Unanimous Consent Request--Amendment No. 2457
Floor Speech
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Mr. WYDEN. Madam President, I thank my colleague this afternoon because he speaks today with passion and facts and clearly outlines what our constituents told us at home this past week, and I thank him for this partnership that Oregonians are seeing again on the floor of this great Senate.
Madam President, Donald Trump has deployed a paramilitary squad to our hometown in Portland. His secret police are terrorizing my friends and neighbors. People across the country need to understand that yesterday Donald Trump announced to America that your friends and your neighbors are next.
There are unmarked vans full of armed men in military gear snatching people off the streets. They take people away. They hold them. They interrogate them without justification and ultimately without charges.
Over the weekend, a very close personal friend, Sharon Meieran, an ER doctor and a mom, was protesting peacefully and was tear-gassed without provocation. She felt like she was seeing democracy pass right in front of her eyes.
Millions of Americans have seen the video of that local Navy veteran who was repeatedly beaten and pepper-sprayed and left with broken bones. People ask me: Ron, what was his offense?
I am sure Senator Merkley gets exactly the same question: What did he do wrong?
He was standing motionless, hands by his side, speaking up for the liberty that he served to protect. People are stunned that this is happening on the streets of our hometowns. We have seen reports of agents ripping a mask off of a protester who is obeying commands, with hands in the air, only to pepper spray the protester's face. The secret police even threw flash bombs and tear gas at a ``wall of moms.'' Here they are. Here they are in our hometown. You can see them, over the last couple of days: Moms and dads and now their kids are going to peacefully sing songs and protest for justice.
Oregonians are just standing up for what is right. Only the cowards of the Trump administration would try to convince America that these peaceful protesters, the ``wall of moms,'' represent some kind of anarchist threat. It is nonsense.
I condemn violence by anybody--always--and I spent much of last week working for nonviolent solutions in my hometown and fresh approaches to reduce tensions on our streets. The fact is, the protests in Portland have been overwhelmingly peaceful. Crime in Portland and across Oregon was down before Donald Trump sent in his secret police.
Donald Trump did not send that paramilitary force to keep people safe. Donald Trump is doing it to create an image of chaos, to air it on far-right television, scare the country, turn them into campaign ads, but these are the people Senator Merkley and I are honored to represent. These are the people Donald Trump's paramilitary forces attacked and terrorized. He calls it a ``great success.'' As we have indicated, he has a game plan to basically make Portland an experiment and to do it in other cities, especially, by his accounts, those with Democratic leadership and voters.
This kind of abusive exercise of power by a rogue President would have horrified our Founding Fathers. They wrote a wonderful Constitution to prevent exactly this behavior because democracy cannot survive in a nation that tolerates it. These tactics were used throughout the world a century ago to turn elected politicians into tyrants.
The President's first and most important job is to keep Americans safe. Residents of Portland are less safe and less secure since Donald Trump deployed the secret police to our streets. The same thing--and I say this to colleagues wherever you are from--the same things will happen in your communities where Donald Trump will send his paramilitary forces.
Frankly, when Donald Trump always talks about targeting Portland and other cities, I say to Senator Merkley, I wish he would target the coronavirus. I wish he would put a fraction of his passion for going after our cities into dealing with the coronavirus because while Donald Trump's secret police are out terrorizing Portland's moms and doctors and other peaceful protesters, we face a raging pandemic and record- high unemployment.
I want us to renew the supercharged unemployment benefits that people are going to lose this weekend. Donald Trump isn't doing any of that work. What he is doing is making Americans in cities less safe and not dealing with the coronavirus on top of it. He is attempting to cut resources for COVID testing and treatment. His administration is covering up data that the public health professionals rely on to do their job. He does it repeatedly, anxious to cut the lifelines of 30 million jobless Americans, sending them tumbling off an economic cliff right in the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.
He is not doing his job. He is ignoring his responsibilities. Both on the streets of Portland and in Washington, DC, when he walks away from dealing with the coronavirus, he isn't keeping Americans safe. He is putting them in more danger.
As I have said repeatedly, Donald Trump ought to attack the coronavirus pandemic and not the people of Portland. So that is why, very shortly, Senator Merkley and I will offer an amendment that will block Donald Trump from using these paramilitary forces in Portland or other cities where they are unwanted.
What we are seeing in our hometowns is these paramilitary squads brutally unleashed against peaceful protesters--moms and veterans, doctors and activists. All they want to do is speak out for liberty and justice.
What Donald Trump is now doing is incompatible with the fundamental principles of democracy laid out by our Founders and expanded throughout the generations. I believe what Donald Trump is doing, in light of his statement yesterday, to America, that he is going to go after one city after another, is totally out of control. The Senate cannot allow this to happen. That is why Senator Merkley and I are calling for the Senate to act.
I thank my friend and colleague for his leadership. He has made it clear that 100 percent of Oregon's U.S. Senators are going to keep pushing and fighting until this changes.
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