of Justice lawyers and to the government Agencies involved.
Unless the adversary can prove otherwise, courts will presume that the government has done the right thing. And over and over again, we have seen judges say that presumption of regularity is now shot because there is so much dishonesty and incompetence coming out of the Department of Justice. That is unprecedented.
There are hundreds of other reasons to vote against this most reprehensible Attorney General nominee in American history, but the very specific ones about his complicity in the Epstein files screwup and coverup, his being the first senior Department of Justice official in the history of the United States to face a fraud on the courts inquiry, where the judge already decided that the proceeding was a sham and that the parties were in collusion with each other and that the whole thing was done in bad faith, and that that is not an isolated incident--that is part of a pattern of incompetence and dishonesty out of the Department of Justice that has never before happened in the United States of America.
If my Republican colleagues want to get behind that--if they are cool with an Attorney General who has that record--that is on you.
There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in the Record, as follows:
Dear Senators: We write to you as survivors of Jeffrey
Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell's sex-trafficking operation to
urge you to vote no on Todd Blanche's confirmation as
attorney general. We understand that both of you remain open
to opposing his nomination, and we are asking you to stand
with survivors of human trafficking and sexual assault at
this critical moment.
Under Todd Blanche's leadership, the Justice Department
released survivors' names, identifying information and images
while the names of alleged abusers and enablers remained
hidden.
Text printed in the Record (1,918 characters)
More than a thousand women and girls were abused, yet
no one beyond Epstein and Maxwell has been prosecuted.
During Todd Blanche's meeting with survivors, survivors
asked direct questions about how these redaction failures
happened and whether he would purse the investigative leads
that remain. Survivors received an hour of deflection,
interruption and gaslighting. Todd Blanche showed no remorse
for the horrific release of materials that exposed survivors'
identities and images. He also gave no indication that he
believed there were investigative leads worth pursing, or
that he intended to seek accountability beyond Jeffrey
Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
Senator Tillis, when you urged Todd Blanche to meet with
survivors, we believed you expected a serious and meaningful
conversation. What occurred was a box-checking exercise
arranged only after his confirmation was put at risk.
Blanche's willingness to sit in a room with us should not
matter more than how he treated us once he was there.
Both of you have records of standing with survivors of
human trafficking and sexual assault. A vote to confirm Todd
Blanche would be a vote against those survivors. It would
reward someone who has refused to take responsibility for the
harm they've caused, failed to provide meaningful answers and
shown no credible commitment to pursing the full truth.
We urge you to vote no on Todd Blanche's confirmation.
Sincerely,
Annie Farmer, Jane Doe, Jena-Lisa Jones, Lara Blume McGee,
Michelle Licata, Ashley Rubright, Jane Doe, Jennifer, Lisa
Phillips, Rachel Benavidez, Audra Lynn, Jane Doe, Jess
Michaels, Liz Stein, Roza, Dani Bensky, Jane Doe, Joanna
Harrison, Marijke Chartouni, Sharlene Rochard, Jane Doe, Jane
Doe, Juliette Bryant, Marina Lacerda, Teresa J. Helm, Wendy
Pesante. Mr. WHITEHOUSE. I yield the floor. The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Banks). The Senator from North Carolina.
Mr. President, every parent in America, they want the same thing. They want to know that their kids are safe. As U.S. Senators, each of us has a responsibility to the millions of parents we represent for the safety and welfare of American kids first.
And that is exactly why--just 9 months ago on this very floor--76 Members of this body voted to close the hemp loophole that allowed these dangerous substances to be sold in unregulated retail stores.
But since last November, the intoxicating hemp industry has attempted to delay our effort to close this dangerous loophole.
May I show you some of the products that you can find in some of these stores?
It looks like a familiar brand, but if you look closely--well, sometimes they use the brand name. But how about something like Slizzles? Pretty deceptive.
You know, these companies want to continue selling these intoxicating THC substances loosely labeled as hemp products. They want to put them on the shelves of local convenience stores, gas stations, and grocery stores nationwide.
And the problem doesn't stop there. The packaging is unmistakably designed to appeal to kids. Using these bright colors, they intentionally mimic popular snack food and candy brands like this.
But what is most concerning is how easy it is for a child to walk into a convenience store and pick up what looks like their favorite snack or their favorite candy without realizing that they are actually buying an intoxicating substance.
See a familiar--what might be a familiar brand here, but it is Stoneo. How about that?
So it is difficult enough for an adult to distinguish the minor difference on these name-brand products and intoxicating substances on the shelves. I mean, just look at the examples. So are you telling me that this is not intentional?
You know, the four basic principles of marketing are product, price, place, and promotion. And what we are looking at right here, it is a crash course in all four: how to package a product; how to make it appealing; how to put it in front of consumers; and how to promote it, while attempting to evade Federal law.
You know, this is not some innocent coincidence. You don't accidentally create packaging for an intoxicating substance that bears a strange resemblance to a recognizable brand. You don't accidentally make an intoxicating product look something like a child would recognize from a grocery store shelf without reasonable intent.
Now this is marketing by design, and it is designed--it is designed--to evade the law. The resemblance here is absolutely outrageous, and it is putting our kids at risk each and every day.
And over the past few years, we have already seen the horrifying consequences play out in emergency rooms across the country.
From 2018 to 2023, emergency departments in the United States that responded to pediatric cannabis poisoning increased by 461 percent; 91 percent of those patients were 4 years or younger--91 percent. And 45 percent of those kids--ages zero to 11--45 percent of them required hospitalization.
These numbers, they are not just statistics. They represent children ending up in emergency rooms--45 percent of them. And why? Because the intoxicating hemp industry wants to make a cheap dollar.
Now, in my home State of North Carolina, cannabis consumption-coded emergency department visits among minors, they increased by 969 percent between 2017 and 2025. That is almost 1,000 percent increase, and that is nothing short of alarming.
THC can have very serious consequences for adults. It can trigger psychosis, addiction, manic episodes, bipolar relapse, depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation. And having assessed those risks, it makes it utterly irresponsible to turn around and put those same THC substances within reach of our kids.
It is also impacting our workforce. Able-bodied adults, they are unable to hold jobs that require them to take a drug test. Stores near military bases sell these products to men and women in the armed services, making them ineligible for military service. And that is also no accident.
I can't tell you how many times that I have sat down with a family in my office that has tragically lost a son or a daughter because they became addicted to these disguised substances, and it is just heartbreaking to witness. It is heartbreaking to have those conversations, and, yet, they keep coming to my office. We keep hearing their stories.
There are young people who no longer walk this Earth. They will never graduate. They will never go to college. They will never start a career. They will never get married. They will never have children. And they will never get the chance to experience the life that was ahead of them because these dangerous substances robbed them of their future.
And I am appalled at the well-oiled, slick lobbying machine--which is very well connected in this town, by the way--that has chosen to wage this surreptitious war against our efforts to protect American children.
So let me be clear to my colleagues. I am not going to back down on this. I am not going to waver. I am not going to stop until this life-threatening loophole is closed permanently.
And we are going to have this fight before the end of this Congress, and I can assure you that I am not going to stop fighting to protect American children.
And I have already had numerous conversations with the White House about this issue, and I am willing to have a larger conversation about marijuana. We may not agree, but I will have the conversation.
But I want to make one thing really, really clear: Making THC intoxicating substances readily accessible to our kids is an entirely different issue from the medical marijuana movement.
Today, we are talking about unregulated hemp products being sold on the shelves of nearly every corner store in America. These intoxicating substances--they are hiding in plain sight, and they are putting our kids at risk.
Parents should never have to face the fear that sending their child into a convenience store for a snack or a treat could mean that that child walks out with a product that can get them high.
And that is not too much to ask. It is just common sense. And it is our responsibility to make sure that the millions of parents that we represent--that they can trust the product sitting on store shelves, that they are safe for their kids.
I am not here to obstruct the Senate for the sake of obstruction. I am here because I have a duty to the millions of parents in North Carolina who have sent me to Washington to be their voice and, above all, to protect their children.
To every parent in North Carolina: I hear you. I stand with you. You have my word I am not going to back down, and I am not going to stop fighting until we get this right.
This is a public health crisis that deserves this Senate's immediate attention. Our children should never be the testing ground for an industry willing to exploit a loophole in Federal law for profit.
We need to strip this amendment from the continuing resolution and regulate these harmful substances for exactly what they are, not what the industry wants to call it.
So if substances cause intoxication--like marijuana--then it should be regulated as such, not given a free pass as hemp. There is no loophole worth putting a child's well-being at risk.
I yield the floor.
Vote on Schwartz Nomination (Executive Calendar)
Page S4464 · Official textThe PRESIDING OFFICER
The question is, Will the Senate advise and consent to the Schwartz nomination?
I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll. The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the Senator from Wisconsin (Mr. Johnson), and the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. McConnell).
I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), and the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Klobuchar) are necessarily absent.
The result was announced--yeas 51, nays 44, as follows:
Text printed in the Record (1,020 characters)
Armstrong Banks Barrasso Boozman Britt Budd Capito Cassidy Collins Cornyn Cotton Cramer Crapo Cruz Curtis Daines Ernst Fischer Graham Grassley Hagerty Hawley Hoeven Husted Hyde-Smith Justice Kaine Kennedy Lankford Lee Lummis Marshall McCormick Moody Moran Moreno Murkowski Paul Ricketts Risch Rounds Schmitt Scott (FL) Scott (SC) Sheehy Sullivan Thune Tillis Tuberville Wicker Young
Alsobrooks Baldwin Bennet Blumenthal Blunt Rochester Booker Cantwell Coons Cortez Masto Duckworth Durbin Fetterman Gillibrand Hassan Heinrich Hickenlooper Hirono Kelly Kim King Lujan Markey Merkley Murphy Murray Ossoff Padilla Peters Reed Rosen Sanders Schatz Schiff Schumer Shaheen Slotkin Smith Van Hollen Warner Warnock Warren Welch Whitehouse Wyden
Blackburn
Gallego
Johnson
Klobuchar
McConnell
The nomination was confirmed.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Moreno). Under the previous order, the motion to reconsider is consider made and laid upon the table, and the President will be immediately notified of the Senate's actions.
S. Res. 817 (Executive Calendar)
Page S4464 · Official textMr. President, I rise in opposition to the en bloc nominations process and in opposition to almost all of these nominees.
While the en bloc process unfortunately means that I have to cast a single vote for or against all 74 nominees today, I do want to reaffirm my strong support of both Democratic nominees that were reported with unanimous approval out of the Commerce Committee, Thomas Chapman and Karen Hedlund.
Thomas Chapman was renominated to the National Transportation Safety Board. He is an industry veteran who previously served on Commerce Committee staff and has a demonstrated commitment to fact-based investigations into aviation and other transportation disasters.
Karen Hedlund was renominated to serve on the Surface Transportation Board. She has served with distinction since 2022. The Surface Transportation Board is currently evaluating the largest proposed rail merger in our Nation's history. Given her prior experience at STB and years of service at USDOT, I am confident Ms. Hedlund will continue putting the public's interest first and foremost.
While I strongly support these Democratic nominees, I have more significant concerns about other nominations in the bloc.
Unfortunately, the en bloc process means that I have to cast a single vote today. Even though I support some of the nominations in the bloc, I must stand up today to speak against the other nominations and the lack of bipartisan representation at independent agencies.
I look forward to working with my colleagues to ensure qualified candidates from both parties are appointed in the future.
Cloture Motion (Executive Calendar)
Pages S4464–S4465 · Official textThe PRESIDING OFFICER
Pursuant to rule XXII, the Chair lays before the Senate the pending cloture motion, which the clerk will state.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
Text printed in the Record (612 characters)
We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate and the provisions of S. Res. 817 (119th Congress), do hereby move to bring to a close debate on Executive Calendar Nos.: 729, 730, 731, 732, 733, 734, 739, 740, 746, 747, 748, 749, 757, 759, 761, 762, 764, 766, 781, 782, 820, 821, 822, 823, 824, 826, 832, 834, 835, 836, 837, 840, 841, 842, 843, 844, 845, 846, 847, 848, 849, 850, 853, 854, 855, 856, 857, 858, 859, 860, 861, 862, 863, 864, 865, 866, 867, 868, 869, 870, 871, 872, 873, 874, 875, 899, 900, 903, 904, 905, 906, 907, 908, 909 en bloc.
=========================== NOTE =========================== On page S4465, August 5, 2026, first column, the following appears: We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate and the provisions of S. Res. 817 (119th Congress), do hereby move to bring to a close debate on Executive Calendar Nos.: 729, 730, 731, 732, 733, 734, 739, 740, 746, 747, 748, 749, 757, 759, 761, 762, 764, 766, 781, 782, 820, 821, 822, 823, 824, 826, 832, 834, 835, 836, 837, 840, 841, 842, 843, 844, 845, 846, 847, 848, 849, 850, 853, 854, 855, 856, 857, 858, 859, 860, 861, 862, 863, 864, 865, 866, 867, 868, 869, 870, 871, 872, 873, 874, 875, 899, 900, 903, 904, 905, 906, 907, 908, 989 en bloc. The online Record has been corrected to read:We, the undersigned Senators, in accordance with the provisions of rule XXII of the Standing Rules of the Senate and the provisions of S. Res. 817 (119th Congress), do hereby move to bring to a close debate on Executive Calendar Nos.: 729, 730, 731, 732, 733, 734, 739, 740, 746, 747, 748, 749, 757, 759, 761, 762, 764, 766, 781, 782, 820, 821, 822, 823, 824, 826, 832, 834, 835, 836, 837, 840, 841, 842, 843, 844, 845, 846, 847, 848, 849, 850, 853, 854, 855, 856, 857, 858, 859, 860, 861, 862, 863, 864, 865, 866, 867, 868, 869, 870, 871, 872, 873, 874, 875, 899, 900, 903, 904, 905, 906, 907, 908, 909 en bloc. ========================= END NOTE =========================
The PRESIDING OFFICER
Under the previous order, the mandatory quorum call under rule XXII has been waived.
The question is, Is it the sense of the Senate that debate on the en bloc nominations, provided for under the provisions of S. Res. 817, shall be brought to a close?
The yeas and nays are mandatory under the rule.
The clerk will call the roll. The legislative clerk called the roll.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn), the Senator from Mississippi (Mrs. Hyde-Smith), and the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. McConnell).
I announce that the Senator from Arizona (Mr. Gallego), the Senator from Minnesota (Ms. Klobuchar), and the Senator from Georgia (Mr. Warnock) are necessarily absent.
The yeas and nays resulted--yeas 50, nays 44, as follows:
Text printed in the Record (1,099 characters)
Armstrong Banks Barrasso Boozman Britt Budd Capito Cassidy Collins Cornyn Cotton Cramer Crapo Cruz Curtis Daines Ernst Fischer Graham Grassley Hagerty Hawley Hoeven Husted Johnson Justice Kennedy Lankford Lee Lummis Marshall McCormick Moody Moran Moreno Murkowski Paul Ricketts Risch Rounds Schmitt Scott (FL) Scott (SC) Sheehy Sullivan Thune Tillis Tuberville Wicker Young
Alsobrooks Baldwin Bennet Blumenthal Blunt Rochester Booker Cantwell Coons Cortez Masto Duckworth Durbin Fetterman Gillibrand Hassan Heinrich Hickenlooper Hirono Kaine Kelly Kim King Lujan Markey Merkley Murphy Murray Ossoff Padilla Peters Reed Rosen Sanders Schatz Schiff Schumer Shaheen Slotkin Smith Van Hollen Warner Warren Welch Whitehouse Wyden
Blackburn
Gallego
Hyde-Smith
Klobuchar
McConnell
Warnock
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Schmitt). On this vote, the yeas are 50, the nays are 44. The motion is agreed to.
The motion was agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Cloture having been invoked pursuant to the provisions of S. Res. 817, the nominations listed therein are pending en bloc.
The Senator from Kansas.
Unanimous Consent Request--S. 738 (Executive Calendar)
Page S4465 · Official textMr. President, I rise today to ask the Senate body to join me in the stopping of the funding of viral gain-of-function research.
Viral gain-of-function research is what led, of course, to the COVID virus being developed and, of course, the COVID epidemic. I think it is important to pause and stop and think why this is still important--what is it now--5 or 6 years later.
We all know we lost 1 million Americans to this COVID virus. Twenty million Americans still suffer from long COVID. Many, many Americans died alone--maybe at a nursing home, maybe in their own home. But they weren't allowed to have their own children, their spouses come visit them in those last moments of their life.
We had tens of millions of students miss their senior year of high school, their senior year of college. Maybe it was the State track meet. Maybe it was the State softball team they had been working on their whole life.
We have kids that still have learning disabilities or are lagging in their learning--specifically reading--not to mention their social interactions and their social development. This COVID virus left a huge physical, economic, and emotional scar on America.
And that is why I am asking that we stop this viral gain-of-function research. I am so proud that the President, recently, has agreed to stop the funding. I have been calling for the stopping of this since 2021 as well.
And I think it is important to realize how Anthony Fauci evaded the intentions of Congress and the rules from his own White House. Even President Obama asked him to stop doing viral gain-of-function research, but, of course, Anthony Fauci had more attorneys than Carter has pills, and they always found some loophole. Then, when they couldn't do it here, he offshored the funding of this.
Make no mistake about it, the United States was funding viral gain-of-function research for decades. This was Anthony Fauci's baby. He thought that this was his ticket to a Nobel Prize.
You know, whether you are a physician, like myself, or a mom or dad or a businessperson, a military officer, you always had to sit there and weigh the benefits and the risks of something like this.
I mean, what the benefits are, I am not sure of. You know, maybe they said it was so that if some unknown organism appeared, that we would be able to develop a vaccine. But, of course, the downside was always the fear of risk of a virus they made in a laboratory, of it escaping.
And, of course, why wouldn't there be? Multiple times in history, viruses, microorganisms have escaped from laboratories. It is practically impossible to control it. In 1978, a smallpox virus escaped from a lab in the United Kingdom. In 2007, foot-and-mouth virus accidently released from a United Kingdom lab. In 2014, the CDC had an anthrax issue. Again, in 2014, NIH-FDA, there were unsecured smallpox vials seen.
These mice they were doing experiments on and infecting them with these monster viruses, from time to time, escaped.
So it seems like we were set up for failure. And, again, despite scientist after scientist, President after President, warning Anthony Fauci to stop doing this research, he persisted and he persisted and he persisted, until finally COVID-19 was accidentally released from a lab in Wuhan, China. And the rest is history.
And that is why I think it is so important that we stop the funding for this once and for all. Let's codify what the President has done here and make sure--at least until someone can come to this Congress and say: Look, we have a foolproof system for keeping this in control.
But when you are making monster viruses, the worst-case scenario is probably some type of terrorism; that it would be so easy, once these are made, to be replicated and turned into a terrorist weapon--much more of a serious consequential threat to America than nuclear warheads are.
Think about this: This virus alone has exponentially been more lethal than all the years of nuclear weapons.
This bill does one simple thing: It stops Federal tax dollars from funding the kind of research that could turn a virus into a weapon--no more offshoring risks to avoid oversight, no more asking permission from the very Agencies that created the problem.
Mr. President, that is why today, as if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions be discharged from further consideration of S. 738 and the Senate proceed to its immediate consideration; further, that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
Is there an objection?
I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
The objection is heard.
The Senator from Iowa.
Unanimous Consent Request--H.R. 2069 (Executive Calendar)
Pages S4465–S4467 · Official textMr. President, during my 12 years in the Senate, I have exposed many outlandish examples of government waste.
For example, I uncovered that Washington sent nearly $500 million to China to pay for everything from poetry projects to dangerous research on bats.
Another $870 million of U.S. taxpayer money went to Russia. This includes more than $770,000 from the National Institutes of Health sent to a state-run lab in Russia to put cats on treadmills.
How did I uncover these crazy trails of money to our foreign adversary? It is quite simple. For 20 years now, the Federal Funding Accountability and Transparency Act has required unclassified government spending to be put online in a searchable public website, usspending.gov. This allows taxpayers to see for themselves how the money they are sending to Washington is spent.
Bureaucrats, however, have been hiding tens of billions of dollars distributed through secret spending arrangements known as other transaction agreements, or OTAs, by not publicly disclosing these expenditures on USAspending.gov. The Pentagon alone has obligated $77.7 billion for thousands of OTAs over just the past 5 years through over 30,000 hard-to-track contracts.
The lack of transparency with OTAs is having a real impact. According to the Government Accountability Office, the Pentagon "cannot assess the extent to which OTAs are delivering capabilities to the warfighter." The Office of the Inspector General also found the Pentagon doesn't even have an accurate count of OTAs or their dollar values.
OTAs are also being used by the Departments of Health and Human Services, Homeland Security, Transportation, Energy, as well as NASA.
We recently learned that NIH's new ARPA-H biomedical research contracts are being processed as OTAs through the Interior Department. This means if you want to know the details behind NIH's biomedical research contracts, you practically have to be a data wizard and know where to look deep in the Department of--where did I say?--Department of the Interior's databases. I know, it makes no sense. As we witnessed last week, we can't get answers from Dr. Fauci about what NIH has been funding because he is hiding behind the Fifth Amendment.
Taxpayers deserve to know how their dollars are being spent in Washington, and we have an obligation here to show them.
In June, the Senate unanimously passed my bipartisan Stop Secret Spending Act to require OTAs to be publicly disclosed on USAspending.gov just like all other government spending.
I very much appreciate Senators Peters and Hassan, whose support was critical for making this happen. I was also delighted last month when the House approved the bipartisan companion bill introduced by Representatives Moore and Panetta, which is now at the desk here in the Senate. We all know Congress can't agree on very much these days, so it makes a very powerful statement when folks on both sides of the aisle and from both Chambers come together by passing this transparency bill to hold Washington accountable for how Americans' tax dollars are being spent. With fraudsters stealing $1.4 billion every single day, we need this information now so we can account for who is taking tax dollars and why they are taking them.
Earlier today, I attended the meeting of the Vice President's Task Force to Eliminate Fraud at the White House, and the success of this effort depends on being able to track how dollars are being spent. Unfortunately, some Governors are impeding anti-fraud efforts by blocking access to spending information about how tax dollars from Washington are being spent in their own States.
We can't stop what we can't see, but we can do our part by passing the Stop Secret Spending Act today. This bill will end the secrecy about how tens of billions of dollars are being spent every single year. There are no excuses for delaying sending this bill to the President today to become law. In fact, the only reason to oppose the Stop Secret Spending Act is if you have something to hide.
As if in legislative session and notwithstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of H.R. 2069, which was received from the House. I further ask that the bill be considered read a third time and passed and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
Is there an objection?
The Senator from Texas.
Reserving the right to object, I understand that my colleague from Iowa is deeply interested in getting this legislation passed, and I appreciate the diligence and effort she has devoted to this legislation. This is a good bill. I support her bill. Indeed, I voted for her bill, as did every other Member of this body.
But the Senate also has a great many other bills that we are working on, that we have passed, and that have run into a roadblock in the House of Representatives. The House of Representatives currently is refusing to take up Senate-passed bills and, rather, is passing almost exclusively House bills. This is an unreasonable position for the House to take. Indeed, it is not a theoretical position; it is what the House has done on this very bill.
On this bill, Senator Ernst introduced it, the Senate passed it unanimously, it was sent to the House, and what did the House do? They did not pass the Senate-passed bill; instead, they passed essentially the identical bill but as a House measure. Now, mind you, that was not because they had any substantive objections to Senator Ernst's bill but, rather, it was because they were refusing to do their job as another Chamber in this Congress.
Among the bills that the Senate has passed that are sitting, languishing at the House right now is a bill that I have worked very hard to pass called Trey's Law.
Trey's Law is named for Trey Carlock, a beloved citizen of Dallas who tragically, as a young boy, was a victim of sexual assault at a summer camp. Litigation ensued, and Trey ended up signing an NDA where he was blocked by law from sharing the details of the horrific sexual abuse he endured. That silence weighed on Trey powerfully, and he ultimately took his own life at age 28.
Trey's Law is an initiative that has been championed by Trey's sister Elizabeth. Numerous States, including my home State of Texas and including, Mr. President, your home State of Missouri, have passed Trey's Law.
In the Senate, I introduced Trey's Law as bipartisan legislation, and the Senate passed it 100 to none, and it is sitting at the House languishing--not because anyone objects to it but simply because the House has decided not to process Senate bills.
So, as my friend Senator Ernst knows, I have placed a hold on House bills until the House starts taking up and passing Senate bills. I have been actively in negotiation with House leadership, and I am confident this issue will get resolved. The House is going to take up and do their job and pass Senate bills, and the Senate will likewise take up and pass House bills. And I am confident in particular that Senator Ernst will succeed in passing this bill into law this year--with my enthusiastic support.
But often in Congress, the only way to get a change of action is to exercise leverage. That is what I am doing now to get the House to take up and pass important bills, so therefore, at this time at least, I object.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
The objection is heard.
The Senator from Iowa.
I can appreciate the dilemma that many of us are in as we debate these very important bills, and they are very important bills. So what I have in front of me here at my desk is a list of 59 House bills that have been passed this Congress. They are H.R. bills. They are H.J. Res. 140; H.R. 7147--59 House bills that have already passed through the Senate in this Congress.
Now, I understand that we all have ways that we have to use leverage. I completely understand that. As a matter of fact, the bill that I had passed through this Chamber, you know, I would love to have it as an S. bill, a Senate bill, and I would love to see my name at the top of the bill rather than a House bill.
The companion bill was passed by the House. So, again, I would love to see my name at the top of the bill and it listed as a Senate bill.
I discussed it with my staff. I am in the last 6 months of my final term in the U.S. Senate. I would love to have more of my legacy items with my name on them, but I told my staff that it is more important that we get these bills done. I don't care if it is a House bill. I don't care if this has my name all over it. The important thing is that when we have good pieces of legislation put in front of us and that we worked hard in a bipartisan manner, in a bicameral manner, and it is good for the American people, that we move forward with those bills.
So I am disappointed today that my piece of legislation under the title of a House bill will not be moving, and I know that many of our constituencies will be greatly disappointed.
I do hope in the future that, between the Senate Republican leadership and the House Republican leadership, we can come together on these issues because it is not good for the American people when we have this infighting on good, solid pieces of legislation. We can do better.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
The Senator from Hawaii.
Economy (Executive Calendar)
Page S4467 · Official textMr. President, the price of everything is up, and that is on purpose. It is on purpose because Donald Trump made it so.
We are not in the middle of a pandemic or a recession or a national emergency, but the President of the United States has decided that Americans should pay more for everything--food, gas, electricity, healthcare, housing, clothes, everything. So while he is busy lining his pockets with crypto schemes and insider-information subscription programs, regular people can't afford their lives.
Now, I say he is doing this on purpose because these are deliberate policy choices he has made. First, it was the tariffs that jacked up the prices of goods across the board. Tomatoes--tomatoes--went up 40 percent. Coffee went up by 20 percent. Clothes and car seats went up by 20 percent. Electronics shot up by hundreds of dollars. So it wasn't as if you could avoid the hit by not shopping at a particular store for a particular thing.
People in Hawaii are very expert at figuring out "OK, turkey is high; let's get chicken. Pork is high; let's get beef." The difference now is that there is no escape. Literally everything is up. That is because the President of the United States has decided, through this Iran war, through the tariffs, through the energy bans, through the Medicaid and Medicare cuts, through the ACA cuts, through the nutrition cuts, to make literally every aspect of your life more expensive.
Then came the One Big Beautiful Bill where, in order to cut taxes for billionaires, Trump and the Republicans slashed subsidies for affordable healthcare and food assistance.
I want you to understand. This sounds like the kind of thing a partisan would say, and it is, but it is also true that the way they paid for tax cuts for the wealthiest people and the wealthiest corporations on this planet--the way they literally paid for it--was to take away people's healthcare. Without the enhanced premium tax credits, ACA premiums went up by close to 60 percent. As a result, millions of Americans are living without healthcare this year. Millions of Americans are living without healthcare this year not by choice but by force.
I want to read some of what those people had to say about it.
A man in Texas said:
Text printed in the Record (255 characters)
The prices are simply too high. I don't think we could afford our mortgage if I had to pay for health insurance. If I have a catastrophic health event, it makes more sense for me to just declare bankruptcy than it would to be delinquent on other payments.
Here is another one--a 38-year-old from Alabama:
Text printed in the Record (135 characters)
[I] can't afford insurance, [I] can't afford health care without insurance, so basically just hoping and praying I don't get sick . . .
People are having to gamble on their health so that the richest people to ever live can pay even less in taxes. And the price hikes aren't over yet because premiums are set to rise by double digits again next year according to proposals from insurers.
Aside from healthcare, the Republican tax bill also compounded Trump's ban on wind and solar energy. They are banning wind and solar energy, which is not only clean and helps us to address the climate crisis, it is just the quickest and cheapest energy that we could possibly get on the grid. It is not like we are in 1970 and we are arguing with the climate crisis versus the price that people pay on their utility bills.
The way to address the climate crisis is to do a lot more wind and solar, and the benefit is that it is the cheapest form of energy. Yet, this President has banned wind and solar energy through their administrative actions, and that is spiking the price of utilities across the country.
This is all before you factor in the war in Iran. In addition to being a spectacular failure that has achieved very little of Trump's own stated goals, it has also caused gas and energy and food prices to spike everywhere. Gas is over 4 bucks, right now, nationally, and it is even higher in Hawaii at $5.45. Diesel is $1.60 more than it was a year ago, which means that we are all paying more at stores for deliveries and transportation. In Hawaii, electricity bills went up 20 percent in 1 month--20 percent in 1 month--because of skyrocketing oil prices. Food prices continue to climb everywhere as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz extends a global fertilizer shortage.
It is common for Presidents to have to deal with the problems related to the economy. Specifically, what can be a real political killer is the question of inflation, but this is very unusual, and it may be unprecedented in American history. You have a President of the United States whose stated policy on tariffs, on energy, on Iran, on healthcare, and on food is to raise the price of everything. That is not a sort of accidental outcome of his economic policy; it is his economic policy to raise the price of everything.
People are going broke, and they are doing it to you on purpose.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
The Senator from Washington.
Nomination of Todd Blanche (Executive Calendar)
Pages S4467–S4468 · Official textMr. President, I was never going to come out here and support Todd Blanche for a long list of reasons.
I do believe he is one of the most corrupt Justice Department officials in our country's history, for one. He was Trump's former personal lawyer, and it seems that he never quit. The only difference now is that taxpayers are signing his checks instead of Trump. He was the one who negotiated a $1.8 billion slush fund to pay off violent insurrectionists and who cut a backroom deal to give the President and his entire corrupt family immunity from IRS investigations, not to forget that Todd Blanche is the guy who botched the Epstein file so badly that survivors had their names and faces exposed while the names of alleged abusers were hidden.
This is a man who wouldn't meet with survivors until Senators put him under a tremendous amount of public pressure. When the meeting eventually got on the books, the survivors made it crystal clear Blanche didn't listen to them. He was more interested in checking a box than in hearing their stories or bringing them justice.
All of that is, of course, absolutely unacceptable and disqualifying, but I come here today to sound the alarm on some of the most disturbing comments I have ever heard from the Nation's top law enforcement official. I guess Todd Blanche thought no one was listening because, on a private call with anti-abortion activists, Mr. Blanche told us all exactly what he plans to do if Senators confirm him. His goal was to make the Dobbs decision "permanent in every single state"--"every single state"--not just in Texas or Idaho. He wants to ban abortion in Washington State, in California, in New York--in every State.
He told them:
Text printed in the Record (73 characters)
We will have victory, and victory will be soon, and it will be permanent.
Victory over what exactly? Victory over women who just want to make their own healthcare decisions? Victory over patients in States where abortion is legal--where voters have said over and over at the ballot box: Keep your hands off our rights?
A DOJ spokesperson tried to clean up Blanche's words, saying he was only focused on restricting access to medication abortion in all 50 States, as if that is somehow better.
I am here to say: I will believe the tape. I believe Todd Blanche's own words.
So let's be crystal clear about what this vote is. A vote to confirm Todd Blanche is a vote to endorse his fight to ban abortion in all 50 States. Whatever happened to this being a State's decision?
Every Republican who votes yes is voting for exactly that--his words, not mine--and any Republican who votes to confirm him will own that in every State, in every way. This isn't just a confirmation vote anymore; it is a rollcall vote in which Senators endorse banning abortion in all 50 States at the Federal level. I am voting no.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
The Senator from Rhode Island.
Congressional Review Act (Executive Calendar)
Page S4468 · Official textMr. President, I am here to take us into the upcoming vote, the Congressional Review Act vote, with respect to an EPA rule related to PFAS.
For those of you who aren't following this, PFAS is a dangerous and toxic substance that, I think, Republicans and Democrats alike see as a dangerous and inadequately regulated substance. Unfortunately, it is particularly prevalent in military installations, and particular exposure has been faced by veterans and also by folks who are in our emergency response community--firefighters. Airports get a lot of it because of the firefighting drills that they have to have. It is a very significant problem.
There was a rule that required the reporting about PFAS use. Manufacturers and importers just have to say: Here is what we are doing. But it is important to get that information out so that people can understand where the exposure is to these toxic PFAS chemicals. Well, just before--like 4 days before--that reporting window was supposed to open and require the reporting of PFAS exposure, Trump's EPA announced a new interim rule with a delay of the reporting requirement until next year. They delayed it once. That delay ran out. This is the second delay.
First of all, I don't think there is any need for a delay. Second of all, there is every reason to believe that the chemical industry is behind weakening PFAS protections during the delay period. That would be consistent with the Trump EPA's favoritism toward any pollutant and any polluter all the time.
So here we are with a deadline for reporting. This isn't regulation; this is reporting public information that is being scrapped and extended. I would hope because of the fact that the PFAS contamination danger falls across red and blue States alike that we could send a bipartisan message today, through this Congressional Review Act, back to the EPA, saying: No, you don't get a second delay. Start the reporting right now. If you want to come back and weaken the standard, we will fight you on that, but that is a separate fight. At least let's get the reporting on PFAS contamination out there.
So I urge my colleagues to support this Congressional Review Act.
I understand that the distinguished chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee would like to respond. So I ask unanimous consent that Senator Capito be recognized and that, at the conclusion of her remarks, I be recognized to go through the parliamentary steps necessary for the vote.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
Without objection, it is so ordered.
The Senator from West Virginia.
Mr. President, I thank the distinguished Senator from Rhode Island for recognizing me but also for giving me a chance to talk about my opposition to S.J. Res. 187.
As he explained, this resolution would rescind Trump's EPA's extension of its start date for PFAS reporting under section 8 of TSCA. Yet, the CRA only does one thing about the rule, and that is as to the date that the reporting window opens. It would force the window to open months before the EPA's reporting system is even ready to receive submissions.
The EPA moved this date for a straightforward reason, which is that the infrastructure that is needed to support this reporting program is still being built. Companies will file this data through the EPA's electronic system, the Central Data Exchange. Across two administrations--that is the previous administration and this one--the EPA has moved this reporting window three separate times for this very reason, which is that the electronic platform that companies must use is just not complete. Both the Biden and the Trump EPAs have explained in detail the technical challenges associated with this reporting program: this rule's requiring of a collection of more than a decade of historic PFAS information from thousands of entities across a broad range of uses.
This CRA cannot make the EPA build the system faster, and it won't address contamination or pollution in the interim. The only real effect it will have is to force an unworkable deadline rather than to stand up a PFAS reporting system that works for the long term, and that is what we all want.
Consider what passing this would really mean. It would set a Federal reporting deadline that would be physically impossible to meet, putting both regulated entities and the EPA in a very difficult position. There is no finished system to file through, and there is no time left to assemble all of those years of data. It would do this while exposing small businesses and manufacturers to potential enforcement for failing to comply with the reporting requirement that the EPA itself has concluded cannot be met.
I have seen the impact of PFAS contamination firsthand in my home State of West Virginia. I think Senator Whitehouse and I agree that this is an issue--an important issue--that we need to address. I have led efforts to try to clean up legacy contamination in order to protect communities that did not cause this pollution, like our water utilities and our farmers, and to ensure that polluters bear the responsibility for the PFAS cleanup.
I have helped secure funding to address PFAS contamination in the communities that need it the most, and I have chaired hearing after hearing on PFAS cleanup, disposal, and liability. So I think my record is very clear on this.
So addressing PFAS should not be a partisan issue. Both parties, both Chambers, both of us, and two consecutive administrations have recognized: PFAS is a serious public health challenge that requires practical solutions.
But this does not make PFAS reporting more effective; it does not make the reporting system come online any faster; and it does not provide communities with better data.
So I would urge a no vote from my colleagues.
And with that, I yield back to Senator Whitehouse.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
The Senator from Rhode Island.
Well, I am sorry that we can't agree on this particular provision because we are working together on so many things so well. But I will have to confess I have real doubts about whether EPA is really trying to put this together, as deadline after deadline slips and slips and slips.
So perhaps we will see what happens. But if, for some reason, this CRA should fail, perhaps we can come back again after EPA slips the deadline again and perhaps has baked in some goodies for the PFAS industry along the way. And if we can't do it today, then soon send a bipartisan message to the EPA to knock it off and get about their business with PFAS.
Legislative Session
Page S4468 · Official textMr. President, with that, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate resume legislative session.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title 5, United States Code, of the Rule Submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency Relating to "Modification to the Start of The...
Pages S4468–S4469 · Official textPROVIDING FOR CONGRESSIONAL DISAPPROVAL UNDER CHAPTER 8 OF TITLE 5, UNITED STATES CODE, OF THE RULE SUBMITTED BY THE ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY RELATING TO "MODIFICATION TO THE START OF THE SUBMISSION PERIOD FOR PERFLUOROALKYL AND POLYFLUOROALKYL SUBSTANCES (PFAS) REPORTING AND RECORDKEEPING UNDER TSCA 8(A)(7)"--Motion to Proceed
Mr. President, I move to proceed to Calendar No. 532, S.J. Res. 187.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
The clerk will report the resolution by title.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
Text printed in the Record (372 characters)
Motion to proceed to Calendar No. 532, S.J. Res. 187, providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency relating to "Modification to the Start of the Submission Period for Perfluoroalkyl and Polyfluoroalkyl Substances (PFAS) Reporting and Recordkeeping Under TSCA 8(a)(7)".
The PRESIDING OFFICER
The question is on agreeing to the motion to proceed.
I ask for the yeas and nays.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
Is there a sufficient second?
There appears to be a sufficient second.
The clerk will call the roll. The senior assistant legislative clerk called the roll.
The following Senators are necessarily absent: the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) and the Senator from Kentucky (Mr. McConnell).
The result was announced--yeas 48, nays 50, as follows:
Text printed in the Record (783 characters)
Alsobrooks Baldwin Bennet Blumenthal Blunt Rochester Booker Cantwell Collins Coons Cortez Masto Duckworth Durbin Fetterman Gallego Gillibrand Hassan Heinrich Hickenlooper Hirono Kaine Kelly Kim King Klobuchar Lujan Markey Merkley Murphy Murray Ossoff Padilla Peters Reed Rosen Sanders Schatz Schiff Schumer Shaheen Slotkin Smith Van Hollen Warner Warnock Warren Welch Whitehouse Wyden
Armstrong Banks Barrasso Boozman Britt Budd Capito Cassidy Cornyn Cotton Cramer Crapo Cruz Curtis Daines Ernst Fischer Graham Grassley Hagerty Hawley Hoeven Husted Hyde-Smith Johnson Justice Kennedy Lankford Lee Lummis Marshall McCormick Moody Moran Moreno Murkowski Paul Ricketts Risch Rounds Schmitt Scott (FL) Scott (SC) Sheehy Sullivan Thune Tillis Tuberville Wicker Young
Blackburn McConnell
The motion was rejected.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Moreno)
On this vote, the yeas are 48, the nays are 50. The motion is not agreed to.
The motion was rejected.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
The majority whip.
Executive Session
Page S4469 · Official textMr. President, I move to proceed to executive session.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
The question is on agreeing to the motion.
The motion was agreed to.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
The Senator from Colorado.
Nomination of Todd Blanche (Executive Session)
Page S4469 · Official textMr. President, the Senate is currently considering the nomination of Todd Blanche to serve as Attorney General of the United States. The Attorney General is one of the most important positions in the U.S. Government.
Not only does the Attorney General serve as a trusted member of the President's Cabinet, but he also leads the Department of Justice, the Agency responsible for enforcing the laws of the land and, hopefully--traditionally--enforcing them in a nonpartisan way.
That is a difficult job in any administration, but under this President, who values personal loyalty above pretty much all else, it may well be impossible.
During his confirmation hearing, Mr. Blanche was asked about his relationship with the President. He responded, "I'm his lawyer," before quickly correcting himself to say that he previously "was" his lawyer. Now, this wasn't a slip; this was a tell.
Mr. Blanche will not be an impartial check on the President.
And here is another tell: For months, Mr. Blanche has insisted the Department of Justice slush fund is dead. Yet, as recently as this weekend, President Trump was saying the exact opposite. He defended the fund.
So when Mr. Blanche says the slush fund is dead, the slush fund isn't moving forward, don't believe him, not for 1 second. His word is worth about as much as the Trump meme coin.
During reconciliation, we introduced an amendment to permanently--permanently--end the DOJ slush fund. Despite bipartisan support, it ultimately was voted down. That means taxpayers could still be on the hook for paying bounties, rewards to people who attacked our democracy, attacked this Capitol.
At a time when working families are struggling with rising costs, the last people the Federal Government should seek to reward, to subsidize are those who assault our elections, people like convicted election criminal Tina Peters, who tried to undermine Colorado's free and fair elections; people like the January 6 rioters--my first full day of work in this position--the rioters who stormed this very Chamber in an attempt to tear apart our democracy.
The DOJ slush fund isn't dead; it is dormant. Until Congress permanently closes this avenue through legislation, we shouldn't rely on assurances alone. If there is even a chance that this fund could be revived, this confirmation, this moment, is when this Chamber and its Members have the greatest leverage to act. We should not surrender that leverage for promises that can be undone at the President's whim.
A DOJ letter promising to end the slush fund isn't law, it isn't binding, and it is certainly not enough.
Now, to be clear, we don't believe Mr. Blanche will break all of his promises. When he says behind closed doors that he wants the Dobbs v. Jackson decision to become, in his words, "permanent in every state," we should believe him.
When someone reveals themselves to you, it is generally a good idea to believe them.
Whether it is abortion access or access to the ballot box, we should have little confidence that this new Attorney General will not target Colorado or other blue States because that is exactly what his boss wants.
We cannot allow a fox to guard the henhouse. We need an Attorney General who is loyal to the Constitution, not to President Trump. Mr. Blanche does not seem to be that person. Mr. Blanche is not that person.
I strongly, strongly oppose his confirmation and urge all of my colleagues to do the same.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
The Senator from Nebraska.
Hemp (Executive Session)
Pages S4469–S4470 · Official textMr. President, we have a drug problem in this country today, and right now, there is an industry that is targeting our children with look-alike products with intoxicating levels of THC. THC is tetrahydrocannabinol. Now, this is the psychoactive ingredient that you find in marijuana.
How could we possibly let this happen? Well, let's take a step back. In 2018, we passed a farm bill, and at the time, there were those who wanted to separate hemp--a plant that has some THC in it--from cannabis, which is a marijuana plant. Hemp used to be grown in this country, made into rope back in the 1940s.
This is what we were told was going to happen. The bill was written, but in that farm bill, it said you had to keep the THC for delta-9, a certain type of THC, down to 0.3 percent by dry weight. Well, what happened was some clever chemist figured out that you could take this product, which makes CBD oil, right, which is commonly available, and take CBD oil, chemically alter it, and create delta-8 and delta-10, which also have those intoxicating effects.
The problem is, this is all unregulated, and so an industry exploded--an industry that in part targeted our kids with look-alike products that had THC at intoxicating levels, targeted kids with them.
For example, we have an example here of Sour Patch Kids look-alikes. You may say: Why are they doing that? Well, they are trying to grow their market share. Sadly, the outcome was that this past July, a 3-year-old and 4-year-old in Nebraska took these out of their mom's purse and got THC poisoning. Even worse news is that this is not an uncommon occurrence.
We have seen the potency of THC over the last few years, from 1995 to 2021, increase and increase four times. We have seen, since 2016 to 2023, the number of THC poisonings of children under 5 go up 10 times and the number of hospitalizations of children under 5 go up 3 times.
In 2024, that was 620 children under the age of 5 poisoned. Of those children being poisoned, 100 have been hospitalized and ended up on ventilators. This is a serious health risk problem.
And I mention the Sour Patch Kids here, but let's look at some of the other examples of how this industry is targeting and trying to confuse consumers.
Here we have Nerds, a candy many children are familiar with, and a Nerds knockoff that has THC in it. Here we have Fritos--the regular Fritos product that is a safe product--and Fritos with THC in it. Here we have a safe product, again, that looks like gummy worms, and here we have a product with THC in it.
This is an industry that, because we made a mistake in the farm bill in 2018, has taken advantage of a loophole of the law to manufacture delta-8 and delta-10 THC to be able to infuse it into these products.
Now, again, you cannot grow the hemp plant in concentrations to make this. You have to manufacture this. This was done on purpose. It was manufactured. And, by the way, this kind of knockoff doesn't happen by accident either. This was on purpose too. And this is what is poisoning our children. We have to shut this loophole down.
And so last year we did. We actually changed the definition to cover all THC that would be in these types of products; that all THC products would have to stay below that 0.3 percent case. So it is not going to impact CBD oil because that is below 0.3 percent. It wouldn't impact any of those products that are used for clothing or for jewelry because they are all below 0.3 percent.
In fact, the only place it is going to impact is for the intoxicating products that are out there in the marketplace, that are only out there because of this loophole that we created back in 2018.
So, last year in our Ag appropriations bill, we closed this loophole. Now, one of the Senators in our body offered an amendment to strip out that loop--closing the loophole. And we had Republicans and Democrats vote together to stop that amendment--75 Senators, 51 Republicans all came together to say: No, we want to close this loophole.
Well, now in our continuing resolution, somebody has decided to open that loophole back up again. We gave the industry until November 12 to adjust. We said: The loophole has been out there. We are going to give you a year to get your products in line with the new law. It has got to be below 0.3 percent, and you have got until November 12.
But in our current continuing resolution, somebody wants to keep that extended until December 11.
I have cosponsored an amendment with Ted Budd to take that amendment out of the continuing resolution. I am cosponsoring that because we don't need to extend this. This has been out there for a year. People know what is coming. One month more is not going to make a big difference in doing this.
For those of you who say this is going to impact agriculture, I will tell you right now, hemp production in the United States probably presents about 0.0056 percent of all the farmland--49,000 acres--and only 17,000 are using it to grow the kind of hemp that would go into these kinds of products.
There are pilot programs right now on how to use CBD oil in the treatments of things like cancer. They are all out there. They are not going to be impacted. We should let this expire November 12.
My colleague Ted Budd and I--the Senator from North Carolina--we want an amendment vote to be able to take this out of this continuing resolution and call upon my colleagues to help pass it.
This is literally--these high-THC products disguised as candies--could get into the hands of young children and poison them. It has done so already.
Let's stop this right now because we know when THC gets into young people's minds, it can reduce their IQs, lead to mental health issues, such as suicidal ideation, anxiety, depression. This drug is bad for young people. So let's close this loophole and keep it closed.
I yield the floor.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Justice)
The Senator from Louisiana.
Social Security (Executive Session)
Pages S4470–S4471 · Official textMr. President, I have been coming to this floor talking about Social Security. No offense, but you look like, with that gray hair of yours, you might be on Social Security. I am thinking that might be the case.
But a lot of people who are watching right now are on Social Security. Why? Like 75 million Americans are, and this should be important to Congress because in 6 years, Social Security goes insolvent.
And when that happens, those folks watching right now who are on Social or anybody who is watching who is going to be on Social--which I hope includes everybody in this room, including the young people who are our pages--they will get a 22- to 28.5-percent cut in their benefits.
Let me say that again. In 6 years, when the Social Security trust fund goes insolvent, by law, there will be a 22- to 28.5-percent cut in the benefits that people on Social Security receive--from now until eternity.
And folks say: No, no, no, we will just raise taxes. We will just pay for it. We won't cut benefits. We will just raise taxes.
If we do that, according to the actuaries, we have to raise payroll taxes 40 percent. So think about that family who is struggling to make ends meet. They notice that they are paying a payroll tax, and now that goes up 40 percent.
Over the course of the year, that can be thousands of dollars that they don't have in their pocket to pay for their groceries, their gasoline, the time to be together on a special night, hopefully, putting some away for savings. That won't be there because, instead of cutting benefits, we are going to raise taxes.
And then a third group says: No, no, we are just going to borrow the money.
The Congressional Budget Office has looked at it. If we just try and borrow our way out of here, they say the amount of debt accumulated is so large, their models cannot calculate the destabilizing effect upon the U.S. economy.
What does that mean? Interest rates sky-high, can't afford a car, can't afford to buy a house. You can't afford to buy a house, so no one is employed building houses. No one is employed building houses, so no one is making shingles. No one is cutting wood, so no one is shipping lumber from here to there. That has ramifications for each of us. We need a better solution.
But the problem is that we have lacked a sense of urgency of fixing Social Security now. I say we need to have that urgency. It is almost like we are telling our seniors: We built a bridge for Social Security, but, by the way, it is about to lose a step. And on that last step, "woo, boom." And Congress sits there and says: We will get to it someday.
It is time for Congress to do its job. It is time for Congress to get serious about something affecting not just the folks in this, who look as if they are elderly, but folks of all ages who will be affected because one day we will all, hopefully, be able to access Social Security.
Now, the good news is, today we had a Senate Finance Committee hearing on the PROMISE Act. Dick Durbin--a Democratic Senator, the whip for the Democrats and their leadership, been here for a long time--he has got a bill. Bill Cassidy is the cosponsor, a conservative Republican. We have got a bill called the PROMISE Act that doesn't say how Social Security is going to be fixed; it sets up a process by which we would consider how to fix Social Security--a process that, ideally, would give a product for the Senate and the House to consider sometime later in the year. Instead of saying we will get to it someday, we get to it this Congress.
By the way, this process is transparent, with input from anybody who wishes to have an input. And we are not saying what the solution is going to be. We are saying: Come up with a solution. But, by the way, if the Senate doesn't like it or if the Senate Finance Committee doesn't like it, they can replace it or, if an individual Member--Bernie Sanders has a bill. If Bernie doesn't like the product, he can offer his bill as a substitute. Same with Sheldon Whitehouse, Ron Wyden, Elizabeth Warren, any of us could put up a bill as a substitute.
And so we are not prescribing a solution. We are just trying to generate a process by which the Senate will consider how to rescue Social Security.
Now, what was good about the hearing, AARP was there. And AARP, represented by Nancy LeaMond, came out against the PROMISE Act.
I am thinking to myself, Wait a second. All we are doing is setting up a process. We are not saying it has to look like this, the solution. We are setting up a process whereby Congress does its job, and we are forced to come up with something that would rescue Social Security for AARP's members as well as all other Americans.
And so this is kind of the questions I had with Ms. LeaMond. And at the end of it, she said that they could support what I am about to propose.
I said: Ms. LeaMond, do your 38 million members, do they want a benefit cut that would--I am paraphrasing, condensing--would your 38 million members want a Social Security System which is fully funded and is not threatened with a 22- to 28-percent benefit cut?
She answers: No, they don't want a benefit cut.
Would they like a Social Security System fully funded?
Yes, they would.
Is AARP developing a plan to do so?
We are not developing our own plan at this time.
So they want it fully funded. They don't like the PROMISE Act, setting up a process that would lead to a solution, but they are not coming up with their own plan. They are just objecting to people who are coming up with a process to develop a plan.
So I go on to say, to condense it: It seems like what you object to is that, in the PROMISE Act, it is not Senators and Representatives doing the initial analysis, it is a Social Security Commission.
And she says: Basically, yes, that is true.
So I said: If we take out the Social Security Commission and we put together a bipartisan group of Senators and Representatives to start considering all the plans--Senator Whitehouse's plan, Senator Sanders' plan, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Moreno's plan, the Cassidy-Durbin plan--would you support that?
And she said: We would want to talk to you about that.
And I pressed her on that. Wait. You want to talk to us about it? I need a yes or a no.
It is like asking somebody to be married. When you ask somebody: Will you marry me, you don't say: Well, let's talk about it. You say, Hey, dear, either you are going to marry me or you are not. If not, I am out of here. But if you want to, let's get married.
So kind of putting it that way--I didn't ask her to marry me--but I did say: Wait a second. We are going to have a 22- to 28-percent cut in benefits if we do nothing. Your people don't want a cut in benefits. We are talking about a regular-order process, which you say you want, with Representatives and Senators coming together where you would have input, your members would have input, this is--and then bring it back to the Senate Finance Committee for a week of hearings and then bring it to the Senate floor for a vote. Could you support that?
If it is a regular order, which is what it sounds like, yes--meaning they could support it.
Now, I love that. AARP likes what I am about to say.
I have heard that they and others are concerned about the PROMISE Act and how the PROMISE Act would, first, ask a group from the Social Security Advisory Board to come up with a plan.
So to replace the PROMISE Act, I am going to introduce a Senate resolution. The Senate resolution does exactly what I just said. It would immediately--or within a week or two--impanel a group of Senators, invite the House of Representatives to join.
It is a Senate resolution, but we would invite them to join. And we would spend the next 2 months considering all the things that have been proposed to fix Social Security. And we would have open hearings. We would get as much public comment as possible. We would come up with two different proposals and, by the end of September, ask the Social Security actuaries to score these proposals. Does it actually fix Social Security? That would be our goal. And we would start as soon as possible.
We can't wait to get to it someday, Mr. President. We have got to get to it now. There needs to be a sense of urgency. We need to do this like yesterday; if not yesterday, how about tomorrow? And AARP said they could support that process.
And it does go through regular order. All it does is establish a time agreement where, after the products are delivered, they are to be considered by the Senate Finance Committee, and they would come to the Senate floor for further consideration.
I am inviting the House with this resolution, so they also could participate through the Ways and Means Committee. They would have to. That is the whole point.
I would love to have them vote on the resolution, too, but they have been out since July 23. And it is too important to wait to come back until September. Let us pass it in the Senate, pass it in the Senate and invite them to join us, and then that way we could have these hearings through August and September and deliver a product at the beginning of October to the Social Security actuaries to be scored. And then we could consider it.
And by the way, it may be that the products developed are not what the Senate Finance Committee wants. Senator Bernie Sanders could bring his proposal and offer it as an alternative. Senator Elizabeth Warren and Senator Bernie Moreno, who have got a plan, bipartisan plan, could bring their plan. Or Senator Wyden spoke about his plan; his plan could be offered because we are not, in this resolution, dictating an outcome. We are dictating a process whereby their proposals can be heard. And in that, we can serve the American people.
What we don't want to do is to delay any further because every year we delay, the taxes get higher or the cuts get deeper or the debt gets bigger in order to fix this problem.
What we are doing right now is only setting up a process where Sanders and Wyden and Warren and Moreno and Cassidy and Durbin and Wyden can have their proposals heard.
Mr. President, I am introducing this resolution--I guess I am. We are doing a hotline right now. We are in the process of doing this.
And if you are watching on C-SPAN or somehow seeing this, contact your Senator. Ask them to support this resolution because all it does is set up a process and then demands that Congress does its job. Don't give Congress a free pass on getting into it someday.
I will finish by saying this: I was once given a compliment by both Lindsey Graham at one time and Bernie Sanders at the other, and I will kind of do it with Lindsey's accent: Bill, you are a lousy politician. You are a good Senator, but you are a lousy politician.
I think I should probably take that as a compliment.
So I am a lousy politician. I think right now we all should be lousy politicians. We should all be good Senators. Let us run to the problem. And the problem is the Social Security System is going insolvent. That will lead up to a 28.5-percent benefit cut for seniors if we follow the law. Let us be good Senators. Let us be good Senators and solve this problem beginning now.
I yield the floor.
I suggest the absence of a quorum.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
The clerk will call the roll.
The senior assistant legislative clerk proceeded to call the roll.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
Without objection, it is so ordered.
The majority leader.
Legislative Session
Pages S4471–S4472 · Official textMr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate resume legislative session and be in a period of morning business, with Senators permitted to speak therein for up to 10 minutes each.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Vote Explanation
Page S4472 · Official textMr. President, I was absent for one rollcall vote on August 5, 2026.
On August 5, had I been present, I would have voted nay on the Motion to Invoke Cloture on the Nomination of Erica Schwartz to be Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (rollcall vote No. 219).
Vote Explanation
Page S4472 · Official textMr. President, today the Senate voice voted the motion to proceed to Calendar No. 320, H.R. 6500, the legislative vehicle for a continuing resolution. Had this been a recorded rollcall vote, I would have voted "present" and ask that the Record reflect that accordingly.
Tribute to Hmong American Veterans
Page S4472 · Official textMr. President, today we honor the extraordinary bravery, sacrifice, and devotion of Hmong American veterans who stood alongside the United States during the Vietnam war.
From 1961 to 1975, Hmong soldiers fought in the CIA-backed operation known as the Secret War in Laos under the leadership of Vang Pao, risking everything to defend freedom and support American forces.
Hmong forces carried out dangerous missions, gathered intelligence, disrupted enemy supply lines along the Ho Chi Minh Trail, and rescued downed American pilots. Thousands of American lives were saved because of the courage and perseverance of Hmong soldiers.
The Hmong people paid an enormous price for their alliance with the United States. More than 40,000 Hmong fighters were killed or wounded during the conflict.
For many years, the contributions of Hmong veterans remained largely unknown because the conflict in Laos was classified as the "Secret War."
Today, we ensure that history remembers their service and that future generations understand the sacrifices they made in defense of freedom.
Alaska is proud to be home to a robust Hmong community whose members continue to serve our State through military service, business ownership, public service, education, and community leadership.
We recognize veterans such as Pasert Lee, a resident of the Mountain View neighborhood in Anchorage, AK, who served as a lieutenant under General Vang Pao and helped rescue American pilots during the war. As communist forces took control of Laos, those who had stood with the United States faced persecution, imprisonment, and even death. The beginning of the exodus of the Hmong people from their homes in Laos began following the May 1975 Communist takeover.
Many Hmong families were forced to flee Laos to escape persecution. Many veterans and their families have never been able to safely return to their homeland.
Mr. Lee, like most of our Hmong American veterans, has never returned home, even to visit, in fear for their lives.
Their story is one of courage, resilience, conviction, and unwavering commitment to the United States.
We have a moral obligation to remember those who fought beside American servicemembers and to ensure their sacrifices are never forgotten.
Tribute to Mike Witherell
Page S4472 · Official textMr. President, I rise today to congratulate Michael Witherell on a remarkable career spent in service of scientific achievement and discovery as he steps down after a decade of leadership as the eighth director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. As the Director of Berkeley Lab, Mike dedicated himself to pursuing transformational breakthroughs across all areas of science and helped its researchers deliver scientific solutions addressing critical national priorities.
Mike Witherell was born on September 22, 1949, in Toledo, OH. He would go on to receive a bachelor of science from the University of Michigan in 1968. After earning his Ph.D. in experimental particle physics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison in 1973, Mike served on the faculty at Princeton until 1981 and then found himself at the University of California, Santa Barbara until 1999. While working at UC Santa Barbara, Mike won the W. K. H. Panofsky Prize in Experimental Particle Physics from the American Physical Society in 1990 and was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1998. After serving as the director of the Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory for 6 years, Mike returned to UC Santa Barbara in 2005 as the vice chancellor for research. He was then appointed director of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 2016, a position he held until June of 2026.
In his decade of service leading Berkeley Lab, Mike strengthened the lab's position as a world-leading institution for breakthrough science through significant real-world solutions in energy and pioneering programs in quantum informational science and artificial intelligence. This record of scientific excellence resulted in 31 members of the lab being elected to the National Academies of Science and Engineering, two National Medals, and three Nobel Prizes, including most recently in 2025 for groundbreaking research in quantum computing.
Thanks to his hard work and dedication, Berkeley Lab has contributed greatly to the mission of the Department of Energy, including becoming a core contributor to the Genesis Mission. None of these efforts would have been possible without the passion, vision, and excellence that Mike poured into the lab during his storied tenure.
As Mike embarks on this new chapter in his life, his absence will undoubtedly be felt by all those fortunate enough to have collaborated with him. I extend my heartfelt wishes to Mike and his family for a joyful retirement.
Recognizing the 150th Anniversary of Hot Springs, Arkansas
Pages S4472–S4473 · Official textMr. President, I rise today to recognize the 150th anniversary of the city of Hot Springs, AR.
Located in central Arkansas at the eastern edge of the Ouachita Mountains and the Ouachita National Forest, Hot Springs has long been one of my State's most treasured destinations. Since its incorporation in 1876, generations of residents have helped shape a city known for its resilience, vibrant community, and commitment to preserving the natural beauty and historic character that makes the city so special.
For centuries, the area's natural thermal springs have drawn visitors seeking their restorative waters. Long before Arkansas achieved statehood, Native American Tribes recognized their significance and laid the foundation for the city's enduring legacy as a place of renewal and hospitality.
Now this unique feature sits at the heart of Hot Springs National Park, arguably the oldest within the National Park System. The land was first set aside for protection by Congress in 1832, decades before the National Park Service was established in 1916. Today, visitors from across the Nation and around the world enjoy the city's historic Bathhouse Row, scenic trails, thriving downtown, nearby lakes, world-class horse racing, and many other attractions that showcase Arkansas' majestic landscapes and rich history.
Beyond its historic landmarks, Hot Springs continues to be an important economic and cultural center. Its small businesses, hospitality industry, and community organizations reflect the hard-working spirit that has helped the city thrive for 150 years.
Congratulations to the entire community on this sesquicentennial celebration and steadfast commitment to building a bright future. I am pleased to recognize this milestone and commemorate 150 years of embracing its identity and charming residents and visitors alike.
Recognizing Alpha Phi Sorority, University of Maryland Chapter
Page S4473 · Official textMr. President, I rise today to recognize the Alpha Phi Sorority at the University of Maryland, College Park. Alpha Phi has dedicated its philanthropic efforts to advancing women's heart health, the leading cause of death among women in the United States.
Although the topic of women's heart health is often overlooked, the members of Alpha Phi have made it their mission to advance this vital cause through research, education, and advocacy. The University of Maryland chapter has received national recognition for its year-round efforts to not only raise funds, but to increase awareness of heart disease and relevant prevention methods.
Every year, the University of Maryland chapter hosts the Red Dress Gala, their capstone philanthropic event. This past year, they successfully raised over $26,000 to benefit their cause. Beyond their fundraising, the members of Alpha Phi treat every event as an opportunity to educate the campus community, honor those affected by heart disease, and inspire others to support women's health.
I commend the Alpha Phi Sorority at the University of Maryland, College Park for its unshakeable dedication to women's heart health and look forward to witnessing its continued impact on its community.
Measures Read the First Time
Page S4473 · Official textThe following bills were read the first time:
Text printed in the Record (284 characters)
H.R. 7008. An act to amend chapter 131 of title 5 to require certain restrictions on stocks for Members of Congress and their spouses and dependents, and for other purposes.
S. 5271. A bill to amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to require voters to provide photo identification.
Executive and Other Communications
Pages S4473–S4474 · Official textThe following communications were laid before the Senate, together with accompanying papers, reports, and documents, and were referred as indicated:
Text printed in the Record (10,278 characters)
EC-4293. A communication from the Senior Bureau Official, Legislative Affairs, Department of State, transmitting, pursuant to section 36(b)(1) of the Arms Export Control Act, the Army's proposed letter(s) of offer and acceptance to the Government of Kuwait for defense articles and services estimated to cost $542 million ((RSAT Case 26-53) (OSS-2026-0587)); to the Committee on Foreign Relations.
EC-4294. A communication from the Senior Bureau Official, Legislative Affairs, Department of State, transmitting, pursuant to section 36(b)(5)(C) of the Arms Export Control Act, the notification of enhancements or upgrades from the level of sensitivity of technology or capability ((RSAT Case 26-0W) (OSS-2026-0586)); to the Committee on Foreign Relations.
EC-4295. A communication from the Senior Bureau Official, Legislative Affairs, Department of State, transmitting, pursuant to section 36(b)(5)(C) of the Arms Export Control Act, the notification of enhancements or upgrades from the level of sensitivity of technology or capability ((RSAT Case 26-0S) (OSS-2026-0588)); to the Committee on Foreign Relations.
EC-4296. A communication from the Senior Bureau Official, Legislative Affairs, Department of State, transmitting, pursuant to section 36(b)(5)(C) of the Arms Export Control Act, the notification of enhancements or upgrades from the level of sensitivity of technology or capability ((RSAT Case 26-1F) (OSS-2026-0589)); to the Committee on Foreign Relations.
EC-4297. A communication from the President of the United States, transmitting, pursuant to law, a report of the continuation of the national emergency that was originally declared in Executive Order 14105 of August 9, 2023, with respect to the threat posed by advancement by countries of concern in sensitive technologies and products critical for the military, intelligence, surveillance, or cyber-enabled capabilities of such countries; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
EC-4298. A communication from the President of the United States to the President pro tempore of the United States Senate, transmitting, consistent with the War Powers Resolution, a report relative to military action taken on July 27, 2026, against targets in the Republic of Iraq following Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-directed attacks by Iranian aligned militia groups; to the Committee on Foreign Relations.
EC-4299. A communication from the Secretary of State, transmitting, pursuant to law, a six-month periodic report on the national emergency with respect to Brazil that was declared in Executive Order 14323 of July 30, 2025; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
EC-4300. A communication from the Secretary of the Treasury, transmitting, pursuant to law, a six-month periodic report on the national emergency with respect to the advancement by countries of concern in sensitive technologies and products critical for the military, intelligence, surveillance, or cyber-enabled capabilities of such countries that was declared in Executive Order 14105 of August 9, 2023; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
EC-4301. A communication from the Senior Bureau Official, Legislative Affairs, Department of State, transmitting, pursuant to section 3(d) of the Arms Export Control Act, a certification of a proposed transfer of major defense equipment with an original acquisition value of approximately $255,900,000 (RSAT Case 26-11558); to the Committee on Foreign Relations.
EC-4302. A communication from the Senior Bureau Official, Legislative Affairs, Department of State, transmitting, pursuant to section 3(d) of the Arms Export Control Act, a certification of a proposed transfer of major defense equipment with an original acquisition value of approximately $28,000,000 (RSAT Case 26-11496); to the Committee on Foreign Relations.
EC-4303. A communication from the Assistant Secretary of Defense, transmitting legislative proposals that the Department of Defense requests be enacted during the second session of the 119th Congress; to the Committee on Foreign Relations.
EC-4304. A communication from the Assistant Secretary of Defense, transmitting legislative proposals that the Department of Defense requests be enacted during the second session of the 119th Congress; to the Committee on Foreign Relations.
EC-4305. A communication from the Assistant Secretary of Defense, transmitting legislative proposals that the Department of Defense requests be enacted during the second session of the 119th Congress; to the Committee on Foreign Relations.
EC-4306. A communication from the Under Secretary of Defense (Personnel and Readiness), transmitting, pursuant to law, the annual report of the National Security Education Program (NSEP) for fiscal year 2025; to the Select Committee on Intelligence.
EC-4307. A communication from the Assistant Secretary of Defense, transmitting legislative proposals that the Department of Defense requests be enacted during the second session of the 119th Congress; to the Committee on Veterans' Affairs.
EC-4308. A communication from the Assistant Secretary of Defense, transmitting legislative proposals that the Department of Defense requests be enacted during the second session of the 119th Congress; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.
EC-4309. A communication from the Assistant Secretary of Defense, transmitting legislative proposals that the Department of Defense requests be enacted during the second session of the 119th Congress; to the Committee on the Judiciary.
EC-4310. A communication from the Assistant Secretary of Defense, transmitting legislative proposals that the Department of Defense requests be enacted during the second session of the 119th Congress; to the Committee on the Judiciary.
EC-4311. A communication from the Under Secretary of Defense, transmitting the report of 16 officers authorized to wear the insignia of the grade of brigadier general in accordance with title 10, United States Code, section 777; to the Committee on Armed Services.
EC-4312. A communication from the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, transmitting the report of an officer authorized to wear the insignia of the grade of lieutenant general in accordance with title 10, United States Code, section 777a; to the Committee on Armed Services.
EC-4313. A communication from the Under Secretary of Defense (Personnel and Readiness), transmitting the report of an officer authorized to wear the insignia of the grade of lieutenant general in accordance with title 10, United States Code, section 777a, for a period not to exceed 14 days before assuming the duties of the position for which the higher grade is authorized; to the Committee on Armed Services.
EC-4314. A communication from the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, transmitting the report of an officer authorized to wear the insignia of the grade of lieutenant general in accordance with title 10, United States Code, section 777a; to the Committee on Armed Services.
EC-4315. A communication from the Under Secretary of Defense for Personnel and Readiness, transmitting the report of an officer authorized to wear the insignia of the grade of lieutenant general in accordance with title 10, United States Code, section 777a; to the Committee on Armed Services.
EC-4316. A communication from the Secretary of Defense, transmitting the report of 13 officers authorized to wear the insignia of the grade of rear admiral (lower half) in accordance with title 10, United States Code, section 777; to the Committee on Armed Services.
EC-4317. A communication from the Alternate Federal Register Liaison Officer, Office of the Secretary, Department of Defense, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled "Nondiscrimination in Federally Assisted Programs of the Department of Defense-Effectuation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964; Amendment" (RIN0790-AM02) received in the Office of the President
of the Senate on August 4, 2026; to the Committee on Armed Services.
EC-4318. A communication from the Alternate Federal Register Liaison Officer, Office of the Secretary, Department of Defense, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled "Privacy Act of 1974; Implementation (Catch a Serial Offender (CATCH) Program Records)" (RIN0790-AL45) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on August 4, 2026; to the Committee on Armed Services.
EC-4319. A communication from the Alternate Federal Register Liaison Officer, Office of the Secretary, Department of Defense, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled "Department of Defense Assistance to Non-Government, Entertainment-Oriented Media Productions" (RIN0790-AL71) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on August 4, 2026; to the Committee on Armed Services.
EC-4320. A communication from the Assistant Secretary of Defense, transmitting legislative proposals that the Department of Defense requests be enacted during the second session of the 119th Congress; to the Committee on Armed Services.
EC-4321. A communication from the Assistant Secretary of Defense, transmitting legislative proposals that the Department of Defense requests be enacted during the second session of the 119th Congress; to the Committee on Armed Services.
EC-4322. A communication from the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense, transmitting legislative proposals that the Department of Defense requests be enacted during the second session of the 119th Congress; to the Committee on Armed Services.
EC-4323. A communication from the Assistant Secretary of Defense, transmitting legislative proposals that the Department of Defense requests be enacted during the second session of the 119th Congress; to the Committee on Armed Services.
EC-4324. A communication from the Administrator, Specialty Crops Program, Department of Agriculture, transmitting, pursuant to law, the report of a rule entitled "Clingstone Peach Diversion Program; Amendment of Program Regulations" ((RIN0581-AE58) (Docket No. AMS-SC-26-0496)) received in the Office of the President of the Senate on August 4, 2026; to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.
Reports of Committees
Page S4474 · Official textThe following reports of committees were submitted:
Text printed in the Record (1,142 characters)
By Mr. COTTON, from the Select Committee on Intelligence:
Report to accompany S. 4615, An original bill to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2027 for intelligence and intelligence-related activities of the United States Government, the Intelligence Community Management Account, and the Central Intelligence Agency Retirement and Disability System, and for other purposes (Rept. No. 119-133).
By Mr. CASSIDY, from the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, without amendment:
S. 3010. A bill to amend the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act to improve provisions relating to dyslexia, and for other purposes.
By Mr. CASSIDY, from the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, with an amendment in the nature of a substitute:
S. 3333. A bill to modify the eligibility requirements and account contribution maximum for pension-linked emergency savings accounts, and for other purposes.
S. 3589. A bill to amend the Higher Education Act of 1965 to provide students with disabilities and their families with access to critical information needed to select the right college and succeed once enrolled.
Executive Reports of Committee
Page S4474 · Official textThe following executive reports of nominations were submitted:
Mr. President, for the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation I report favorably the following nomination lists which were printed in the Records on the dates indicated, and ask unanimous consent, to save the expense of reprinting on the Executive Calendar that these nominations lie at the Secretary's desk for the information of Senators.
Text printed in the Record (530 characters)
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
*Coast Guard nomination of James C. Meyers, to be Lieutenant Commander.
*Coast Guard nominations beginning with Aaron J. Casavant and ending with Jeremy A. Weiss, which nominations were received by the Senate and appeared in the Congressional Record on July 13, 2026.
*Coast Guard nominations beginning with Caroline M. Jenkins and ending with Christine E. Olds, which nominations were received by the Senate and appeared in the Congressional Record on July 13, 2026.
*Nomination was reported with recommendation that it be confirmed subject to the nominee's commitment to respond to requests to appear and testify before any duly constituted committee of the Senate.
Introduction of Bills and Joint Resolutions
Pages S4474–S4475 · Official textThe following bills and joint resolutions were introduced, read the first and second times by unanimous consent, and referred as indicated:
Text printed in the Record (10,710 characters)
By Mrs. CAPITO (for herself and Mr. Justice):
S. 5243. A bill to provide for the automatic establishment of Trump accounts using information collected under the Enumeration at Birth Program of the Social Security Administration; to the Committee on Finance.
By Mr. MORAN (for himself, Ms. Baldwin, Mrs. Capito,
Mr. Kaine, Mr. Boozman, and Mr. Hickenlooper):
S. 5244. A bill to amend the Public Health Service Act with respect to the drug discount program, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
By Mr. RICKETTS (for himself and Mrs. Fischer):
S. 5245. A bill to establish the Karly Rain Wood Repeat Violent Felon Registration and Notification Program within the Department of Justice, and for other purposes; to the Committee on the Judiciary.
By Mr. WARNER (for himself and Mr. Banks):
S. 5246. A bill to amend title XXX of the Public Health Service Act to establish standards and protocols to improve patient matching; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
By Mrs. MURRAY (for herself and Mr. Lankford):
S. 5247. A bill to amend title 10, United States Code, to include Indian Tribes in the defense community infrastructure program, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Armed Services.
By Mr. LUJAN (for himself, Mrs. Shaheen, Mr. Heinrich,
and Mr. Kim):
S. 5248. A bill to authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services to make grants to States to improve the knowledge, credentials, compensation, and professional development of early childhood educators working with children in early childhood education programs; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
By Mr. KELLY (for himself and Ms. Lummis):
S. 5249. A bill to amend the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 to align the licensing of uranium enrichment facilities with other fuel cycle facilities under that Act, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.
By Ms. COLLINS:
S. 5250. A bill to amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to decrease fraud related to home health agencies in Medicare, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Finance.
By Ms. ROSEN:
S. 5251. A bill to modify the termination of the aviation consumer protection advisory committee, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation.
By Mr. HAGERTY (for himself, Mr. Kim, Mr. Scott of
South Carolina, and Ms. Cortez Masto):
S. 5252. A bill to prevent foreign adversaries from threatening the national security of the United States by extracting key technical features of closed-source, United States-owned artificial intelligence models, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
By Mr. SCHMITT (for himself, Mr. Justice, and Mr.
Marshall):
S. 5253. A bill to amend the Food, Agriculture, Conservation, and Trade Act of 1990 to prioritize emerging tick-borne livestock disease research, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry.
By Mr. RISCH (for himself and Mr. Warner):
S. 5254. A bill to modify the prohibition on financing of civil nuclear energy by the Export-Import Bank of the United States, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
By Mr. LANKFORD (for himself, Mr. Rounds, Mrs. Britt,
Mr. Grassley, and Mr. Cramer):
S. 5255. A bill to amend title 10, United States Code, to define the purpose, role, duties, and professional qualification requirements for chaplains in the Armed Forces, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Armed Services.
By Ms. CORTEZ MASTO (for herself, Mr. Schiff, Mr.
Blumenthal, and Ms. Hirono):
S. 5256. A bill to provide increased oversight of certain pardons, to clarify the applicability of bribery prohibitions to pardons and commutations, and for other purposes; to the Committee on the Judiciary.
By Mr. MARKEY (for himself and Ms. Warren):
S. 5257. A bill to expedite the provision of humanitarian assistance, including life-saving medical care, to the people of North Korea, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
By Mr. CASSIDY (for himself and Ms. Murkowski):
S. 5258. A bill to amend title XI of the Social Security Act to establish a payment model to reimburse providers for furnishing comprehensive breast cancer risk assessments and developing personalized screening
and risk-reduction plans, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Finance.
By Mr. HAGERTY:
S. 5259. A bill to prohibit sanctuary jurisdictions from receiving community development block grants, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
By Mr. LUJAN (for himself, Mr. Schumer, Mr. Bennet, Mr.
Fetterman, Mrs. Shaheen, Mr. Heinrich, Mr. Schiff,
Mr. Padilla, Mr. Hickenlooper, Ms. Smith, and Ms.
Rosen):
S. 5260. A bill to require the Secretary of Health and Human Services to carry out research and data collection to improve the quality of stroke care, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
By Mr. BOOKER:
S. 5261. A bill to amend the Federal Fire Prevention and Control Act of 1974 to make available under the assistance to firefighters grant program the establishment of cancer prevention programs, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
By Mr. PAUL (for himself, Mr. Lee, and Mr. Cruz):
S. 5262. A bill to amend the Federal Water Pollution Control Act to clarify the definition of navigable waters, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.
By Mr. McCORMICK (for himself and Mr. Fetterman):
S. 5263. A bill to amend the Workforce Innovation and Opportunity Act to provide to States and local areas information on the best practices for addressing the effects that substance use disorder has on the workforce, and to provide local areas with grants to provide training activities related to the treatment and prevention of substance use disorder; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
By Mr. REED (for himself and Mr. Hawley):
S. 5264. A bill to amend title 49, United States Code. to set requirements for certain operator workstations for fixed route buses, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
By Mr. SHEEHY (for himself, Mr. McCormick, and Mr.
Budd):
S. 5265. A bill to identify and take action against international trade practices of high income countries that unfairly exploit innovation by deviating from market-based policies and unfairly exploit United States innovation, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Finance.
By Mr. RISCH:
S. 5266. A bill to amend title 10, United States Code, to provide flexibility in the recoupment of separation pay, severance pay, and readjustment pay from members of the Armed Forces receiving veterans' disability compensation; to the Committee on Veterans' Affairs.
By Mr. BANKS (for himself, Mr. Padilla, and Mr.
Marshall):
S. 5267. A bill to amend title XI of the Social Security Act to require the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation to test a model to reduce chronic diseases by using Accountable Produce is Medicine; to the Committee on Finance.
By Mr. GALLEGO (for himself, Mr. Blumenthal, Mr.
Markey, Mr. Merkley, and Mr. Van Hollen):
S. 5268. A bill to amend the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 to adjust the rate employers pay for overtime hours from one and one-half to two times the regular rate; to the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
By Mr. WHITEHOUSE (for himself and Mr. Cassidy):
S. 5269. A bill to provide for the establishment of hybrid primary care payments under the Medicare program, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Finance.
By Mr. KIM:
S. 5270. A bill to amend title XVIII of the Social Security Act to establish a Medicare home care benefit, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Finance.
By Mr. HUSTED:
S. 5271. A bill to amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to require voters to provide photo identification; read the first time.
By Mr. LANKFORD:
S. 5272. A bill to recover unclaimed pandemic-era unemployment compensation funds held by financial institutions or escheated to State unclaimed property administrators, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Finance.
By Ms. LUMMIS (for herself, Mr. Barrasso, Mrs. Fischer,
Mr. Husted, Mr. Lee, Mr. Marshall, Mr. Ricketts, Mr.
Schmitt, and Mr. Moreno):
S.J. Res. 205. A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency relating to "California State Nonroad Engine Pollution Control Standards; Small Off-Road Engines Regulations; Notice of Decision"; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.
By Mr. SCHMITT (for himself, Mr. Ricketts, Ms. Lummis,
Mr. Husted, Mr. Marshall, Mr. Barrasso, Mrs. Fischer,
and Mr. Moreno):
S.J. Res. 206. A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency relating to "California State Motor Vehicle Pollution Control Standards; Notice of Decision Granting a Waiver of Clean Air Act Preemption for California's 2009 and Subsequent Model Year Greenhouse Gas Emission Standards for New Motor Vehicles"; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.
By Mr. RICKETTS (for himself, Ms. Lummis, Mr. Husted,
Mr. Schmitt, Mr. Marshall, Mr. Barrasso, Mrs.
Fischer, and Mr. Moreno):
S.J. Res. 207. A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency relating to "California State Motor Vehicle Pollution Control Standards; Notice of Decision Granting a Waiver of Clean Air Act Preemption for California's Advanced Clean Car Program and a Within the Scope Conformation for California's Zero Emission Vehicle Amendments for 2017 and Earlier Model Years"; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.
By Mr. HUSTED (for himself, Ms. Lummis, Mr. Ricketts,
Mr. Schmitt, Mr. Marshall, Mr. Barrasso, Mrs.
Fischer, and Mr. Moreno):
S.J. Res. 208. A joint resolution providing for congressional disapproval under chapter 8 of title 5, United States Code, of the rule submitted by the Environmental Protection Agency relating to "California State Motor Vehicle Pollution Control Standards; Advanced Clean Car Program; Reconsideration of a Previous Withdrawal of a Waiver of Preemption; Notice of Decision"; to the Committee on Environment and Public Works.
Submission of Concurrent and Senate Resolutions
Page S4475 · Official textThe following concurrent resolutions and Senate resolutions were read, and referred (or acted upon), as indicated:
Text printed in the Record (335 characters)
By Mr. WICKER (for himself and Mrs. Hyde-Smith):
S. Res. 831. A resolution recognizing the 100th anniversary of Northwest Mississippi Community College and celebrating a century of educational excellence, workforce development, student success, and service to the people of Mississippi and the United States; considered and agreed to.
Additional Cosponsors
Pages S4475–S4477 · Official textAt the request of Mrs. Blackburn, the name of the Senator from South Carolina (Ms. Graham) was added as a cosponsor of S. 74, a bill to require the Attorney General to submit to Congress a report relating to violence against women in athletics. At the request of Mr. Sheehy, the name of the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. McCormick) was added as a cosponsor of S. 226, a bill to require a strategy to oppose financial or material support by foreign countries and nongovernmental organizations to the Taliban, and for other purposes. At the request of Mr. Cassidy, the name of the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Lujan) was added as a cosponsor of S. 492, a bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to improve and enhance the work opportunity tax credit, to encourage longer-service employment, and to modernize the credit to make it more effective as a hiring incentive for targeted workers, and for other purposes. At the request of Mrs. Gillibrand, the names of the Senator from Illinois (Ms. Duckworth), the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Kennedy) and the Senator from Washington (Mrs. Murray) were added as cosponsors of S. 1289, a bill to require the Secretary of the Treasury to mint coins in commemoration of the 25th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States and to support programs at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at the World Trade Center. At the request of Mrs. Moody, the name of the Senator from Illinois (Ms. Duckworth) was added as a cosponsor of S. 1782, a bill to prohibit discrimination on the basis of mental or physical disability in cases of organ transplants. At the request of Mrs. Gillibrand, the name of the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. Justice) was added as a cosponsor of S. 1789, a bill to amend the Food and Nutrition Act of 2008 to exclude as income certain payments received by household members from certain employment programs, and for other purposes. At the request of Ms. Baldwin, the name of the Senator from Iowa (Mr. Grassley) was added as a cosponsor of S. 2195, a bill to award a Congressional Gold Medal, collectively, to the brave women who served in World War II as members of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps and U.S. Navy Nurse Corps. At the request of Mr. Sullivan, the names of the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Hickenlooper) and the Senator from Rhode Island (Mr. Whitehouse) were added as cosponsors of S. 2229, a bill to require the Secretary of the Treasury to mint a coin in recognition of the Foreign Service of the United States and its contribution to United States diplomacy. At the request of Ms. Alsobrooks, the name of the Senator from Nevada (Ms. Cortez Masto) was added as a cosponsor of S. 2531, a bill to authorize the Secretary of Health and Human Services to award grants to increase early detection of and intervention for uterine fibroids, and for other purposes. At the request of Mr. Paul, the name of the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. McCormick) was added as a cosponsor of S. 2732, a bill to strengthen employee cost savings suggestions programs within the Federal Government. At the request of Ms. Alsobrooks, the name of the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Kim) was added as a cosponsor of S. 2913, a bill to prohibit the use of appropriated funds to eliminate, consolidate, or otherwise restructure any office within the Department of Education that administers or enforces programs serving individuals with disabilities. At the request of Mr. Cassidy, the name of the Senator from New Hampshire (Ms. Hassan) was added as a cosponsor of S. 3097, a bill to provide additional protections with respect to health information, and for other purposes. At the request of Mrs. Blackburn, the name of the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. McCormick) was added as a cosponsor of S. 3109, a bill to amend titles 46 and 49, United States Code, to require that individuals who commit human trafficking violations be permanently disqualified from obtaining certain licenses issued by the Department of Homeland Security and the Department of Transportation, and for other purposes. At the request of Mr. Curtis, the name of the Senator from Washington (Mrs. Murray) was added as a cosponsor of S. 3400, a bill to amend title XXVII of the Public Health Service Act, the Employee Retirement Income Security Act of 1974, the Internal Revenue Code of 1986, and the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act to require coverage of hearing devices and systems in certain private health insurance plans, and for other purposes. At the request of Mr. Banks, the name of the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. McCormick) was added as a cosponsor of S. 3610, a bill to prohibit the provision of United States financial assistance to any entity that is controlled by an agent of a covered foreign principal. At the request of Mr. Barrasso, the name of the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. McCormick) was added as a cosponsor of S. 3863, a bill to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to terminate the Hazardous Substance Superfund financing rate. At the request of Mr. Cruz, the names of the Senator from Nevada (Ms. Cortez Masto), the Senator from Kansas (Mr. Marshall) and the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. McCormick) were added as cosponsors of S. 4009, a bill to provide for the imposition of sanctions with respect to forced organ harvesting within the People's Republic of China, and for other purposes. At the request of Mr. Padilla, the name of the Senator from New Mexico (Mr. Heinrich) was added as a cosponsor of S. 4271, a bill to amend title 5, United States Code, to provide rest and recuperation leave for employees engaged in wildland firefighting, and for other purposes. At the request of Ms. Cortez Masto, the names of the Senator from Alaska (Ms. Murkowski) and the Senator from Massachusetts (Mr. Markey) were added as cosponsors of S. 4312, a bill to amend the National Energy Conservation Policy Act to include the installation of mechanical insulation property as an energy or water efficiency measure, and for other purposes. At the request of Mr. Barrasso, the name of the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. McCormick) was added as a cosponsor of S. 4317, a bill to amend title 23, United States Code, to withhold Federal highway funding from States that issue driver's licenses, commercial driver's licenses, or personal identification cards to individuals without verifying the legal status of those individuals, and for other purposes. At the request of Mr. Durbin, the name of the Senator from New Jersey (Mr. Kim) was added as a cosponsor of S. 4494, a bill to prioritize funding for an expanded and sustained national investment in biomedical research. At the request of Mr. Cruz, the names of the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Hickenlooper) and the Senator from Nebraska (Mr. Ricketts) were added as cosponsors of S. 4668, a bill to protect the name, image, and likeness rights of, and provide protections for, student athletes and to promote fair competition among intercollegiate athletics, and for other purposes. At the request of Mr. Budd, the name of the Senator from Pennsylvania (Mr. McCormick) was added as a cosponsor of S. 4873, a bill to amend the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 by limiting nonmilitary foreign assistance to organizations that provide or promote abortion, promote gender ideology, or promote discriminatory equity ideology, and for other purposes. At the request of Mr. Armstrong, the names of the Senator from Tennessee (Mrs. Blackburn) and the Senator from Montana (Mr. Daines) were added as cosponsors of S. 4944, a bill to streamline permitting under the Natural Gas Act, the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, and the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969, and for other purposes. At the request of Mr. Moreno, the name of the Senator from Indiana (Mr. Banks) was added as a cosponsor of S. 4983, a bill to curb criminal activity by aliens, to defend against acts of international terrorism, to protect American workers from unfair labor competition, and to relieve pressure on public services by strengthening border security and stabilizing immigration into the United States. At the request of Ms. Warren, the name of the Senator from Washington (Mrs. Murray) was added as a cosponsor of S. 4986, a bill to amend title XIX of the Social Security Act to provide coverage under the Medicaid program for services provided by doulas, midwives, and lactation support providers, and for other purposes. At the request of Mr. Kim, the name of the Senator from Washington (Mrs. Murray) was added as a cosponsor of S. 5037, a bill to amend title XIX of the Social Security Act to make all children eligible for Medicaid from birth until age 26, to require States to automatically enroll children and young adults under age 26 in the State Medicaid program, and for other purposes. At the request of Mrs. Blackburn, the name of the Senator from South Carolina (Ms. Graham) was added as a cosponsor of S. 5179, a bill to clarify that for purposes of Federal nondiscrimination requirements applicable to education programs or activities receiving Federal financial assistance, discrimination prohibited under title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 is based on the biological reality of sex. At the request of Ms. Hirono, the name of the Senator from Colorado (Mr. Bennet) was added as a cosponsor of S. 5189, a bill to amend title 10, United States Code, and the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 1994, to codify and clarify gender neutral standards for members of certain Armed Forces, and for other purposes. At the request of Mr. Tillis, the names of the Senator from Idaho (Mr. Crapo) and the Senator from Nevada (Ms. Cortez Masto) were added as cosponsors of S. 5214, a bill to amend title 18, United States Code, to punish criminal offenses targeting law enforcement officers, and for other purposes. At the request of Mr. Blumenthal, the name of the Senator from California (Mr. Schiff) was added as a cosponsor of S. 5219, a bill to improve end-of-life care. At the request of Mrs. Blackburn, the name of the Senator from Maine (Ms. Collins) was added as a cosponsor of S. Res. 819, a resolution condemning the Government of the Islamic Republic of Iran for its ongoing human rights abuses, including its use of politically motivated espionage claims to justify arbitrary detention and executions. At the request of Mr. Risch, the names of the Senator from Montana (Mr. Daines) and the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. Justice) were added as cosponsors of S. Res. 826, a resolution honoring the contributions of small manufacturers of firearms to the economy, culture, and recreational heritage of the United States and recognizing the month of August 2026 as "National Shooting Sports Month". At the request of Mr. Risch, the names of the Senator from Montana (Mr. Daines) and the Senator from West Virginia (Mr. Justice) were added as cosponsors of S. Res. 827, a resolution recognizing the 100th anniversary of the creation of the Sporting Arms and Ammunition Manufacturers' Institute, Inc. (SAAMI) and commending its work establishing industry standards that ensure the safe interoperability of firearms and ammunition. At the request of Mr. Budd, the names of the Senator from Louisiana (Mr. Cassidy), the Senator from Arkansas (Mr. Cotton), the Senator from Iowa (Ms. Ernst) and the Senator from North Dakota (Mr. Cramer) were added as cosponsors of amendment No. 6733 intended to be proposed to H.R. 6500, a bill to extend duty-free treatment provided with respect to imports from certain countries in Africa under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, to extend customs user fees, and for other purposes.
Statements on Introduced Bills and Joint Resolutions
Pages S4477–S4478 · Official textThis is the bill's second key objective. To accomplish this, my bill directs CMS to reset the home health base payment amount using 2020 rates, adjusted for inflation, before applying future payment updates. Resetting to 2020 is appropriate because it reflects the first year of the current payment methodology under the Patient-Driven Groupings Model and predates the fraud patterns that later emerged. The bill also addresses a calculation distortion in the current payment methodology and directs CMS to implement appropriate corrections going forward. This legislation strikes the right balance. It strengthens CMS's ability to prevent fraud before taxpayer dollars are lost, while ensuring that honest providers have the resources necessary to continue delivering high-quality care. It advances both program integrity and payment integrity, protects Medicare beneficiaries, safeguards taxpayer dollars, and helps preserve access to the home health services that allow millions of Americans to receive care safely and independently in their own homes. I want to note that these program integrity provisions align with those outlined in the Protecting Seniors and Stopping Fraudsters Act, introduced by Rep. Van Duyne in May. I look forward to working with her to move our bills forward as quickly as possible. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this important legislation. ______
Text printed in the Record (3,043 characters)
By Mr. REED (for himself and Mr. Hawley):
S. 5264. A bill to amend title 49, United States Code, to set requirements for certain operator workstations for fixed route buses, and for other purposes; to the Committee on Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs.
Mr. REED. Mr. President, today, I am introducing the Bus Operator Safety and Security Act with my colleague from Missouri, Mr. Hawley. Our bipartisan bill will address a growing safety concern facing the transit industry: protecting the bus operators who serve as the backbone of our Nation's public transportation system.
Bus operators are being subjected to physical assaults, chemical attacks, and exposure to biohazards for simply carrying out their essential work. In my home State, a Rhode Island Public Transit Authority, RIPTA, busdriver was sprayed in the face with insecticide after asking a passenger to pay their fare. In Missouri, a Kansas City Area Transportation Authority, KCATA, busdriver was attacked with a baseball bat. In Ohio, a Central Ohio Transit Authority, COTA, busdriver was punched in the face after a passenger reached around a partial operator barrier, and in Pennsylvania, a Southeastern Pennsylvania Transportation Authority, SEPTA, busdriver sustained slash wounds to his face and abdomen when attacked by a passenger. The list goes on.
These attacks are part of a growing nationwide trend. Indeed, assaults on transit workers have increased by more than 36 percent since 2023, with an average of 43 assaults each day in 2025. These alarming statistics underscore the urgent need to better protect the dedicated operators who keep our public transportation systems running safely every day.
To address this growing crisis, the Bus Operator Safety and Security Act would require all new, federally funded buses to be equipped with protective barriers around the operator's seat, providing bus operators with a safer and more secure workspace. These barriers are not cosmetic; they are lifesaving. They fully enclose the operator's workstation, preventing unauthorized entry and protecting operators from physical assaults, thrown objects, chemical agents, and other dangerous hazards. while maintaining a clear line of sight so operators can safely perform their jobs.
This is a simple, commonsense solution. These barriers cost between $3,000 to $7,000 per bus, yet they can mean the difference between a bus operator making it home safely at the end of the day or becoming the victim of a violent assault.
I am pleased that the bill is supported by the Amalgamated Transit Union, ATU, the Transportation Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, TTD, the SMART Transportation Division, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, AFSCME, and the Transport Workers Union of America, TWU. And in Rhode Island, the bill is supported by RIPTA and ATU Local 618. I urge my colleagues to join me and Senator Hawley in supporting this commonsense legislation and in working to include it in the next Surface Transportation reauthorization.
Introductory Statement on S. 5250
Pages S4477–S4478 · Official textThis is the bill's second key objective. To accomplish this, my bill directs CMS to reset the home health base payment amount using 2020 rates, adjusted for inflation, before applying future payment updates. Resetting to 2020 is appropriate because it reflects the first year of the current payment methodology under the Patient-Driven Groupings Model and predates the fraud patterns that later emerged. The bill also addresses a calculation distortion in the current payment methodology and directs CMS to implement appropriate corrections going forward. This legislation strikes the right balance. It strengthens CMS's ability to prevent fraud before taxpayer dollars are lost, while ensuring that honest providers have the resources necessary to continue delivering high-quality care. It advances both program integrity and payment integrity, protects Medicare beneficiaries, safeguards taxpayer dollars, and helps preserve access to the home health services that allow millions of Americans to receive care safely and independently in their own homes. I want to note that these program integrity provisions align with those outlined in the Protecting Seniors and Stopping Fraudsters Act, introduced by Rep. Van Duyne in May. I look forward to working with her to move our bills forward as quickly as possible. I urge my colleagues to join me in supporting this important legislation.
Senate Resolution 831--Recognizing the 100th Anniversary of Northwest Mississippi Community College and Celebrating a Century of Educational Excellence, Workforce Development, Student Success, And...
Pages S4478–S4479 · Official textSENATE RESOLUTION 831--RECOGNIZING THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF NORTHWEST MISSISSIPPI COMMUNITY COLLEGE AND CELEBRATING A CENTURY OF EDUCATIONAL EXCELLENCE, WORKFORCE DEVELOPMENT, STUDENT SUCCESS, AND SERVICE TO THE PEOPLE OF MISSISSIPPI AND THE UNITED STATES Mr. WICKER (for himself and Mrs. Hyde-Smith) submitted the following resolution; which was considered and agreed to:
Text printed in the Record (6,848 characters)
Whereas Tate County Agricultural High School was established in 1915 to provide educational opportunities for the people of North Mississippi and laid the foundation for what would become Northwest Mississippi Community College;
Whereas, for more than a century, the institution has served the educational, workforce, and community needs of North Mississippi;
Whereas, on September 7, 1926, the institution opened its academic year with college-level instruction, marking the beginning of its continuous service as an institution of higher education;
Whereas, during the formative years of the institution, it earned approval from the Mississippi Junior College Committee, expanded its academic offerings, strengthened its faculty, and developed the academic standards necessary to serve as a model for community college education in Mississippi;
Whereas, in 1928, the institution adopted the name Northwest Mississippi Junior College and expanded its academic offerings to include a second year of collegiate instruction;
Whereas, effective January 2, 1988, the institution officially changed its name from Northwest Mississippi Junior College to Northwest Mississippi Community College, reflecting the expanding mission of the institution to serve the educational, workforce, and community needs of North Mississippi;
Whereas Northwest Mississippi Community College serves an 11-county district consisting of Tate, DeSoto, Panola, Tallahatchie, Tunica, Quitman, Marshall, Calhoun, Lafayette, Yalobusha, and Benton counties through a main campus in Senatobia and campuses and instructional sites in DeSoto, Oxford, Batesville, Olive Branch, Water Valley, and Ashland;
Whereas Northwest Mississippi Community College has expanded educational opportunity throughout North Mississippi through the establishment and growth of instructional locations across its service area, bringing higher education, workforce training, and local community enrichment closer to the communities it serves, including in--
(1) Senatobia, established in 1926;
(2) DeSoto, established in 1975;
(3) Ashland, established in 1980;
(4) Oxford, established in 1983;
(5) Olive Branch, established in 1985;
(6) Batesville, established in 2021; and
(7) Water Valley, established in 2022;
Whereas, as of the date of adoption of this resolution, Northwest Mississippi Community College serves more than 8,000 students annually and has experienced 13 consecutive semesters of enrollment growth, reflecting the enduring value of the institution and its continued ability to meet the educational and workforce needs of North Mississippi;
Whereas Northwest Mississippi Community College has become one of the largest and most respected community colleges in Mississippi, serving thousands of students annually through academic transfer programs, career and technical education, workforce training, health sciences programs, dual enrollment opportunities, and local community enrichment initiatives;
Whereas Northwest Mississippi Community College has earned national recognition for student success, enrollment growth, workforce development, academic achievement, and institutional excellence, including selection among the premier community colleges in the United States, while expanding educational opportunities through new facilities, innovative programs, and strategic partnerships;
Whereas Northwest Mississippi Community College has expanded educational access and workforce development opportunities through strategic investments in facilities and infrastructure, including the Ranger Center in DeSoto County, the Concourse in Batesville, the Heindl Center for the Performing Arts in Senatobia, and continued improvements to academic, workforce, student, and athletic facilities throughout the district;
Whereas Northwest Mississippi Community College continues to expand high-demand programs in health sciences, workforce education, career and technical education, and university transfer programs to meet the evolving needs of students, employers, and communities throughout Mississippi;
Whereas Northwest Mississippi Community College has contributed significantly to the economic growth and prosperity of Mississippi by preparing a highly skilled workforce and fostering partnerships with business, industry, health care providers, governmental agencies, and community organizations;
Whereas Northwest Mississippi Community College has earned national recognition for excellence in intercollegiate athletics and student achievement throughout its history;
Whereas Northwest Mississippi Community College has consistently competed at the highest levels of intercollegiate athletics in the National Junior College Athletic Association, claiming National Championships in football, women's basketball, women's soccer, cheerleading, and dance;
Whereas Northwest Mississippi Community College student-athletes have consistently exemplified excellence in competition, leadership, service, and academic achievement, earning national recognition for both athletic success and outstanding team grade point averages, reflecting the enduring commitment of the institution to excellence in academics and athletics;
Whereas Northwest Mississippi Community College has produced generations of All-Americans, national champions, conference champions, regional champions, academic honorees, and community leaders, whose accomplishments have brought distinction to the institution and to the State of Mississippi;
Whereas the faculty, staff, administrators, trustees, alumni, students, and supporters of Northwest Mississippi Community College have built a legacy of service, opportunity, innovation, and achievement that has positively affected hundreds of thousands of lives during the first century of college instruction of the institution; and
Whereas, as Northwest Mississippi Community College begins its second century of service as an institution of higher education, the institution remains committed to expanding opportunity, promoting student success, supporting workforce development, strengthening communities, and preparing future generations of students, workers, and community leaders: Now, therefore, be it
Resolved, That the Senate--
(1) recognizes and congratulates Northwest Mississippi Community College on the occasion of its 100th anniversary;
(2) commends Northwest Mississippi Community College for 100 years of educational excellence, workforce development, student success, community service, and economic impact; and
(3) respectfully requests that the Secretary of the Senate transmit an enrolled copy of this resolution to--
(A) the President of Northwest Mississippi Community College, Dr. Michael J. Heindl;
(B) the Vice President for Institutional Affairs, Dr. Brad Smith; and
(C) the Director of Athletics, Mr. Jake Gordon.
Text of Amendments
Pages S4479–S4480 · Official textSA 6736. Mr. THUNE proposed an amendment to amendment SA 6732 proposed by Ms. Collins to the bill H.R. 6500, to extend duty-free treatment provided with respect to imports from certain countries in Africa under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, to extend customs user fees, and for other purposes; as follows:
Text printed in the Record (102 characters)
At the end add the following.
"This Act shall take effect 1 day after the date of enactment."
______
SA 6737. Mr. THUNE proposed an amendment to amendment SA 6736 proposed by Mr. Thune to the amendment SA 6732 proposed by Ms. Collins to the bill H.R. 6500, to extend duty-free treatment provided with respect to imports from certain countries in Africa under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, to extend customs user fees, and for other purposes; as follows:
Text printed in the Record (43 characters)
Strike "1 day" and insert "2 days".
______
SA 6738. Mr. THUNE proposed an amendment to the bill H.R. 6500, to extend duty-free treatment provided with respect to imports from certain countries in Africa under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, to extend customs user fees, and for other purposes; as follows:
Text printed in the Record (103 characters)
At the end add the following.
"This Act shall take effect 3 days after the date of enactment."
______
SA 6739. Mr. THUNE proposed an amendment to amendment SA 6738 proposed by Mr. Thune to the bill H.R. 6500, to extend duty-free treatment provided with respect to imports from certain countries in Africa under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, to extend customs user fees, and for other purposes; as follows:
Text printed in the Record (44 characters)
Strike "3 days" and insert "4 days".
______
SA 6740. Mr. THUNE proposed an amendment to the bill H.R. 6500, to extend duty-free treatment provided with respect to imports from certain countries in Africa under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, to extend customs user fees, and for other purposes; as follows:
Text printed in the Record (103 characters)
At the end add the following.
"This Act shall take effect 5 days after the date of enactment."
______
SA 6741. Mr. THUNE proposed an amendment to amendment SA 6740 proposed by Mr. Thune to the bill H.R. 6500, to extend duty-free treatment provided with respect to imports from certain countries in Africa under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, to extend customs user fees, and for other purposes; as follows:
Text printed in the Record (44 characters)
Strike "5 days" and insert "6 days".
______
SA 6742. Mr. THUNE proposed an amendment to amendment SA 6741 proposed by Mr. Thune to the amendment SA 6740 proposed by Mr. Thune to the bill H.R. 6500, to extend duty-free treatment provided with respect to imports from certain countries in Africa under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, to extend customs user fees, and for other purposes; as follows:
Text printed in the Record (44 characters)
Strike "6 days" and insert "7 days".
______
SA 6743. Mr. KELLY submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by him to the bill S. 4784, to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2027 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:
Text printed in the Record (1,149 characters)
At the appropriate place in title XI, insert the following:
SEC. 11__. LIMITATION ON EXECUTIVE ORDER 14251 RELATING TO
EXCLUSIONS FROM FEDERAL LABOR-MANAGEMENT
RELATIONS PROGRAMS.
(a) In General.--None of the funds authorized to be appropriated by this Act or otherwise made available for the Department of Defense for fiscal year 2027 may be used to implement Executive Order 14251, issued on March 27, 2025, relating to exclusions from Federal labor-management relations programs, or any successor or substantially similar authority.
(b) Collective Bargaining Agreements.--Any collective bargaining agreement between any labor organization and the Department of Defense or any subcomponent of the Department, which was in effect as of March 26, 2025, and which has since been terminated pursuant to Executive Order 14251 or any sub-regulatory policy or guidance issued pursuant to Executive Order 14251 by the Department or any of its subcomponents, shall be restored and shall have full force and effect through the stated term of the applicable agreement, including any continuation pending the negotiation of a successor agreement.
______
SA 6744. Mr. HAWLEY submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by him to the bill S. 4668, to protect the name, image, and likeness rights of, and provide protections for, student athletes and to promote fair competition among intercollegiate athletics, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:
Text printed in the Record (356 characters)
In section 121(a)(2), strike subparagraph (C) and insert the following:
(C) except in the case of such a law, regulation, rule, requirement, or standard that prohibits biological men from playing in women's sports, any provision described in section 113 relating to the eligibility of a student athlete to participate in intercollegiate athletics.
______
SA 6745. Mr. THUNE (for Ms. Hassan) proposed an amendment to the bill S. 850, to amend the Northern Border Security Review Act to require updates to the northern border threat analysis and the northern border strategy, and for other purposes; as follows:
Text printed in the Record (329 characters)
On page 2, line 8, strike "September 2, 2025" and insert "180 days after the date of the enactment of the Northern Border Security Enhancement and Review Act".
On page 3, line 2, strike "September 2, 2026" and insert "18 months after the date of the enactment of the Northern Border Security Enhancement and Review Act".
______
SA 6746. Mr. KELLY (for himself, Ms. Murkowski, Mr. Warner, and Mrs. Gillibrand) submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by him to the bill S. 4784, to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2027 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:
Text printed in the Record (649 characters)
At the appropriate place in title VII, insert the following:
SEC. 7___. IMPROVEMENTS TO DEPENDENT COVERAGE UNDER TRICARE
YOUNG ADULT PROGRAM.
(a) Expansion of Eligibility.--Subsection (b) of section 1110b of title 10, United States Code, is amended--
(1) by striking paragraph (3); and
(2) by redesignating paragraphs (4) and (5) as paragraphs (3) and (4), respectively.
(b) Elimination of Separate Premium for a Young Adult.--Such section is further amended by striking subsection (c).
(c) Conforming Amendment.--Section 1075(c)(3) of such title is amended by striking "section 1076d, 1076e, or 1110b" and inserting "section 1076d or 1076e".
Text of Senate Amendment 6736
Page S4479 · Official textSA 6736. Mr. THUNE proposed an amendment to amendment SA 6732 proposed by Ms. Collins to the bill H.R. 6500, to extend duty-free treatment provided with respect to imports from certain countries in Africa under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, to extend customs user fees, and for other purposes; as follows:
Text printed in the Record (94 characters)
At the end add the following.
"This Act shall take effect 1 day after the date of enactment."
Text of Senate Amendment 6737
Page S4479 · Official textSA 6737. Mr. THUNE proposed an amendment to amendment SA 6736 proposed by Mr. Thune to the amendment SA 6732 proposed by Ms. Collins to the bill H.R. 6500, to extend duty-free treatment provided with respect to imports from certain countries in Africa under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, to extend customs user fees, and for other purposes; as follows:
Text printed in the Record (35 characters)
Strike "1 day" and insert "2 days".
Text of Senate Amendment 6738
Page S4479 · Official textSA 6738. Mr. THUNE proposed an amendment to the bill H.R. 6500, to extend duty-free treatment provided with respect to imports from certain countries in Africa under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, to extend customs user fees, and for other purposes; as follows:
Text printed in the Record (95 characters)
At the end add the following.
"This Act shall take effect 3 days after the date of enactment."
Text of Senate Amendment 6739
Page S4479 · Official textSA 6739. Mr. THUNE proposed an amendment to amendment SA 6738 proposed by Mr. Thune to the bill H.R. 6500, to extend duty-free treatment provided with respect to imports from certain countries in Africa under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, to extend customs user fees, and for other purposes; as follows:
Text printed in the Record (36 characters)
Strike "3 days" and insert "4 days".
Text of Senate Amendment 6740
Page S4479 · Official textSA 6740. Mr. THUNE proposed an amendment to the bill H.R. 6500, to extend duty-free treatment provided with respect to imports from certain countries in Africa under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, to extend customs user fees, and for other purposes; as follows:
Text printed in the Record (95 characters)
At the end add the following.
"This Act shall take effect 5 days after the date of enactment."
Text of Senate Amendment 6741
Page S4479 · Official textSA 6741. Mr. THUNE proposed an amendment to amendment SA 6740 proposed by Mr. Thune to the bill H.R. 6500, to extend duty-free treatment provided with respect to imports from certain countries in Africa under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, to extend customs user fees, and for other purposes; as follows:
Text printed in the Record (36 characters)
Strike "5 days" and insert "6 days".
Text of Senate Amendment 6742
Page S4479 · Official textSA 6742. Mr. THUNE proposed an amendment to amendment SA 6741 proposed by Mr. Thune to the amendment SA 6740 proposed by Mr. Thune to the bill H.R. 6500, to extend duty-free treatment provided with respect to imports from certain countries in Africa under the African Growth and Opportunity Act, to extend customs user fees, and for other purposes; as follows:
Text printed in the Record (36 characters)
Strike "6 days" and insert "7 days".
Text of Senate Amendment 6743
Pages S4479–S4480 · Official textSA 6743. Mr. KELLY submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by him to the bill S. 4784, to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2027 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:
Text printed in the Record (1,141 characters)
At the appropriate place in title XI, insert the following:
SEC. 11__. LIMITATION ON EXECUTIVE ORDER 14251 RELATING TO
EXCLUSIONS FROM FEDERAL LABOR-MANAGEMENT
RELATIONS PROGRAMS.
(a) In General.--None of the funds authorized to be appropriated by this Act or otherwise made available for the Department of Defense for fiscal year 2027 may be used to implement Executive Order 14251, issued on March 27, 2025, relating to exclusions from Federal labor-management relations programs, or any successor or substantially similar authority.
(b) Collective Bargaining Agreements.--Any collective bargaining agreement between any labor organization and the Department of Defense or any subcomponent of the Department, which was in effect as of March 26, 2025, and which has since been terminated pursuant to Executive Order 14251 or any sub-regulatory policy or guidance issued pursuant to Executive Order 14251 by the Department or any of its subcomponents, shall be restored and shall have full force and effect through the stated term of the applicable agreement, including any continuation pending the negotiation of a successor agreement.
Text of Senate Amendment 6744
Page S4480 · Official textSA 6744. Mr. HAWLEY submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by him to the bill S. 4668, to protect the name, image, and likeness rights of, and provide protections for, student athletes and to promote fair competition among intercollegiate athletics, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:
Text printed in the Record (348 characters)
In section 121(a)(2), strike subparagraph (C) and insert the following:
(C) except in the case of such a law, regulation, rule, requirement, or standard that prohibits biological men from playing in women's sports, any provision described in section 113 relating to the eligibility of a student athlete to participate in intercollegiate athletics.
Text of Senate Amendment 6745
Page S4480 · Official textSA 6745. Mr. THUNE (for Ms. Hassan) proposed an amendment to the bill S. 850, to amend the Northern Border Security Review Act to require updates to the northern border threat analysis and the northern border strategy, and for other purposes; as follows:
Text printed in the Record (321 characters)
On page 2, line 8, strike "September 2, 2025" and insert "180 days after the date of the enactment of the Northern Border Security Enhancement and Review Act".
On page 3, line 2, strike "September 2, 2026" and insert "18 months after the date of the enactment of the Northern Border Security Enhancement and Review Act".
Text of Senate Amendment 6746
Page S4480 · Official textSA 6746. Mr. KELLY (for himself, Ms. Murkowski, Mr. Warner, and Mrs. Gillibrand) submitted an amendment intended to be proposed by him to the bill S. 4784, to authorize appropriations for fiscal year 2027 for military activities of the Department of Defense, for military construction, and for defense activities of the Department of Energy, to prescribe military personnel strengths for such fiscal year, and for other purposes; which was ordered to lie on the table; as follows:
Text printed in the Record (649 characters)
At the appropriate place in title VII, insert the following:
SEC. 7___. IMPROVEMENTS TO DEPENDENT COVERAGE UNDER TRICARE
YOUNG ADULT PROGRAM.
(a) Expansion of Eligibility.--Subsection (b) of section 1110b of title 10, United States Code, is amended--
(1) by striking paragraph (3); and
(2) by redesignating paragraphs (4) and (5) as paragraphs (3) and (4), respectively.
(b) Elimination of Separate Premium for a Young Adult.--Such section is further amended by striking subsection (c).
(c) Conforming Amendment.--Section 1075(c)(3) of such title is amended by striking "section 1076d, 1076e, or 1110b" and inserting "section 1076d or 1076e".
Authority for Committees to Meet
Page S4480 · Official textMr. President, I have nine requests for committees to meet during today's session of the Senate. They have the approval of the Majority and Minority Leaders.
Pursuant to Rule XXVI, paragraph 5(a), of the Standing Rules of the Senate, the following committees are authorized to meet during today's session of the Senate:
The Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation is authorized to meet in executive session during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, August 5, 2026, at 10 a.m.
The Committee on Finance is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, August 5, 2026, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing.
The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, August 5, 2026, at 10 a.m., to conduct a hearing on nominations.
The Committee on Foreign Relations is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, August 5, 2026, at 3 p.m., to conduct a briefing.
The Committee on Indian Affairs is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, August 5, 2026, at 2 p.m., to conduct a business meeting.
The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, August 5, 2026, at 10:15 a.m., to conduct a hearing on nominations.
The Committee on the Judiciary is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, August 5, 2026, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing.
The Committee on Small Business and Entrepreneurship is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, August 5, 2026, at 2:30 p.m., to conduct a hearing.
The Select Committee on Intelligence is authorized to meet during the session of the Senate on Wednesday, August 5, 2026, at 3 p.m., to conduct a closed briefing.
Privileges of the Floor
Page S4480 · Official textMr. President, I ask unanimous consent that Dan Alpert, a detailee in my office, and Michal Malachowski, a law clerk in my office, be granted floor privileges until the end of the 119th Congress.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Measures Read the First Time En Bloc--S. 5271 and H.r. 7008
Page S4480 · Official textMr. President, I understand there are two bills at the desk, and I ask for their first reading en bloc.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
The clerk will read the bills by title for the first time en bloc.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
Text printed in the Record (286 characters)
A bill (S. 5271) to amend the Help America Vote Act of 2002 to require voters to provide photo identification.
A bill (H.R. 7008) to amend chapter 131 of title 5 to require certain restrictions on stocks for Members of Congress and their spouses and dependents, and for other purposes.
Mr. President, I now ask for a second reading, and I object to my own request, all en bloc.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
The objection is heard. The bills will be read for the second time on the next legislative day.
Recognizing the 100th Anniversary of Northwest Mississippi Community College
Page S4480 · Official textRECOGNIZING THE 100TH ANNIVERSARY OF NORTHWEST MISSISSIPPI COMMUNITY COLLEGE
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the consideration of S. Res. 831, which is at the desk.
The clerk will report the resolution by title. The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
Text printed in the Record (260 characters)
A resolution (S. Res. 831) recognizing the 100th anniversary of Northwest Mississippi Community College and celebrating a century of educational excellence, workforce development, student success, and service to the people of Mississippi and the United States.
There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the resolution.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the resolution be agreed to, the preamble be agreed to, and the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table with no intervening action or debate.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
Without objection, it is so ordered.
The resolution (S. Res. 831) was agreed to.
The preamble was agreed to. (The resolution, with its preamble, is printed in today's Record under "Submitted Resolutions.")
Northern Border Security Enhancement and Review Act
Pages S4480–S4481 · Official textMr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of Calendar No. 256, S. 850.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
The clerk will report the bill by title.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
Text printed in the Record (176 characters)
A bill (S. 850) to amend the Northern Border Security Review Act to require updates to the northern border threat analysis and northern border strategy, and for other purposes.
There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the bill, which had been reported from the Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs.
Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the Hassan amendment, which is at the desk, be considered and agreed to; that the bill, as amended, be considered read a third time and passed; and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
Without objection, it is so ordered.
The amendment (No. 6745) was agreed to, as follows: (Purpose: To delay the deadlines for certain reporting requirements to
make it feasible for the Secretary of Homeland Security to meet such deadlines)
Text printed in the Record (3,179 characters)
On page 2, line 8, strike "September 2, 2025" and insert
"180 days after the date of the enactment of the Northern
Border Security Enhancement and Review Act".
On page 3, line 2, strike "September 2, 2026" and insert
"18 months after the date of the enactment of the Northern
Border Security Enhancement and Review Act".
The bill (S. 850), as amended, was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading, was read the third time, and passed, as follows:
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the "Northern Border Security Enhancement and Review Act".
SEC. 2. NORTHERN BORDER THREAT ANALYSIS AND STRATEGY.
(a) Northern Border Threat Analysis.--Section 3(a) of the Northern Border Security Review Act (Public Law 114-267) is amended--
(1) in the matter preceding paragraph (1), by striking "180 days after the date of enactment of this Act" and inserting "180 days after the date of the enactment of the Northern Border Security Enhancement and Review Act, and every 3 years thereafter";
(2) by redesignating paragraphs (2), (3), and (4) as paragraphs (3), (4), and (5), respectively; and
(3) by inserting after paragraph (1) the following:
"(2) an assessment of recent changes in the amount and demographics of apprehensions at the Northern Border, including an analysis of apprehension changes at the sector level.".
(b) Northern Border Strategy Updates.--Section 3 of the Northern Border Security Review Act (Public Law 114-267) is amended--
(1) by redesignating subsection (c) as subsection (d); and
(2) by inserting after subsection (b) the following:
"(c) Northern Border Strategy Updates.--The Secretary of Homeland Security shall update the Department of Homeland Security's Northern Border strategy not later than 18 months after the date of the enactment of the Northern Border Security Enhancement and Review Act, and every 5 years thereafter, and shall incorporate the results of the most recent threat analysis in each such update.".
(c) Classified Briefings.--Section 3 of the Northern Border Security Review Act, as amended by subsections (a) and (b), is further amended by adding at the end the following:
"(e) Classified Briefings.--Not later than 30 days after the submission of each threat analysis pursuant to subsection (a), the Secretary of Homeland Security shall provide a classified briefing regarding such analysis to the appropriate congressional committees.".
(d) Implementation of Certain Government Accountability Office Recommendations.--Not later than 180 days after the date of the enactment of this Act, the Secretary of Homeland Security, acting through the Executive Assistant Commissioner of Air and Marine Operations of U.S. Customs and Border Protection, shall develop performance measures to assess the effectiveness of Air and Marine Operations at securing the northern border between ports of entry in the air and maritime environments.
SEC. 3. NO ADDITIONAL FUNDS.
No additional funds are authorized to be appropriated for the purpose of carrying out this Act or the amendments made by this Act.
Orders for Thursday, August 6, 2026
Page S4481 · Official textMr. President, I ask unanimous consent that when the Senate completes its business today, it stand adjourned until 10 a.m. on Thursday, August 6; that following the prayer and pledge, the Journal of proceedings be approved to date, the morning hour be deemed expired, the time for the two leaders be reserved for their use later in the day, morning business be closed, and the Senate proceed to executive session to resume consideration of the nominations en bloc pursuant to S. Res. 817, postcloture; further, that all time during recess, adjournment, leader remarks, and morning business count postcloture on the nominations en bloc pursuant to S. Res. 817; finally, if any nominations are confirmed during Thursday's session of the Senate, that the motions to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table and the President be immediately notified of the Senate's actions.
The PRESIDING OFFICER
Without objection, it is so ordered.
Adjournment Until 10 A.m. Tomorrow
Page S4481 · Official textMr. President, if there is no further business to come before the Senate, I ask that it stand adjourned under the previous order.
There being no objection, the Senate, at 7:12 p.m., adjourned until Thursday, August 6, 2026, at 10 a.m.
Confirmation
Page S4481 · Official textExecutive nomination confirmed by the Senate August 5, 2026:
Text printed in the Record (93 characters)
Erica Schwartz, of Florida, to be Director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.