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Floor Speech

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Mr. DURBIN. Mr. President, let me first thank Senator Blumenthal for bringing us together on the floor this afternoon and also Senator Schiff for his excellent statement on this issue, which is so timely and important.

I speak to this issue in the usual, personal position. My State, my home State of Illinois--the State that I am elected to represent in the Senate, a State that I love--is under siege by this administration. If you think I am exaggerating, imagine, if you will, for a moment a President who has decided to declare that your town, your State is somehow on his list to face punitive action by the delegation of military force. That is what is happening in Illinois. That is what is happening in Chicago.

This last Saturday, we had the No Kings rallies across the United States. Millions of Americans took the time to peacefully protest this administration's policies.

In Chicago, I cannot tell you the number of people in the crowd because no one is sure. I am sure it was over 100,000. My wife and I looked at that sea of people at the Petrillo band shell in Grant Park and thought, how many people could possibly be here? They were there, and they marched peacefully, nonviolently, to really use their constitutional rights to express themselves.

The President has designated Chicago as uninhabitable, unlivable, violent. It is just a fraud and a lie. It is not true. Does Chicago have its problems? You bet it does. So does a city in the State of California or Connecticut or even Utah. Each of our cities has its challenges. There will always be someone who will break the law and disappoint you. But to argue that the city is dangerous and needs to be occupied by National Guard troops from Illinois and the State of Texas is completely, completely wrong.

I recall that the President was right in one respect. Two weeks ago, there were people running through the streets of Chicago--53,000 of them, as a matter of fact, in the Chicago Marathon and thousands of others who came there to witness and cheer them on. It was a beautiful scene on a Sunday morning and afternoon in the city of Chicago, and it certainly didn't tell the story that President Trump and others are trying to tell about the city.

Just last week, President Trump called the Insurrection Act ``the strongest power a President has.'' President Trump is known for exaggerating, but this time, he wasn't. In his hands--the hands of a man who wants to be King, who nearly every day undermines checks and balances in the Constitution--the Insurrection Act as it stands today would serve as another tool for dangerous Executive overreach.

Since its enactment in the 1800s, Presidents of both parties have relied on the Insurrection Act selectively, and, as we have discovered over time, the law is dangerously outdated, vague, and vulnerable to abuse if wielded by a President who refuses to act in good faith.

President Trump talks frequently about the so-called enemy within in the United States. He has no qualms about spreading baseless lies about a rebellion or an emergency in American cities to justify his abuse of power. Whether it is unleashing Federal agents to detain people based on the color of their skin in Chicago or improperly deploying marines for civil law enforcement in Los Angeles, you see example after example.

The Founders of this Nation designed the Constitution to protect generations of Americans from abuses unfolding before our eyes today. To prevent Presidents from using the military as a weapon of tyranny, the Framers of the Constitution constrained the role of the military in civilian affairs, gave Congress control over when the military may be deployed, and barred the Federal Government from usurping State powers.

While the Insurrection Act gives the President greater authority to deploy the military within the United States, it was never meant to be used for the purpose President Trump is proposing.

Congress must act to update this law to ensure it can only be used to safeguard the Nation, and I want to commend Senator Blumenthal for taking steps with legislation he has introduced along those lines.

If you don't agree with me, listen to what Jack Goldsmith, Assistant Attorney General for the Office of Legal Counsel under President Bush, wrote in the New York Times with Bob Bauer just this last Monday. He wrote:

The Insurrection Act was written for a different century and a different conception of the presidency and presidential self-restraint.

Listen to what experts at the libertarian think tank CATO said:

The sweeping language of the Act makes it a potentially decisive and lethal tool in the hands of an authoritarian chief executive.

Earlier this month, the Republican Governor of Oklahoma criticized the deployment of Texas Guard troops to Illinois as a violation of ``States' rights.'' He went on to say further--to rightly call out the hypocrisy of his own Republican Party. Imagine the outrage, this Governor of Oklahoma said, if Governor ``Pritzker in Illinois sent troops down to Oklahoma during the Biden administration.''

I can imagine it, and you can too.

Republican Senators who are quiet about the President's misuse of his office and misuse of power would not be quiet if their own State and their own towns were at stake in this debate.

The reform bill my colleague from Connecticut has introduced preserves Presidential discretion to respond to genuine crisis while ensuring accountability and oversight and reducing the risk of abuse.

I don't exaggerate when I tell you that, having spent my life in government service, I am more worried now than I have ever been about the fate of this Republic. But I see the possibility of the use of the Insurrection Act by this President. I worry that our democracy will struggle to survive.

I believe so dearly in this country that I have taken an oath willingly and happily to uphold its Constitution. I have turned to military leaders under President's Trump first term that I respected, like General Milley, and asked him basic questions such as: Given a choice, are you going to take your orders from the Commander in Chief or from the Constitution?

He said: Always the Constitution.

We have a lot at stake now in this national debate. It is about a lot more than who gets the morning headline and who wins the next election. What is at stake is the future of our democracy, and this Insurrection Act can be misused by this President in ways unimaginable. We have seen evidence of it already in my State of Illinois and the city of Chicago.

I thank the Senator from Connecticut for leading us in this conversation that must continue.

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