Trump Administration

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, retaining the floor, I yield to the question that is being posed by my colleague from Massachusetts.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I yield for a question to be posed by my colleague from Massachusetts.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you very much, Mr. President. I see that my colleague from Massachusetts is here and has gotten half of her question out.

If you would like to continue the question, I would invite you to give me a question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I thank so much my colleague from Massachusetts for the question of how the price of goods around the country is linked to Trump's authoritarian undertakings. It kind of boils down to this--and a colleague came to the floor and used this term a little while ago, a colleague from New Hampshire. She said: In an authoritarian structure, the authoritarian believes that the people are accountable to the authoritarian, and in a democracy, the leader believes that the leader is accountable to the people. That is the difference.

So if you are in a situation where you have an authoritarian for the President, first thing they do is try to erode the checks and balances of the constitution to concentrate more and more power in the Executive. Of course, we see that in all kinds of ways we have been discussing.

Then they proceed to try to change the rules for elections so they can rig the next elections.

Then they start to attack any form of dissent--suppress freedom of assembly, freedom of press, freedom of speech and due process. We see that.

Then they say: Now we want to free the military. But in all of that is this sense that the people are simply pawns for the authoritarian President.

Then, in that setting, it becomes just fine to do a bill that savages healthcare for the people to fund tax breaks for billionaires. It becomes just fine to do a bill that savages child nutrition to do tax breaks for billionaires. It becomes just fine to run up debt over the next 30 years $30 trillion to fund tax breaks for billionaires.

That is the way the authoritarian personality is connected to the policies that emerge from bills that authoritarian champions. They are not bills by and for the people; they are bills by and for the powerful.

I see that my colleague from Connecticut has come to the floor, and I would be happy to yield if you have a question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I will yield, absolutely.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I really appreciate the question from my colleague. It is quite an interesting moment right now because unless there is a decision that has been made while I have been speaking--and that is certainly possible due to the amount of time--there has not yet been a decision by the district judge to dissolve the second temporary restraining order. So the National Guard has not been federalized and able to deploy.

But it was going to depend on what happened at midnight last night, in which the district judge had said: I want to see if the circuit court decides to do an en banc panel. That is a fancy way of saying, instead of 3 judges evaluating the situation, a panel of 12 judges--the chief judge and other judges from the Ninth Circuit, selected randomly--would examine the decision. If that was going to happen, my impression was she was going to hold off.

The other thing that was unfolding was that the Seventh Circuit, putting Illinois--and Chicago has been really affected by this. The Seventh Circuit made a decision in support of the district court there, but that looked like it was going to the Supreme Court. And they may do a shadow docket decision very soon, at any moment, which could also affect what happens. So my guess is soon.

If none of those happens, my guess is that soon, in fact, the second temporary restraining order will have been dissolved, and that will give the ability for the National Guard to be in their mission.

I think there has been a lot of effort put into saying: These are our Oregonians. These are our soldiers, our folks. We have gone and supported them as they have gone on missions to Iraq and missions to Afghanistan and missions elsewhere in the world. We go and we welcome them home, and we think that they will have a very deep understanding that whatever they are instructed to do, they will not deliberately do provocative things.

The thing that would really sour the situation--I am putting up a little picture here that I know you can't see, but it is a picture of one of the Federal agents, not the Oregon National Guard, walking up and spraying a protester straight in the face. She had gotten out of the way as she was requested. She was sharing her opinion in a vocal manner but not in the way of anything--she had moved as requested. When people see that and other things where agents start assaulting peaceful protesters, that is where things get dicey.

So far, the Portlanders have said this is what Trump wants. He has almost instructed people, these other Federal agents, to come and provoke a riot. In fact, they even staged a fake riot last week, which was an extraordinary thing that should trouble every American.

He asked the protesters to back up several hundred yards, and they did that without conflict. So there was no tussle. There was no breaking the line. There was no throwing of things. They backed up. But behind the line of the Federal agents--probably Federal Protective Service--were videographers. The goal was to tape a fake riot. After they had been backed up, on command, the Federal Protective Service threw down the flash-bangs, which sound like gunfire. They threw down tear gas with big pluming smoke that was very irritating, and they fired pepper balls at the crowd. Well, the net result of that is the protesters scattered while being videographed so they would look--so that Trump's team could say: Look, there was a riot.

I just can't believe that our government would stage a fake riot like that. It was carefully preserved and recorded by Oregon Public Broadcasting. So I am confident in saying what happened.

I don't think anything like that will ever happen with the Oregon National Guard. I think they will be extraordinarily careful to execute their mission in a professional fashion and to provide a little bit of encouragement to protesters: Get out of the way of the car--or do things like that.

That is my belief of our Oregon National Guard.

There is also the Oregon National Guard from California. The President said he is going to send some from Texas. That could still be possible. I just hope all are well-trained, and that it is a redline that you never attack a peaceful protester.

So far, the Portland protesters decided to engage in joy and whimsy. They have just frustrated the hell of the Trump team because they want riots. No, there is the ``pastries and pajamas'' team, and there is the Puppy Dogs for Peace team, a wedding taking place, a Unipiper doing the bagpipes on his unicycle, and there are folks putting down candles on the ground and flowers in the air and just basically doing the cha-cha slide. I have no idea how to do that, but maybe I will learn down the road here.

But this type of joy and whimsy has been a terrific way to respond to Trump trying to provoke violence and failing to do so. I think the Oregon National Guard will be extremely professional.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Yes, I yield for a question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. The reforms that my colleague speaks of are incredibly important because we have a standard under title 10. Under title 10, which is the federalization of the National Guard, the standard is there has to be a rebellion and there has to be an invasion.

A rebellion: a sizable group, well-organized, well-armed, seeking to overthrow the government.

An invasion: a significant military force coming across to attack us.

They are well-understood terms. Even with that title 10, I am very nervous because even though the law does not say to give deference to the President in title 10, two of the judges said you should give deference to the President, which I find absurd because what it means is these standards that were crafted in legislation here--I am sure broadly and intensely debated--and said no, it has to be a rebellion or it has to be on the verge of a rebellion and the understanding of what that would look like--and to say it is a rebellion just because the President says there is one and there is nothing, like that type of deference, that is throwing open the gates to say an authoritarian President can roll out the military under title 10. That is scary as hell.

The Insurrection Act, in ways, is even scarier because it does have an explicit deference to the executive. So while it has a standard, it says that, interpreting that standard, there should be deference. I have read a number of analyses that say there is no way that the Supreme Court is not going to essentially say that the President interprets what is happening, given the language that exists there. That was written with the belief that we would always have a capable, responsible defender of the Constitution in the Oval Office and we don't. So reforming that act and closing that loophole absolutely is incredibly important to save our Republic.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I note that my colleague from Oregon, following proper protocol here, has arrived on the floor. I would be happy to answer a question, should you have one.

(Mr. SHEEHY assumed the Chair.)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I would be happy to yield for a question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you so much to my colleague from Oregon for this question.

It is very powerful to think about how fast the menace grew through the Jewish community in Germany and how, if one did not recognize that threat--and if I understood it right, the women in the family were the ones who said: We have got to get out of here--

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY.--to save their futures and, therefore, your future.

Why? Why do we have to have a world where the powerful engage in these assaults based on race or religion or ethnicity?

I sometimes hear Rodney King in my head--``Why can't we just all get along?''--after he had been badly, badly beaten.

The fact is, it seems like we have a long ways to go to erase prejudice from our hearts, and when people gain positions of power who carry that prejudice in their hearts, it often becomes open hatred and amplifies the ability of others to more openly discriminate or engage in provocative acts. So, anyway, I hope the generations to come will find a better path.

But in your question on securing liberty, this most important message--and I will have my team put it back up--is the alarm bells are now. The authoritarian actions are not down the street. They are not around the corner. They are not something to worry about 2 months from now. They are here right now.

All the basic characteristics of authoritarian control are present at this moment in the United States of America: stealing the power of the purse so that the President makes decisions of what programs are funded; taking and ignoring due process, which is our guarantee of freedom from an authoritarian state; attacking the issue of liberty for the press to be able to write what they want and not be compelled through using licenses or mergers as a way to coerce them to put up what the government wants; the President telling the universities that they need to shape their education the way the President wants and support his political agenda--are you kidding me?--and so forth. And then weaponizing the Department of Justice to go after an enemies list.

So it is here now. That is the main thing. And what do Americans do to secure liberty?--what you did on Saturday, what you did on Saturday, with 7 million people taking to the streets. It was the largest demonstration in the history of this country, saying: No Kings in the United States of America. Our Presidents are not Kings. Our laws are not suggestions, and our Constitution is not optional.

That outcry, both inside a Chamber like this but, very importantly, in the streets, is the outcry that tells the rest of the country: This is not OK. This is not acceptable. This is breaking the law. This is shredding the Constitution. This is attacking our freedoms, and we the people will reclaim our Constitution, our separation of powers, and our freedom.

That is why the action of demonstration and the action of speaking out are so important at this moment. It needs to work toward the next election where people of any party, if they believe in our Constitution, campaign and win on the basis that they are going to secure for the next generation--our generation and the next generation--the freedoms and the characteristics of our Constitution and make sure this doesn't happen again.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you so much to my colleague from Oregon.

And I so appreciate so many folks coming down to echo and amplify that we have to ring the alarm bells now so the American people will be very clear as to what is going on.

I see my colleague from Rhode Island, and I would be happy to yield to him for a question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I will, indeed, yield for a question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I say to my colleague from Rhode Island that, when an authoritarian President starts collecting data in this fashion, they probably have a plan for it, and that plan is not going to be one to enhance liberty for the American people.

One of the things that I am deeply concerned about--and I am not sure if this is the same database you are referring to--is a collection of voter registration databases--is that the same? Yes--from across the country.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Yes, I will yield for a question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I appreciate that clarification of the question.

It is absolutely concerning. You can imagine the many ways in which it can be weaponized. Any hostile agent from outside the United States can use that data in all kinds of ways. What happens if, suddenly, your Social Security benefits aren't there or the files regarding your disability benefits or your age and birth records? Who all knows what can disappear or be modified? Banking records are possibly included if you had banking transactions to pay your taxes. It could be incredible amounts of stuff.

We have had fairly protective practices of these databases, which is why, when DOGE went in with laptops, there was a lot of resistance. Some people who provided that resistance got moved aside physically to enable DOGE to access.

Then there is this other database effort, which is the voting registration database effort and the idea of collecting that. They have been pushing the secretaries of state. Many States have said no, and they are going to court; they are resisting. Well, thank goodness they are because a national registration voter database can be used just like a State can purge names from it, which several States have done, saying: Oh, these names look the same. Maybe it is like you have two Jack Ryans or, more commonly, it is done to Hispanic names, where they say: Hey, there is the same name in Georgia as there is in Mississippi, so we will purge this name.

I mean, it is hostile purging, and people don't know that they are no longer registered until they go to the polls to vote, and then it is often too late. So I am very, very concerned.

I want our States to maintain their own independent voting registration databases because that would be a phenomenal way to manipulate the next election.

I used to--and I say ``used to.'' Months ago, in February, people in my townhalls would say: Aren't you worried about an effort to postpone the next election or declare an emergency?

And I would say: No. I just can't imagine that taking place.

Now, I can imagine that taking place because we have seen emergency measures abused. We have seen the President assume powers he does not have. For example, tariff power is not delegated to the President. It has always been done by law here in this Chamber and down the Hall.

So when the President is that authoritarian--taking powers the law doesn't grant, arguing it in court, and the court giving him more power; and his consolidating information on voting, I am very, very worried about that.

I want to encourage the secretaries of state in every State, whether you are in a blue State or a red State, to hold onto your data, protect it, back it up, double secure it, and tell the Feds to keep their hands off.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Yes, I will yield for a question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Yes. In regard to your question, I am extremely worried about the Trump administration's effort to pave the path with the courts and with the discipline of the military and have them in the practice of being deployed to, if you will, in theory, quell unrest.

But the law on title 10 is very clear. You need to have a rebellion, or you need to have an invasion, and it is very clear you don't have either of those. Even then, two judges on the three-judge panel on this court said: Well, let's kind of give a little more flexible definition of ``rebellion,'' and by the way, maybe you can give more deference to the President's evaluation. After all, they run the building.

Once you say the President can simply declare there is a rebellion, then the standard set in law means nothing. You are just throwing open the doors to an authoritarian President who is deploying troops against the American people.

We have already seen, with the provocative actions of assaults on peaceful protesters, how dangerous that is. And, then, of course, the Insurrection Act, as an exception to Posse Comitatus, is extremely scary because it explicitly has in the law a certain interpretation by the President, or deference to interpretation by the President. The core assumption was that a person in that position would always be a person who had high regard for the Constitution and for the boundaries and for the liberties and for the freedom and would defend it with their whole heart, mind, and soul. But that is not a person we have in the Oval Office today.

So I do support efforts that a number of folks--and I believe you might be well involved in--are striving to plug some of those loopholes so that that power does not get deployed.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you.

I note that we have a Senator from Wisconsin. I would be happy to yield for a question, if she had one.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I will happily yield. Thank you.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I so appreciate the question from my colleague from Wisconsin.

Part of the discussion earlier was you can detect a difference between a democracy and an authoritarian government in the following fashion: Are the decisions about which programs are funded, how they will operate, and how they are funded decided by the Congress or by the President? That is the power of the purse, and it is so clearly laid out by our Founders that you put it in Congress's hands because if you put it in the President's hands, you have a strongman--1 person, not 100 people in this Chamber bringing their diverse life experiences, their knowledge, their particular interests, and saying these things are important to our various parts of the country. You just have one man from New York deciding what is important, one man who hangs out with a group of billionaires deciding what is important.

So an incredibly essential distinction between a democracy and an authoritarian government is the decisions about the programs, their design, and their funding are made by Congress.

What we have seen is that the President and his head of Office of Management and Budget, Russell Vought, are attempting to take that power out of the hands of Congress and have the President decide which programs are funded and how much.

Every time you hear the President say: I canceled these grants because they are out of sync with the priorities of the President, that is an authoritarian statement because it is not the President's prerogative to decide how to spend that money; it is the power of the people, through their elected representatives in the House and Senate.

Then, in addition, Mr. Vought has coordinated a series of strategies to essentially cancel programs by slow-walking the disbursal of funds; by freezing the funds; by impounding the funds; by delaying until the end of the year and then submitting a request to legislatively have the funds undone but then the clock runs out on the year, and poof, the funds disappear. He has a fancy name for it: a pocket rescission. But think of it more like the carriage in ``Cinderella'' that hits midnight, and poof, the carriage is gone, and you only have a pumpkin. In this case, we only have a lump of coal when we hit the end of the year.

Then there is a requirement under the law for the President to lay out an expenditure schedule so that we can see whether or not funds are being delayed, or frozen, impounded, and so forth, and that schedule has disappeared. That website has been shut down. So the President is hiding, and contrary to the law, what is required so that we can protect the prerogatives of our Constitution.

These are the ways the President is directly attacking the power of the purse and trying to turn this--this is one of the ways. He is doing a whole series of other things, in attacks on freedom, on weaponization of the Department of Justice to go after enemies, sending the military into the streets. But this is a key one in terms of the checks and balances of our Constitution. He is trying to take the power of the purse and has made substantial progress in doing so.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I see my colleague from Hawaii has arrived, and should she have a question--

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I would be happy to yield.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. If the Senator from Hawaii will repeat the last sentence of her question, I would appreciate it.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you so much for the question.

When I hear that word ``corruption''--and I admit, I am starting to feel a little dazed after these many hours on the floor--my head goes, first, to the financial corruption of the President, but there are always other forms of corruption he has engaged in, in terms of corrupting the basic balance of the separation of powers and the checks and balances. But let me speak, first, to the financial corruption.

One thing that we have seen is that he is using the Presidency to enrich himself and his companies and his family.

The most blatant example of this is when he said: I have this product that I want people to buy. I am going to hold a competition, and the people who buy the most of this product, a crypto coin, would be invited to a very special dinner at my golf club, where I will be present, and you will have access to me.

So he sold access to the Presidency to the people who bought the most of his crypto coins. In that case, it was a meme coin, and that means, basically, the coin is a collectible. It basically has no value.

But then he engaged in another form of crypto corruption, and that involved saying: We are going to have a stablecoin. And a stablecoin means you give me a dollar, and I give you a crypto token that you can use in international transactions.

Then there was a transaction involving--I believe; I hope I still have this right--the United Arab Emirates. They basically bought several billion dollars of these coins. What happens then is that the President can hold those dollars until the coins are redeemed and benefit from the interest earned on those several billion dollars.

Meanwhile, there was a desire by the foreign government to get access to highly capable AI chips. The answer was, no, we are not doing that. But then after they bought all these coins and enriched the President of the United States, well, then the President said: Let's give them the coins; let's give them these advanced chips.

So, certainly, the smoke, and I would say even the flame, of selling access and favors out of the Presidency is now to the tune of having made billions of dollars in the roughly 9 months that he has been in office.

I would be happy to yield for another question if you were talking about a different type of corruption.

I yield--I don't yield yet because I have to do this protocol right.

I see my colleague from New Hampshire is on the floor, and I would welcome a question, if you have one.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Yes, I will yield for a question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Absolutely.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I so much appreciate the good report and question from my colleague from New Hampshire and appreciate her leadership on the Foreign Relations Committee as the top Democrat, working hard to partner across the aisle for the common cause of international security.

Every time I think about Ukraine, I think about how fiercely, including in the Orange Revolution, in which they did so much to say: No, we will not be taken over by Russia; we will not be put under the thumb of Russia by one of our Presidents. They have said: We see the system to our north where there is no freedom, where people are not in charge of their own destiny because they are ruled by a dictator, and we reject that and will fight with our lives--and so many have, in fact, perished on the battlefield--to defend our freedom.

That inspires me every time I think about it.

At the moments in which President Trump has been less supportive of Ukraine and more supportive of Russia, I have tried to send him magical vibes--no--understand the difference between standing with a nation fighting for freedom and snuggling up with a dictator. We are a light to the world when we fight for democracy and support democracy.

So I am really pleased to hear about these three bills passing, and I hope that other factors can be worked up in the international community that will help slow down the Russian war machine. They are an incredibly large country, and they have built huge factories to produce cruise missiles, and so, nightly, Ukraine is hammered with hundreds now. So it just means more resolve by the United States, more resolve by Europe.

I am surprised to hear that the Europeans collectively are spending more on defense than the United States. If that had been a trivia question, I would have failed. But there it is, and that certainly has been partly to recognize the threat from Russia.

If Russia is willing to slice off a piece of Georgia, as they were in 2008, I believe; if they are willing to throw thousands of soldiers into a fight with Ukraine really with no consideration--I mean, it is just like fodder to the war machine. And then we are seeing that they are overflying some of the other European countries. And these are incredibly provocative.

So I think all of that goes toward hopefully forging a unity of purpose between Europe and the United States.

Something you may not know--one of the skeletons in my closet is I spent a rotation working at NATO in Brussels when we were trying to develop a treaty for intermediate-range missiles because of the nuclear threats, to stabilize the threats, in the middle of the 1980s. The United States and Europe worked so closely together. That is the type of partnership--it is the type of partnership that has taken some hits in the last few years. We want to restore that vision of that careful, detailed, determined coordination so that we advance the best strategies. And, of course, battlefield strategies are also changing dramatically as we go--being able to adjust to this changing world.

So that is my hope, that building on the work the committee did today--and hopefully those bills will be here on the floor, and hopefully they will be on the President's desk--that we can continue to strive to a peaceful conclusion with security for Ukraine and not allow the war machine of Russia to overwhelm it.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Mr. President, for the first time in several hours, I don't have a colleague who is asking me a question, and so I am going to return to the conversation that I was holding forth on regarding the Department of Justice.

I have here this page called ``Justice Connection, Urgent Message from Recent DOJ Alumni Decrying Attacks on Justice Department.'' I believe I asked unanimous consent to have this put in the Record, but if I did not, I am asking it now.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you very much, Mr. President.

Here is how that reads:

We are 292 former career employees who proudly served our country at the Department of Justice. From prosecutors, special agents, and intelligence analysts to immigration judges, grant managers, civil rights attorneys and more, we all carried out our duties faithfully, regardless of who occupied the White House. Until we no longer could.

Each of us left the Department, either voluntarily or involuntarily, because of actions taken by this administration.

Our fidelity to the Constitution and our dedication to our country did not end when our jobs did. Now that we've left the Department, we believe it's our duty to sound the alarm about this administration's degradation of DOJ's vital work, and its assault on the public servants who do it.

It is incumbent on all of us to fight for the Justice Department before it's too late.

DOJ's mission is to ``to uphold the rule of law, to keep our country safe, and to protect civil rights.'' It's failing on all three fronts:

The Justice Department cannot uphold the rule of law when it carries out the President's retribution campaign and protects his allies; violates court orders and evades due process requirements; directs attorneys to violate their ethical responsibilities; and fires its employees without notice or cause in violation of civil service laws.

It also cannot keep our country safe when it ousts FBI employees, prosecutors, national security experts, and ATF officials; shutters offices that prevent community violence and dismantle drug trafficking operations; purges the attorneys who enforce laws that protect the environment; and shifts highly trained special agents away from counterintelligence and counterterrorism.

And it cannot protect civil rights when it drives out 75% of attorneys from the Civil Rights Division and refuses to enforce the nation's civil rights laws as Congress intended, using them instead as a cudgel against marginalized groups.

The administration is taking a sledgehammer to other longstanding work the Department has done to protect communities and the rule of law, too. Its plans to eliminate the Tax Division, which saves the country billions of dollars by pursuing tax evaders, will leave us poorer. Gutting the Public Integrity Section and FBI public corruption squads has paved the way for government graft. Cancelling hundreds of millions of dollars in grants has left at-risk communities less protected and crime victims less supported. The list could go on.

As for its treatment of its employees, the current leadership's behavior has been appalling. This administration's lies about the ``deep state'' and exaggerations about government inefficiency have eroded the respect our country once held for public servants. And demonizing, firing, demoting, involuntarily transferring, and directing employees to violate their ethical duties has already caused an exodus of over 5,000 of us--draining the Department of priceless institutional knowledge and expertise, and impairing its historical success in recruiting top talent. We may feel the effects of this for generations.

The Justice Department's backbone has always been its career workforce, and those who were part of it are best positioned to explain why the current leaders' actions are catastrophic for the nation.

We call on these leaders to reverse course--to remember the oath we all took to uphold the Constitution--and adhere to the legal guardrails and institutional norms on which our justice system relies.

We call on our fellow alumni to join us in sounding the alarm, and in mobilizing to support our colleagues still there. They deserve respect and gratitude, neither of which they're getting from this administration.

We call on Congress to exercise its oversight responsibilities far more vigorously. Members in both chambers and on both sides of the aisle must provide a meaningful check on the abuses we're witnessing.

And we call on all Americans--whose safety, prosperity, and rights depend on a strong DOJ--to speak out against its destruction.

Our democracy is only as strong as the rule of law, and the rule of law can't survive without the principal institution that enforces it.

Well, that is a powerful letter from these 292 former career employees of the Department of Justice.

I was very struck about the phrase that says: ``We call on Congress to exercise its oversight responsibilities.''

That came up about an hour ago, in one of the conversations, that we could do so much more and we should try to be partnering with our Republican colleagues to provide that essential function of oversight. That is one of the checks and balances, and we should be deeply engaged in making it as effective as possible because here is quite a list of the things going wrong with the Department of Justice.

These things beg for hearings to be held, for issues to be understood, for the press to be able to report, for solutions to be able to be found, for lines that prevent unacceptable conduct to be clearly delineated.

But that can't happen unless Congress exercises its oversight ability.

OK. We have Chapter 8. So we are headed back to the book, and the book is this book, ``How Democracies Die.'' And with each chapter, I am trying to give some sense of the chapter but not every element of it. So I will read some of the pages, maybe scan through some others, and try to address a few of the issues that I will raise.

This particular chapter addresses President Trump's first year in his first administration, and it is titled: Trump's first year: an authoritarian report card. So remember this was just his first year in office. We are now in his fifth year in office, headed toward his sixth year in office, and we have seen such an acceleration. So the items identified in the first year, well, we may well see that they become more serious over time.

Donald Trump's first year in office followed a familiar script. Like Alberto Fujimori, Hugo Chavez, and Recep Tayyip Erdogan, America's new president began his tenure by launching blistering rhetorical attacks on his opponents. He called the media the ``enemy of the American people,'' questioned judges' legitimacy, and threatened to cut federal funding to major cities. Predictably, these attacks triggered dismay, shock, and anger across the political spectrum. Journalists found themselves at the front lines, exposing-- but also provoking--the president's norm-breaking behavior. A study by the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics, and Public Policy found that the major news outlets were ``unsparing'' in their coverage of the Trump administration's first hundred days. Of news reports with a clear tone, the study found, 80 percent were negative--much higher than under Clinton (60 percent), George W. Bush (57 percent), and Obama (41 percent).

Soon, Trump administration officials were feeling besieged. Not a single week went by in which press coverage wasn't at least 70 percent negative. And amid swirling rumors about the Trump campaign's ties to Russia, a high profile special counsel, Robert Mueller, was appointed to oversee investigations into the case. Just a few months into his presidency, President Trump faced talk of impeachment. But he retained the support of his base, and like other elected demagogues, he doubled down. He claimed his administration was beset by powerful establishment forces, telling graduates of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy that ``no politician in history, and I say this with great surety, has been treated worse or more unfairly.'' The question, then, was how Trump would respond. Would an outsider president who considered himself to be under unwarranted assault lash out, as happened in Peru and Turkey?

President Trump exhibited clear authoritarian instincts during his first year in office. In Chapter 4, we presented three strategies by which elected authoritarians seek to consolidate power: capturing the referees, sidelining the key players, and rewriting the rules to tilt the playing field against opponents. Trump attempted all three of these strategies.

President Trump demonstrated striking hostility toward the referees--law enforcement, intelligence, ethics agencies, and the courts. Soon after his inauguration, he sought to ensure that the heads of U.S. intelligence agencies, including the FBI, the CIA, and the National Security Agency, would be personally loyal to him, apparently in the hope of using these agencies as a shield against investigations into his campaign's Russia ties. During his first week in office, President Trump summoned FBI Director James Comey to a one- on-one dinner in the White House in which, according to Comey, the president asked for a pledge of loyalty. He later reportedly pressured Comey to drop investigations into his recently departed national security director, Michael Flynn, pressed Director of National Intelligence Daniel Coats and CIA Director Mike Pompeo to intervene in Comey's investigation, and personally appealed to Coats and NSA head Michael Rogers to release statements denying the existence of any collusion with Russia (both refused).

President Trump also tried to punish or purge agencies that acted with independence. Most prominently, he dismissed Comey after it became clear that Comey could not be pressured into protecting the administration and was expanding its Russia investigation. Only once in the FBI's eighty-two-year history had a president fired the bureau's director before his ten- year term was up--and in that case, the move was in response to clear ethical violations and enjoyed bipartisan support.

The Comey firing was not President Trump's only assault on referees who refused to come to his personal defense. Trump had attempted to establish a personal relationship with Manhattan-based U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, whose investigations into money laundering reportedly threatened to reach Trump's inner circle; when Bharara, a respected anticorruption figure, continued the investigation, the president removed him. After Attorney General Jeff Sessions recused himself from the Russia investigation and his deputy, Rod Rosenstein, appointed the respected former FBI Director Robert Mueller as special counsel to oversee the investigation, Trump publicly shamed Sessions, reportedly seeking his resignation. White House lawyers even launched an effort to dig up dirt on Mueller, seeking conflicts of interest that could be used to discredit or dismiss him. By late 2017, many of Trump's allies were openly calling on him to fire Mueller, and there was widespread concern that he would soon do so.

So in this section, we are hearing about all of the attacks on the referees during Trump's--and this is just a classic part of an authoritarian government--attack the referees. And, of course, we saw it in year five, this year. Immediately, Trump took out special investigators of the various Agencies and did so in order to make sure that there wasn't the type of oversight that would point out to the public or to Congress where things were going wrong.

Take out the referees--that is the authoritarian strategy being laid out here.

President Trump's efforts to derail independent investigations evoked the kind of assaults on the referees routinely seen in less democratic countries--for example, the dismissal of Venezuelan Prosecutor General Luisa Ortega, a chavista appointee who asserted her independence and began to investigate corruption and abuse in the Maduro government. Although Ortega's term did not expire until 2021 and she could be legally removed only by the legislature (which was in opposition hands), the government's dubiously elected Constituent Assembly sacked her in August 2017.

President Trump also attacked judges who ruled against him. After Judge James Robart of the Ninth Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals blocked the administration's initial travel ban, Trump spoke of ``the opinion of this so-called judge, which essentially takes law-enforcement away from our country.'' Two months later, when the same court temporarily blocked the withholding of federal funds from sanctuary cities, the White House denounced the judgment as an attack on the rule of law by an ``unelected judge.'' Trump himself responded by threatening to break up the Ninth Circuit.

The president took an indirect swipe at the judiciary in August 2017 when he pardoned the controversial former Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of violating a federal court order to stop racial profiling. Arpaio was a political ally and a hero to many of Trump's anti-immigrant supporters. As we noted earlier, the chief executive's constitutional power to pardon is without limit, but presidents have historically exercised it with great restraint, seeking advice from the Justice Department and never issuing pardons for self-protection or political gain. President Trump boldly violated these norms.

Not only did he not consult the Justice Department, but the pardon was clearly political--it was popular with his base. The move reinforced fears that the President would eventually pardon himself and his inner circle--something that was reportedly explored by his lawyers. Such a move would constitute an unprecedented attack on judicial independence. As constitutional scholar Martin Redish put it, ``If the president can immunize his agents in this manner, the courts will effectively lose any meaningful authority to protect constitutional rights against invasion by the executive branch.''

This discussion over pardoning himself and the risk it creates of misbehavior is an interesting prelude to the fact that, essentially, the Supreme Court pardoned Trump, saying that the President cannot commit a crime. If he can't commit a crime, then you can do whatever and you don't have to be pardoned because you haven't committed a crime. So the Supreme Court essentially gave him the same protection and created the same risk for an authoritarian state that Trump pardoning himself would have resulted in.

The administration responded by launching attacks on the OGE.

Office of Government Ethics.

House Oversight Chair Jason Chaffetz, a Trump ally, even hinted at an investigation of Shaub. In May, administration officials tried to force the OGE to halt investigations into the White House's appointment of ex-lobbyists. Alternately harassed and ignored by the White House, Shaub resigned, leaving behind what journalist Ryan Lizza called a ``broken'' OGE.

President Trump's behavior toward the courts, law enforcement and intelligence bodies, and other independent agencies was drawn from an authoritarian playbook. He openly spoke of using the Justice Department and the FBI to go after Democrats, including Hillary Clinton. And in late 2017, the Justice Department considered nominating a special counsel to investigate Clinton. Despite its purges and threats, however, the administration could not capture the referees. Trump did not replace Comey with a loyalist, largely because such a move was vetoed by key Senate Republicans. Likewise, Senate Republicans resisted Trump's efforts to replace Attorney General Sessions. But the president had other battles to wage.

I think this is an important moment to remember that back in 2017, colleagues across the aisle played a role of reason in pushing back on some of the unacceptable things that Trump was trying to do.

They protected Comey. As it said:

Trump did not replace Comey with a loyalist, largely because such a move was vetoed by key Senate Republicans. Likewise, Senate Republicans resisted Trump's efforts to replace Attorney General Sessions.

Early in the conversation, we were talking about the importance of one of the checks and balances of the Constitution, which is for the Senate and the House to hold hearings on what is going on.

When I read the two-page letter from the 283, I believe it was, 282 former career employees at the Department of Justice, they laid out a host of things that are going wrong. It is essentially an invitation: Please hold hearings because a lot of bad stuff is happening inside the Department of Justice.

So I encourage colleagues on both sides of the aisle who serve on the Judiciary Committee to take them up on that invitation, to bring these former members and others to share what is going on, because that is our responsibility under the Constitution, to provide that type of spotlight, insight, and hopefully advice to help the administration, well, more effectively and legally pursue the enhancement of the American system of justice.

Of course, this whole litany of the way Trump attacked the referees was a prelude to the absolute assault on the referees that occurred during this year in such a systematic fashion, in such an expanded fashion.

The Trump administration also mounted efforts to sideline key players in the political system. President Trump's rhetorical attacks on critics in the media are an example. His repeated accusations that outlets such as the New York Times and CNN were dispensing ``fake news'' and conspiring against him look familiar to any student of authoritarianism. In a February 2017 tweet, he called the media the ``enemy of the American people,'' a term that, critics noted, mimicked one used by Stalin and Mao. Trump's rhetoric was often threatening. A few days after his ``enemy of the people'' tweet, Trump told the Conservative Political Action Committee:

I love the First Amendment; nobody loves it better than me. Nobody. . . . But as you saw throughout the entire campaign, and even now, the fake news doesn't tell the truth. . . . I say it doesn't represent the people. It never will represent the people, and we're going to do something about it.

Do what, exactly? The following month, President Trump returned to his campaign pledge to ``open up the libel laws,'' tweeting that the New York Times had ``disgraced the media world. Gotten me wrong for two solid years. Change libel laws?'' When asked by a reporter whether the administration was really considering such changes, White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus said, ``I think that's something we've looked at.'' Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa used this approach. His multimillion-dollar defamation suits and jailing of journalists on charges of defamation had a powerfully chilling effect on the media. Although Trump dropped the libel issue, he continued his threats. In July, he retweeted an altered video clip made from old WWE footage of him tackling and then punching someone with a CNN logo superimposed on his face.

President Trump also considered using government regulatory agencies against unfriendly media companies. During the 2016 campaign, he had threatened Jeff Bezos, the owner of the Washington Post and Amazon, with antitrust action, tweeting: ``If I become president, oh do they have problems.'' He also threatened to block the pending merger of Time Warner (CNN's Parent company) and AT&T, and during the first months of his presidency, there were reports that White House advisors considered using the administration's antitrust authority as a source of leverage against CNN. And finally, in October 2017, Trump attacked NBC and other networks by threatening to ``challenge their license.''

This was written in 2018, but you see the strategies as they are reporting on January 2017 through January 2018. You see how the strategies were being explored that have been so fiercely pursued this year. You see that here he was threatening a merger, which is something he did with CBS. You see that here he was threatening libel law changes. And while he didn't do that, apparently, what he did in the most recent year was to do a lawsuit, a $10 billion lawsuit against the Wall Street Journal because he didn't like something that they said. He also attacked, of course, ``60 Minutes'' over how they edited an interview with Kamala Harris.

So the strategy of attacking the press in 2017 continues with Trump reentering office in 2025.

And finally, in October 2017, Trump attacked NBC and other networks by threatening to ``challenge their license.''

There was one area in which the Trump administration went beyond threats to try to use the machinery of government to punish critics. During his first week in office, President Trump signed an executive order authorizing federal agencies to withhold funding from ``sanctuary cities'' that refused to cooperate with the administration's crackdown on undocumented immigrants. ``If we have to,'' he declared in February 2017, ``we'll defund.'' The plan was reminiscent of the Chavez government's repeated moves to strip opposition-run city governments of their control over local hospitals, police forces, ports, and other infrastructure. Unlike the Venezuelan president, however, President Trump was blocked by the courts.

Although President Trump has waged a war of words against the media and other critics, those words have not (yet) led to action. No journalists have been arrested, and no media outlets have altered their coverage due to pressure from the government. Trump's efforts to tilt the playing field to his advantage have been more worrying. In May 2017, he called for changes in what he called ``archaic'' Senate rules, including the elimination of the filibuster, which would have strengthened the Republican majority at the expense of the Democratic minority. Senate Republicans did eliminate the filibuster for Supreme Court nominations, clearing the way for Neil Gorsuch's ascent to the Court, but they rejected the idea of doing away with it entirely.

Now, that topic is something I know a little bit about, having immersed myself in exploration of the ins and outs of the filibuster. And one may wonder why the Senate Republican majority did not proceed to eliminate the filibuster. Well, here is the reason why: Mostly, my Republican colleagues do their policy through tax bills. Tax bills can be done through reconciliation, and reconciliation is a simple majority mechanism. So, therefore, they largely don't need to dump the filibuster because they can do their policy by simple majority already.

You saw that this year with the so-called Big Beautiful Bill that we called the ``Big Ugly Betrayal,'' done solely on a party line, and if I recall right, all of us in the 53-to-47 Senate--I think we ended up with a 50-50 vote broken by the Vice President. So it passed by the narrowest of margins, but it was done entirely on simple majority by one party.

Meanwhile, Democrats tend to like policy ideas, and policy ideas require a supermajority. So if you are a Republican leader, you can pursue your objectives by simple majority through the tax bill, and then when you are the minority, you can block the Democrats' policy bills using the supermajority requirement.

So it is essentially: Heads, we win; tails, you lose. That is a pretty good arrangement. Who would want to mess with that?

Now, Trump didn't understand that. I am sure if he was asked, he couldn't explain it. But that is why it doesn't make sense for Republicans to get rid of the filibuster, because it is inherently advantageous for them, given the difference in how Democrats and Republicans pursue bills.

Perhaps the most antidemocratic initiative yet undertaken by the Trump administration is the creation of the Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity, chaired by Vice President Mike Pence but run by Vice Chair Kris Kobach. To understand its potential impact, recall that the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts prompted a massive shift in party identification: The Democratic Party became the primary representative of minority and first- and second- generation immigrant voters, while GOP voters remained overwhelmingly white. Because the minority share of the electorate is growing, these changes favor the Democrats, a perception that was reinforced by Barack Obama's 2008 victory, in which minority turnout rates were unusually high.

Every now and then, we see the parties flip on a significant issue. That is always kind of an interesting question to explore how that happens.

So here is the Republican Party that was founded, antislavery--the Republican party that fought for civil rights bills against the Southern Democrats who resisted civil rights bills, including filibustering them to keep them from happening. So you would think that in that situation, once civil rights were actually conveyed by the Voting Rights Act, it might be the Republican Party that quickly absorbed the new voters, since the Republican Party had been the premiere champion for civil rights. But that is not the way it worked out.

The Democratic Party, with Johnson, took the lead in overturning the bans on voting participation by minority Americans. The Democratic Party, although being the party that had long oppressed and suppressed civil rights, became the party that pushed through the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act. And it is the Democratic Party, despite its long history of suppressing civil rights, that became the welcoming party for newly-enfranchised minority voters.

Another interesting flip, in my mind, is on international trade. When I came to the Senate, it was primarily Republicans who wanted the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In fact, it was very important trading strategy for very powerful companies. And it was mostly Democrats who opposed it--not purely, but that was certainly the weight.

But then Trump, when he ran for President the first time, he started advocating against the TPP and started advocating for bringing factories back to America, including using tariffs to make American factories more competitive. And so the Republican Party, after his election, became the party that was driving against the TPP, and it was more the Democrats who still had folks who were supporting it--anyway, another flip worthy of thinking about as, over time, special events take place that change the direction.

The first special event was the passage of the 1964 and 1965 bills, led by Democrats that converted the anti-civil rights party into the pro-civil rights party. And the flip on the Trans-Pacific Partnership being driven by Trump's effort as a Republican candidate to become an opponent of the TPP, rather than the traditional position of Republicans to be for it.

Perceiving a threat, some Republican leaders came up with a response that evoked memories of the Jim Crow South: make it harder for low-income minority citizens to vote. Because poor minority voters were overwhelmingly Democratic, measures that dampened turnout among such voters would . . . tilt the playing field in favor of Republicans. This would be done via strict voter identification laws--requiring, for example, that voters present a valid driver's license or other government-issued photo ID upon arrival at the polling station.

The push for voter ID laws was based on a false claim: that voter fraud is widespread in the [U.S.] All reputable studies have concluded that levels of such fraud in this country are low.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I see the Senator from Arizona on the floor, and, yes, I would yield for a question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you so much to my colleague from Arizona for your question.

I so appreciate the decades of experience and knowledge you bring in regard to the services. I have only a small chapter in my life of 2 years working for Secretary Weinberger as a Presidential fellow. But I didn't wear a uniform. I was a civilian working on a host of different programs for 4 months or so. They were great assignments. I learned an awful lot.

But everything you are talking about comes from your deep connection, involvement in the uniformed services, and such a wealth of knowledge just listening to you. I so appreciate that you bring that to bear.

In terms of my concern about the military, I felt, from my much more limited world, mostly the Pentagon, that folks have worked incredibly hard not to be partisan. Certainly, the Secretary of Defense brought a set of missions that tied into President Reagan's administration and his goals. But people didn't overtly talk about pardons or press in terms of the sort of derisive commentary we have now and heard on cable television on both sides.

When I think about these last few years, I am concerned that the military has been substantially politicalized. I may be wrong about that because I don't have that view from inside. But I think about how the President gave the speech to the 800 generals, and he basically said: If you don't like what I am saying, you can leave the room. If you leave, I will strip you of your rank and your career will end.

To me, that was: I want you to be loyal to me, not the Constitution. I want you to be loyal to me, the President of the United States, which is, I felt, very inappropriate and out of sync with the military I saw, ready to work in partnership with administrations of either side.

But I don't know if we see, for example, the speeches at the military academy. I recall some story about folks cheering and clapping for what was a partisan set of political points being made. I don't know. I am going to leave it to your analysis because you have a much better sense of that.

But when it comes to the effort to create a pathway to use the military against civilians inside the United States of America, that is of grave concern to my constituents; to look at the current dynamic now in which President Trump said Portland is a war zone, it is war- ravaged, it is in complete chaos--while he was saying that, there might have been two or three protesters outside the ICE building conducting themselves peacefully; there have been weeks with no arrests--that is a real invention.

When our Governor talked to President Trump, she pointed that out, and I gather he was like, ``Well, I have seen the tapes.'' I don't know what tapes he was watching, maybe 2020 tapes when we did have actual conflict in the city. But here you have Portlanders, who have been so restrained. Even when they have suffered being hit by pepper balls, tear gas, they have not engaged in the scuffles with police, and they have been protesting with joy and whimsy.

I mean, it is a strange feeling to see people bringing their pets down and having ``Keep Your Paws Off Portland'' signs or folks handing out pastries in pajamas or otherwise proceeding to celebrate their joy as a way of saying to President Trump: There is no riot here. Don't use anything that you have said as a foundation for deploying troops to our city.

In fact, a district judge simply said that the President's description of the city is untethered to the facts.

There is a huge concern that the President is striving to get the courts to make decisions that will open the doors and say there will be deference to the President so he can deploy, under title 10, the National Guard, the federalized National Guard, against peaceful protesters or that the President will proceed to using the Insurrection Act, which does inherently give more support, deference, to the President.

So there is a lot of concern, to my colleague from Arizona, about what is going to unfold.

Meanwhile, I am delighted to see my colleague from New Mexico on the floor, and I would welcome a question if he has one.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Yes, I will yield for a question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Yes, I am yielding for your question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you so much for your question.

You have laid out so many points here about kind of the mismanagement of America's funds, and we could add a few more to them: the craziness of spending more money than it costs to buy a Presidential jet--to rehab a jet that was given to the President so that he could actually send it on to his personal library after he leaves office. It is profoundly disturbing, and I appreciate the way you framed it.

There is enough money for luxury glitz--for a megaballroom. I can't even imagine how anything could cost that much to build. Maybe there will be an eighth-inch of gold on every surface or something--I don't know--but that doesn't serve the American people. It doesn't make one single person in America have better healthcare or a better education or a decent home in a decent community or a better job. It doesn't give you quality of opportunity. It doesn't tackle any of the environmental issues.

It is simply a gross display by the President, who has constructed his entire administration on the basis of a theory to govern, which is ``families lose, and billionaires win.''

Families lose their healthcare so there can be massive tax breaks for billionaires.

They lose their Medicaid on top of their ACA healthcare in order to fund massive tax breaks for billionaires.

They lose their nutrition assistance to fund tax breaks for billionaires.

Then, over the next 30 years, their bill runs up $30 trillion in additional debt to fund these tax breaks for billionaires. Maybe I should say ``trillionaires'' now. You think about how that debt, that additional $30 trillion in debt, how much that would compromise the ability to have future programs for healthcare and housing and education.

Folks in my State--probably the same thing with folks in your State-- last Wednesday--the information come out a week ago so people could look on the exchange and see what their policies are going to cost. We don't have a new, comprehensive analysis. The preanalysis, the projection, was that the average cost would go up not 5 percent or 10 percent or 15 percent but about 68 percent. That is because the premium goes up, the tax credits come down, and costs become massively more expensive--now maybe a lot more because the average across the country is that premium payments would go up 114 percent--more than double.

How do you explain to anyone that you slashed their healthcare affordability to fund a giveaway of $20 to $40 billion to Argentina or to fund that new ballroom? I mean, that is insane. I mean, that is, well, just like the rich rubbing our nose in it, for ordinary Americans: You won't be able to afford healthcare, but, wow, we got that new jet, that jet you talked about, for Noem--I hadn't heard about that one. We got the new ballroom. We got the tax breaks for the richest people.

This government by and for the billionaires ties into the authoritarian perspective, because if you are a regular leader of a democracy, you feel you are accountable to the people, and you would never ever pursue a bill that defunds healthcare for ordinary families to put more dollars in the pockets of the already richest Americans. But if you are an authoritarian--and the entire time I have been on the floor has been to ring the alarm bells. Ring the alarm bells. Authoritarianism is here now. I am told that each time I say this, lots of bells are posted online. So just for my team's fun, ring the alarm bells. I want that to be heard all across America, that we are way off track. This is the wrong way to go.

In a democracy, you want to have the foundation for families to thrive because you are accountable to the people, and the people that run the operation. But in an authoritarian government, boy, that is not the case at all. Instead, it is like the leaders feel like the people are accountable to them. So if they have to do without, well, too bad. As the phrase goes, let them eat cake. If they don't have bread, oh, let them eat cake.

So there we are. And our responsibility is to say to the American people that the way to stop this authoritarian takeover is to have very significant, robust demonstrations across America, like we had on Saturday. The citizens have to make a big deal. Protest outside our offices. Write to us. Phone us. Give us a hard time. Tell us we should be doing more. It is that feedback that really caused me to say I need to try to do more to ring the alarm bells about where we are headed and, thus, to be up here all night and now through the morning and into the afternoon.

I am getting a little unsteady on my feet, but if we collectively, through this dialogue, are bringing attention to people in saying: Yes, 7 million people were out there in the streets--next time, we need 10 million. Do your local demonstration with those who went. Hear about what they did, and spread the word that this is not normal, this destruction of our rights; this weaponization of the judiciary to go after political enemies; the effort to open the doors so that the President can deploy, with the court's approval, the military into our cities when there is no rebellion, no insurrection, and no invasion. So that is our responsibility--to call it out and to carry on the fight.

I believe the American people are starting to understand just how much their freedoms are being crushed, and that is why we need to be in partnership, to steer this country back and save our Republic.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I see the Senator from Washington State is on the floor, and I would be very happy to yield for a question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Too many.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I note that my colleague from Delaware is on the floor.

Ms. BLUNT ROCHESTER. Yes, I am.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I would welcome a question if you have one.

Ms. BLUNT ROCHESTER.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I will yield for a question.

Ms. BLUNT ROCHESTER. First let me say thank you, Senator Merkley, for your tenacity, your energy, your compassion, and your love for this country. I mean, really, that is what this is about. That is why you have been standing on this floor for over 20 hours, and I want to say thank you on behalf of the American people.

And I want to say, Mr. President, we are now 21 days into this Republican shutdown and well over 200 days into the Trump administration.

Costs for housing are up, food prices are up, energy costs have gone up, and we are about to see our healthcare costs skyrocket for millions of Americans--all while the President pushes this country to the literal brink of a constitutional crisis.

So let's recap. The Department of Defense is trying to censor the press. This administration is offering deals to universities to teach Trump priorities, taking away independence and academic freedom. They tried to push dissenters off airwaves.

But this is America. And Senator Merkley--you and I know--here, the people have the power, and the power of the people matters. Here, the voices of our communities hold weight, and that is why I stand with you as you ring the alarms.

The people are standing up, they are speaking out, and they are saying: Enough is enough.

What does that look like? It looks like journalists, from MSNBC to FOX News, handing in their DOD press badges, choosing to stand up for their First Amendment rights rather than bowing to the whims of the Secretary of Defense. It means universities are refusing to play ball, declining the offer. It means Americans use the power of their purses to say you will not silence someone like Jimmy Kimmel and he was reinstated.

But it doesn't stop there. It is an unprecedented move by Federal judges appointed by Democrats and Republicans alike that are speaking out on an impending judicial crisis over the Supreme Court's emergency orders.

State governments are joining compacts to protect access to public health for citizens as this administration rips away access to vaccines. Airports across America are refusing to play this administration's propaganda videos. And perhaps most importantly, millions of Americans from across our country have made their voices known and heard.

Seven million Americans did what I think was truly a part of the American spirit by using their voices in a peaceful way, assembling, doing it in a way that was both joyful but also patriotic--and demanding that we in Congress also stand up.

So we are standing up for our communities. And thank you again, Senator Merkley, for doing so. And we are fighting for families across America who are about to see their healthcare coverage go up or maybe even be eliminated.

In this moment, we don't need a King. The people need a President for all of the people--not a $20 billion bailout for Argentina, not a new White House gold ballroom when people can't even afford to pay their rent or to buy a home on their own--and not a Justice Department bailout--all while November 1 is fast approaching and tens of millions of Americans face this healthcare crisis: rising cost or a total elimination of their healthcare or medical debt. Costs are already high--and now this. It is time to do the right thing and to take a stand.

And with the President poised to leave town, we ask that he stay and pull together the partners--the House, which has been out of session. And I came from the House. I don't think I ever saw anything like this where they literally have been missing in action for weeks. As a matter of fact, for our August break, they left in July. This is unprecedented, and we need them back at the table. They need to do the work.

And so my question to you, Senator Merkley: In light of what the President wants to spend money on and what the American people need, does the President have his priorities straight? Are his priorities right on behalf of the American people?

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Well, thank you so much to my colleague from Delaware.

That question rather answers itself after listening to all the points you were making, which were right on.

How can it possibly be the right priorities if you are spending your money on tax breaks for billionaires while cutting the tax credits that enable families to buy insurance at an affordable price? How can it possibly be the right thing to do that you are cutting child nutrition while you are spending a huge amount on a ballroom--undoubtedly a Trumpian gold-style ballroom. How much was it: 200 million or 300 million? Some crazy, crazy sum. I can't even imagine how you could spend that much on a room.

And you mentioned this $20 billion bailout--20 billion with a ``b'' bailout--for Argentina. Now, that one came out of nowhere. I don't remember a bill on the floor here saying that we are passing a spending bill that has in it a 20--and the President said maybe as much as a $40 billion bailout.

Is there some authority I don't know about, maybe? I don't know. The books are complicated. But I doubt it because what this President is doing as an authoritarian is just saying: I am going to do what the hell I want. I am in charge. The bank account of America is mine. Hell, I am going to build a glitzy ballroom, and I am going to try to refurbish a jet for Air Force One that will only be workable for a few months, if that, before I send it off to my Presidential library--a huge waste of our money.

And this bailout for Argentina--you know, earlier I was talking to a colleague from Washington State who said a lot of soybeans are shipped through Washington State but they are normally bought by China. Well, China isn't buying a single bean this year because of the tension and the argument between our two nations over tariffs. One moment, the President put a 50-percent tariff on China; and the next moment, they are saying they are not going to send out any strategic minerals, critical minerals. Next: Well, I will put a 100-percent tariff on you.

I mean, nobody makes an investment in the United States of America, a factory here, when we are in tariff chaos. There is nothing about this that does anything except throw people up and down, and everyone gets hurt. They don't know if the tariffs are going to affect what they sell. They don't know if they are going to be able to affect the inputs of the things they manufacture. They don't know what they should plant if they are farmers.

And where are all these beans--unsold soybeans--going to go this year? Where are they going to be stored? Are they going to be wasted? Are they going to be plowed back into the ground for fertilizer? I don't know.

But I do know this chaos is terrible for America. And the small business world came and talked to me yesterday, the representatives-- maybe you had them in your office as well--and they said: Main Street is Pain Street. And I did hear that--I am going to note that Senator Markey may have been the first person I heard that from. But I thought that was a way to describe it.

And they certainly said: Yes, there are two components of that pain. One is the loss of the credits to buy healthcare--because small businesses don't have big plans with big insurers. They provide some help, and folks go and buy on the exchange. And they said, second of all, the tariffs.

So Main Street is Pain Street. That is not a good future for America. And families with no health insurance, that is a terrible look for America. And by ``look,'' I don't mean the atmospherics of it; I mean that is the wrong mission in a republic.

And the connection I have been drawing between Trump's authoritarian personality and tendencies is that an authoritarian feels that people are accountable to him so he can do any damn thing he wants and control anything without advice or controls or checks from anyone. And he has hated it every time checks were applied in the past. He is going after some of those folks now who applied those checks in the past.

And the leader of a democracy says: I am accountable to the people. The people need healthcare, housing, education, good-paying jobs, investment in infrastructure, quality of opportunity, and let's take on some of those environmental problems. That is what a leader of a democracy does.

So here we have this authoritarian President crushing our freedoms, trying to steal the power of the purse from Congress to concentrate it in the Executive, proceeding to spend money wherever he wants.

That $20 billion, I would love to see--I am not being coy. I would rather have all of the Senators right here and say: Let's pass a bill right now and say ``hell no.'' You know, a lot of that $20 billion is going to the debt that has been built up in Argentina, and friends of President Trump have reportedly bought that debt at a huge discount. I didn't see how much of a discount. But what that means: If you buy a dollar of debt and you buy it at, say--let's make the math easy--25 cents, then you get a 400-percent return if the money goes to Argentina and they pay off the debt at face value.

That is not about making America first; that is about making Scott Bessent and his friends--at least I have seen Scott Bessent's name in some of those articles--and his friends, who are connected to buying up Argentine debt. I am not sure if Scott himself bought it or not. But, the point is, make some billionaires richer. It is another make a few friends of the President and friends of his Cabinet members richer-- that $20 billion--or possibly $40 billion, the President said.

Think about that--20 billion. That is $50 for every single American tossed in a pot to hand out to a strongman in Argentina. Forty billion--$100 a person, handed out to a strongman. Every one of us, take $100 out of our pocket.

Ms. BLUNT ROCHESTER. Will the Senator yield for one more question?

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I will yield for another question. Thank you.

Ms. BLUNT ROCHESTER. As you talked about the small businesses, Senator, I was reminded that, as we look at who is actually purchasing this healthcare in the marketplace--a lot of people don't even know they are on ACA and receiving the tax credit--that half of them are small businesses.

I come from Delaware. We are urban, suburban, rural, and coastal. And so we also know that a quarter of farmers and ranchers are getting their healthcare this way. And then we think about the fact that this issue is disproportionally affecting red States, not just blue States.

All Americans are going to be hurt. This is why your ringing the alarm is so important. And I would ask a very simple question: Is there a connection between the healthcare crisis that we are in and an authoritarian regime?

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Well, there is, absolutely, such a powerful connection because the authoritarian doesn't care about the fundamental programs for the people because they don't feel they are accountable to the people.

So just as our authoritarian President is weaponizing the judiciary to go after his opponents, he is using the power of the government over licenses and mergers in order to try to control what broadcasting does to attack freedom of speech, trying to control what our universities teach by threatening the collapse--threatening and taking away the research grants and telling them they can't have foreign students that are essential to their revenue streams.

All of those authoritarian pieces--the stealing of the purse--but then there is this piece, the philosophy, and the philosophy is: The people owe me, the authoritarian; not I am accountable to them.

So, therefore, it is totally legit to go for legislation that slashes the programs that are fundamental to families to make the rich richer. And I want to go back to that picture that I had up earlier of the billionaires standing behind President Trump at the inauguration. And at that point, maybe we didn't know for sure that he had campaigned on helping families. But we didn't see champions of families behind him. We saw the billionaires behind him.

That is exactly what has happened. The philosophy is: Families lose and billionaires win. And our effort, as those in a democracy, is that we are fighting for the vision that families thrive, and the rich and powerful pay a fair share.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I would yield for a question. Yes.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. My colleague from New York, the minority leader, is absolutely right. The Trump priorities are absolutely perverse. Well, here we are in a structure of the Senate, and what is the Senate about? Coming together and saying here is where I want to go; where do you want to go? How can we make those two things work together to make America better?

We can't always find the answer, but I will tell you one thing is damn sure: You can't find the answer if you can't sit down and have the conversation. And here with are with the House on vacation for over a month. I guess they are getting paid.

And here we are in the Senate without an agreement to just sit down and talk to each other about the framework because it appears that the key, as you have suggested, the lynchpin is they will not sit down and offer ideas and work out a deal without Trump in the room or Trump guiding the outcomes.

So he is the factor.

So as he jets off--and in Oregon, last week, people, a week ago Wednesday, they saw what their prices are going to be. The premiums are higher; the credits lower. They have got to fill in the gap in between. And are they going to be able to afford insurance? Are they going to be able to make that decision by January 1? They are stressed about this.

I had small businesses in yesterday, representatives from Oregon, and the vision there is ``Main Street is in Pain Street'' because of the tariffs and because of the fact that many of them--a large share of them--buy their insurance on the exchange.

And this man who runs a small company--it is a lighting-for-events company--and I think he said he had four employees. I talked to three of them, and three of them said: We are not buying insurance.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. We can't afford it. We looked at the new prices. We can't afford it. We are going to go without insurance. We all know the huge calamity.

Well, when the Speaker of the House that I saw on the boob tube--on the television--says there is nothing to talk about, I think immediately: There are 20 million reasons to talk about. Those 20 million are the 20 million Americans seeing these huge increases. Many of them will not be able to buy insurance at all.

Let's add to that, since the bill, also, is just 15 months out now from slashing in a devastating fashion our Medicaid Program, which in combination with the effects on the Affordable Care exchange will put 15 million people out of healthcare, 235,000 in my home State of Oregon--and 70 percent of the kids in my rural areas are part of the Oregon Health Plan and are on Medicaid. I can just not even conceive of the carnage that will be done to the quality of life without healthcare available to so many people.

Isn't that a hell of a number of reasons to sit down and brainstorm together? You can't get to a common purpose if you can't even talk to each other. You are here. Your office is open. You are available to talk. You are inviting them to talk. They are saying no. That is a travesty in our Republic.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. That is horrific that he is flying away. He absolutely should be sitting down right now and holding a conversation with you about how we solve this problem for millions of Americans.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I see my colleague from Vermont on the floor. I will take a question if he has one.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I will yield for a question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you to my colleague from Vermont. I appreciate your points, and I do share them, yes. You expressed them thoroughly and compassionately. And thank you for your advocacy.

I see that my colleague from Virginia is on the floor. Would my colleague from Virginia consider asking a question?

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I will yield for a question, yes.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you so much, my colleague for Virginia, for laying out this story, which is then quite presented because of its extraordinary nature, to have U.S. attorneys basically fired in short order because they stood up for the principle of the rule of law, rather than agree to be part of a political persecution or prosecution team.

And I must say they are candidates to go up on my wall of heroes. And I so respect--now here, as you said with Todd, he wasn't coming from the blue side of the aisle. And he wasn't just a newbie to the house. He was the leader of the house Republicans. When they were in charge, he was the speaker.

Now, I was the speaker as well. I have a little affection for the speakers, but I know how difficult it can be to run a chamber. So you have to be deeply, deeply connected to your colleagues and your caucus as you manage that process.

So this individual, just by that resume, clearly, was coming with a set of values deeply rooted in the Republican Party. The value he didn't have was to screw over innocent people. And thank goodness we still have people willing to stand up for justice not, if you will, injustice.

Because that is what we are seeing. We see it in the form of the enemies list that the President is going after, but we also see it--and more hidden normally--the firing of individuals, the tossing of individuals who aren't willing to take a loyalty test. Their loyalty is to the Constitution, not to the President.

So I think it says a tremendous amount about how far we are into the authoritarian state. This is kind of standard operating procedure for an authoritarian. You mentioned kind of creeping authoritarianism. I would say we are on full-stream authoritarianism because so much is happening in terms of the firing of employees who are failing the loyalty test; the decimating of programs at the whim of the President, rather than by the laws being passed here; ignoring laws that apply to the Executive, like the fact that you can't fire inspectors general unless it is for cause and 30 days.

The attack on due process and free speech and free press, the weaponization, in general, of the Justice Department--which is kind of a facet of it--and then the effort to get court decisions that enable the President to deploy the military in the streets, when there is no insurrection, no rebellion, and no invasion.

And this last piece, I think, is extraordinarily dangerous, not yet an issue that has come to your home in Virginia, but it has come to Southern California and to DC and to Portland, OR, and to Chicago, IL. And there will be others because the whole intent is to have the court decisions resolved that provide the precedent for deploying troops when and how the President wants, according to his definition of what a rebellion is or an insurrection is, as opposed to the realities. So there are no checks on that use of military.

These are all so many things happening all at once. Remember, we are simply 9 months into this administration. Wow. I mean, it is breathtaking. You had to have--the team had to have a careful plan, ready to roll, things that were going to be done every day. And that is why they had Project 2025. That is why they have Russ Vought at the head of OMB, being the engineer of that Trumpian trainer.

And we are in big trouble, so we are ringing the alarm bells. You are ringing the alarm bells. The people--they are 7 million strong on the weekend--were ringing the alarm bells in the biggest demonstration in U.S. history in a single day, but that is so important right now if we are going to save our Republic.

And thank you for being a core part of the rescue team.

I yield for a possible additional question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Yes, I will yield for another question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Well, thank you for the question. I thought when you were going to hand me this I was going to have a Rorschach test or something of that nature. But I knew within seconds what this was, as soon as I realized it was machinery and not parts of a bridge. But this is the demolition at the White House to prepare for some $300 million ballroom. At least that is what I am nominating as my answer, and I would yield to you a question if you would like to follow up.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I will indeed allow a question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. You are asking such a cerebral and philosophical question here as I am in the 20-whatever hour of the day.

But here we have evidence of the President tearing down a symbol of our Republic and building a symbol that is really a symbol about authoritarian power, about a government that serves the rich.

Just the fact that we are spending money on a $300 million ballroom-- which I can't even imagine how it cost that much--when at the same time, the President will not come as requested by the minority leader in the House and minority leader in the Senate and sit down and work on it. I am sure they are willing to go to him, sit down, and work on the fact that we are facing 20 million people who are going to have their healthcare costs doubled. But instead of addressing that, the President is tearing down part of the symbol of our Republic, a President, and building a symbol of a King.

I thank my colleague from Oregon for this important conversation and for your stamina and patriotism.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. My stamina is getting a little shaky. I see my colleague from California standing behind me. I will get out of the way. I ask if you would care to ask a question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I will yield for a question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Well, I so appreciate the question from my colleague from California.

I must say this is a pretty comprehensive list you put forward, and I was checking them off in the order of issues that I have been raising over the many hours through the night last night, but I think the one that I didn't have that I actually agree with very much is your final point of the firehose of falsehoods, because we are just adrift in a sea of misinformation and disinformation. Then added into that toxic brew is a whole lot of just basic propaganda in a place it doesn't belong.

When you go out to the Portland airport, you will not hear the tape that Noem wants played. She wanted it played in airports all around the country, and a group of airports, led first by Portland, OR, said: No. It is breaking the law. It is breaking the Hatch Act; it is breaking the Anti-Lobbying Act; and it is breaking some other act on the list.

In a situation where the administration does not care what the law says, the philosophy is this: We are the unitary executive. We are in charge, and we can do whatever the hell we want--a ``take us to court if you don't like it'' attitude. Then we see the deliberate crushing of rights, and we see the deliberate grabbing of the power of the purse from Congress.

The difference between an authoritarian government--and there are many differences, but one way to describe the difference between an authoritarian government and a democracy is, in a democracy, the representatives of the people decide what the programs are, how they will be funded, and how they will be run. In an authoritarian government, all of those powers--``What are the programs? How much money will we put into them? How will they be run?''--transition to the executive, the all-powerful executive.

So every time we hear Trump or his Cabinet members saying, ``I am canceling that grant'' or ``I am defunding that program because it doesn't act consistent with the priorities of this administration,'' that is an authoritarian statement, and we are deep into this authoritarian crisis.

The poster behind me says:

Ring the alarm bells.

I thank you for helping to ring these alarm bells in a very cogent and extensive way.

I thank the 7 million people who went out and protested on Saturday for ringing the alarm bells because what we know is that, if we do not confront tyranny in its first year and if we do not find a way to have a strong rebuttal in the next election, then it becomes entrenched, and it is our responsibility--our oath to the Constitution--to not let that happen.

Thank you.

I notice we have a colleague from Vermont on the floor, if the colleague might be interested in asking a question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I would yield for a question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Well, thank you for that question. I am on the verge of falling over.

Mr. WELCH: And the staff.

Mr. MERKLEY: But I have got an hour more before we are going to wrap up this effort.

I am so pleased that so many have been able to come from the caucus and help ring the alarm bells, because this is the most perilous moment for our Republic since the Civil War, and never did I expect it to be in my time. I thought, yes, we argue over housing policy, and how can we best have a decent home in a decent community? Yes, we argue over education policy, and how can there be a pathway for every child to have a full and productive life? All of these are foundations.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Oh, another question. I would yield for another question. Yes, I would.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Make it a long one.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Well, I appreciate the question from my colleague from Vermont.

I must say soybeans have come up several times today, as has Argentina, and this is so troubling.

Now, I will tell you, when I met with my Farm Bureau, everyone has a little bit of queasiness even if tariffs haven't touched them yet, but the tariffs are changing all the time. So how might it suddenly affect the market if another tariff change is inputted and so forth?

Everyone in the agricultural world is terrified that, if they lose their market, even temporarily, those relationships deteriorate. When new relationships are forged, it is hard to get people back. If you have let people down once, then what happens next?

So this is the situation--this double deal, I guess I will call it, with Argentina--with our, well, having a trade war with China. So China doesn't buy a single thing. You said not a single bushel, and I have heard, yep, nothing, nada.

Senator Murray of Washington was down here, saying: We have got all of these beans that normally travel through Washington State before they get exported. Where the hell are they going to be stored?

I don't know, but what I do know is that a lot of folks may not have a place to store them. I look forward to learning more about what is going to happen to this massive crop that there is no customer for because China went to Argentina.

Then you mentioned a second part of the Argentina deal to which the President says: Do you know what? I want to bail out this far-right government down there because they are in trouble--and we don't want to let a far-right government be in trouble--with $20 billion and maybe $40 billion.

Think of how much money that is. That is $100 for every single person in the United States of America. You know, if I went door-to-door in Oregon and personally asked everybody, ``Would you like to give $100 to Argentina?'' do you know how many takers I would have?

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I think I would get zero takers.

By the way, where is the legislation that gives the President the power to give $20 billion or $40 billion to Argentina?

I haven't looked it up yet. I am going to look it up, but I think it is exactly a feature of an authoritarian government that he wants to self-help a fellow authoritarian government but with a twist. The twist is that, apparently, a group of well-placed colleagues--maybe friends of the Treasury Secretary, I believe, that I may have read, but I won't say that definitively--bought up some of the debt in Argentina. They bought it at a discount. That is my understanding.

Again, I have not double-checked this. So I am saying it with some caution.

But what happens when you do that, and then there is a bailout, and you get face value?

Let's say you pay 25 cents on the dollar. When you get face value after a bailout and you make a 400-percent return, well, that is great for the richest of whoever they are in America whom Trump wants to help out.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I will yield, but it has to be in the form of a question. I will yield for a question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Well, thank you for that question.

I must say it reminds me of a townhall because, every now and then, I realize I am way over my head in what I actually know to be the facts. So I am going to stop before I dig a bigger hole because I have not personally researched it or read up on it.

I have heard a variety of comments, almost in passing, from colleagues who were so disturbed about this arrangement, disturbed about what is going to happen to soybeans, disturbed that China is buying them from Argentina, disturbed that we are sending a bailout to Argentina, and disturbed that they have heard that a lot of that money may come back to some very rich people in the United States of America. But I do not know the details, and I am going to leave it as a bit of a conjecture, and when we talk soon, I will have the answers.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you.

I notice my colleague from Illinois has returned to the floor. If he would like to, I would be happy to entertain a question, should he have one.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I am going to interrupt you for just a moment because the protocol team is not sure whether you asked me if I would yield for a question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I will yield for a question. Thank you.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I thank the Senator of Illinois for the question.

As you are telling this story, I was thinking about a story from Oregon in which a woman who has been there for a long time--she has legal status in the United States. Her mother visits from Honduras, and her sister lives in Canada.

There is a park on the border between Washington State and Canada where people can go into the park and meet. They have to leave by the same entry they came in.

They have done this before, and so her mother gets to be with her, and then with her sister, the three of them and four children--7-year- old triplets and a 9-year-old, I believe. And the children are U.S. citizens. So they do what they have done before: They go up to meet the Canadian sister in this park. While they are hugging, she gets arrested. Arrested why? For smuggling her sister into the United States. But they are in this park that is set up for that purpose.

She is still being held. The children were released, and they are with a family friend. And the grandmother was released, the mother's mother, but the mother, Jackie--mother of the four American children-- is still being held. We keep protesting, writing, calling, and she is still being held.

The case against her was dropped. Why? Because you can't arrest somebody for hugging in a park set up for that purpose. This is my understanding of the case.

But think about how that story says everyone is at risk all the time. Everyone is at risk. So there is fear and trepidation.

Individuals who have other documentation are afraid that they may make a move that may lead to some extended family member or someone else who has documentation being arrested, just like this woman had documentation. So it is a regime of fear.

The argument Trump made was that when someone is here and undocumented and they do a violent act, they are going to be deported. I don't think many Americans would argue with that. But we should also recognize that our immigrants commit violent acts at a lower rate than native-born Americans. Portraying immigrants with this false story of being criminals, rapists, murderers, and so forth, is simply, well, to quote a district judge on a different topic, ``untethered to the facts.''

We are in a deeply disturbing period where more children are being separated, and communities are being terrorized.

I think how you have brought forward time and time again that we needed to resolve the status for Dreamers in a more solid way, put bills forth, and we fell short how many times? Six times? I am not sure.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Or more. And this body can't even come together and address children brought here through no fault of their own, who know no other country, who speak no other language, who grew up here and are productive citizens. Many of them, when we first started--the first I was aware of it so long ago--they might have been little kids. Now they may be out of high school, out of college, fully employed in the community, and still we haven't resolved their status so they can kind of feel like fully productive members of our community.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I would yield for a question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you, Senator. I not only agree, but I so admire what you accomplished. It is so frustrating. Why can't we accomplish that again?

I know one of our Members worked hard with my colleague across the aisle to do a bill that may have been a slimmer version, and President Trump--then-Candidate Trump--said don't take that immigration bill forward last year because he wanted to keep this as an election issue.

If people want to keep chaos rather than to solve problems, how are we to address a better path forward for our Nation, a more productive path?

So I hope what you accomplished can be reinvented. I am not sure that I have any confidence that it is possible. It may be harder now than it was then, but let's try. And you have my full backing in that effort.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. And I will yield for a question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I must say, Senator, I don't think there is an individual we have in the Senate who is not the descendent of immigrants. So shouldn't we all be able to identify with our family stories and bring those to bear to solve this challenge and actually restore a framework?

Just let me take one piece of this. The process for being able to have an asylum hearing has a backlog of about 6 years. That is a piece that we can find a rational way to address. The Dreamers--we can find a rational path to bring the Dreamers fully into our society, as you have laid out in the past. We can proceed to, I think, find a deal on border security, what we pay. But there are many pieces that will never get solved unless people are sitting down, like you did with your Gang of 8, bringing people together, and saying: Let's iron this out. So that is my hope and prayer.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I was not aware of that, no, and that is insanity.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I yield in the nature of a question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Absolutely.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I yield for the question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Yes. I think you asked me to recount the story. The story involved the fact that I read a speech by Attorney General Sessions. Attorney General Sessions was delivering this speech at I think it was called Freedom Park in Southern California, on the border. As I read the speech, I said out loud to people around me: It sounds like he is planning to separate children deliberately from their parents in order to have that trauma be a deterrent for people coming.

I said: There is no way any American administration--not blue, not red--would ever deliberately harm children as a political policy strategy.

A member of my team said: There is one way to find out. Go down to the border.

I checked, and I had that weekend free, so I went down to the border. I go into this warehouse, and in this warehouse, there are all these basically what we would call in Oregon cyclone fence cages, wired cages.

I stopped in front of one of them, and it had a group of boys, lined up from the smallest to the tallest. The smallest was just knee high to the grasshopper, as we would say, just a little tyke, maybe 4 years old.

I see these kids looking out across the warehouse because in other cages inside that warehouse were groups of women or men. My impression was they were looking to see, where did my mother go? where did my father go? where is my sister?

I said to the Customs and Border Protection agent: Were these children separated from their parents?

He said: Yes.

I said: Where do you do that?

He said: We bring the family in through that door--the door was maybe 25 feet away--and we say: Children, come with me. Parents go with that person. And, boom, they are separated, and they stayed separated.

What happened as that unfolded is the administration--this is under Trump 1--said they were keeping careful records of the children to be able to have a reunion with their parents, but they were not.

So we ended up with extraordinary efforts, including tons of volunteer lawyers and researchers, trying to get children back unified with their parents. A few hundred, I believe, were never reconnected to their parents. They could never be found. Whether they returned to a small village in a faraway country, I don't know, but it was profoundly disturbing.

I went outside, and the press had a little huddle. They said: What do you see? I said: Children being separated from their parents.

Of course, the story immediately blew up. And then I went up the road. I heard that there were hundreds of boys being held in a former Walmart. And my team member is like: Well, we asked, but we didn't get permission to get in.

I said: Well, let's go knock on the door.

And so we go up. And he is doing a live feed--what is that called--on one of those social media--live Facebook feeds. I go up and I knock, and I say, yes, who I am, and we were in the area, and we heard there were a lot of operations here. Can you give us a tour? Can you have the executive director come out?

And they got back to me. And by the way, I was--since I was doing a live feed, I said: Call me on my phone number. My phone number went out to the entire world at that moment. And so I enjoyed having hundreds or thousands of people, seemed like, called for weeks about this.

But they didn't come out. What they did is they called the police to have me arrested. And the police declined to arrest me but did escort me and my staff member off campus. They did not want there to be a tour.

And I had been told there might be--I think it was--1,000 boys, and there were some almost 1,500 boys in this. And because of the publicity of that live feed, the next week, the administration had to open it up to the press. And the week after that, I went back and took some legislators and saw it.

But this vision of deliberately harming children in order to deter immigration, that is a horrific thing. And it did stop. The outcry was massive. It did stop, thank God. But all these other now circumstances are--people are being hurt in all kinds of ways right now.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Yes, I will yield for another question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I had heard a reference to some kind of a payment program being tested, but I didn't know the details.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Thank you very much, to my colleague from Illinois. Thank you for being a champion.

And I noticed that we have a Senator from Washington State? No, we do not.

We do have a Senator from Oregon who has arrived. Would the Senator from Oregon like to ask a question?

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Yes. Thank you for the protocol. Thank you for asking me. And, yes, I would yield for a question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I thank my colleague. As long as that discussion is not taking place in the hours that I might be sleeping tonight, absolutely.

And I do feel like this is so fundamental to our Nation. That is why everyone who has come down to the floor, everyone here who has asked questions today and made solid insights as they prepared their question, we are collectively ringing the alarm bells. We are ringing the alarm bells because authoritarianism is not down the road or around the corner or next month or next year; it is here right now.

And it has been so astounding to hear all of the mentions that have been highlighted by individual Senators about how this tyranny is taking shape. And in every possible way around the world where authoritarians have developed a strategy, they are all being done here. It is like, all of them: Rig the next election. Yes. And then proceed to pressure the newspapers. Yes. And pressure the broadcasters on what they can put out. Yes. And weaponize the Justice Department. They are doing it.

And the list goes on and on.

And for us in Oregon, certainly, the one that is on everyone's mind is striving to have a pathway to legally send in the military when there is no rebellion, no insurrection, and no invasion. And that one terrifies me.

The administration is hell-bent on getting a judicial thumbs-up, a green light, to be able to move troops where they want in this country when none of those things are happening.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I am checking to see if any more colleagues would like to ask a question.

Would the Senator from Michigan like to ask a question?

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. Before you go any further, can you just say these magical words: Would you yield for a question? And I will say that I will yield for a question.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I will yield for a question, yes.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. MERKLEY. I so appreciate the point that my colleague from Michigan has been making. And if we think about the fundamental difference between a democracy and an authoritarian government, one way of describing that difference is that in a democracy, elected representatives of the people, like folks who are gathered here right now, work together, bringing their diverse life experiences, their knowledge of their individual States, and together find a strategy that will address their collective challenges so that each and every part of the country is represented and things are addressed that are important to every part.

That design of the programs and how they will operate and how they will fund happen in a democracy, in a Chamber like this.

In an authoritarian President--an authoritarian system--it is all happening on the Executive side. The Executive is saying: Here are the programs that are going to be funded; here are my priorities and what I will do. Here are the grants I will cancel and the ones that I will redirect. Here is the way we will run these programs.

And that is exactly what the Trump administration is trying to do. They are trying to move the responsibility we have under the Constitution to design programs, decide how much they should be funded, resolve questions about how they will operate, and move that responsibility over to the Executive.

And the head of the Office of Management and Budget, he was very upfront about it. He said: I believe in a unitary Executive, where all power rests with the President. And that means the President can cancel programs at will.

And I was shocked when I heard him say this. This is before we had the hearing in the Budget Committee, probably about the same time you were holding a hearing on Russell Vought.

And I said: You know, that has already been adjudicated by the Supreme Court. There was an effort in 1996 to do a line-item veto and allocate to the President the ability to say ``these programs go forward, these programs fail,'' and the Supreme Court said: Hell no; you can't do that. The Constitution assigns the responsibility to the legislature to decide what gets funded, and the Executive has to implement that plan.

And when the question of impoundments came up at an earlier date, where in a different strategy Nixon said: Hey, I think I will just not forward the funding; I will impound it so certain programs won't be funded--again, that had gone to the Supreme Court.

And again the Supreme Court said no. But Mr. Vought sat in my office, and he said: Well, I believe we will get this issue through the Supreme Court and the Supreme Court will back the unitary Executive, strengthen the Executive powers of this country.

I just shook my head. I am like, that can't possibly happen. But what happened just a short time ago? A piece of this went to the Court and in their shadow docket. The question was, Could the administration slow-walk funding to the last 45 days of the fiscal year and then bring over a request for us to undo that funding--it is called a rescission-- and then, because it was a 40-day, 5-day grace period, pause, the fiscal year expires and the funding authorization goes proof, and suddenly the President has killed the program. And the Court, in their preliminary response, said: Yeah, we think you can do that.

So Russell Vought certainly seems to have a better grip on where the Supreme Court is.

But I just feel like we have to do everything we can, therefore, legislatively to stop that. Our spending bills need to say that if we have a bipartisan spending bill, that decision to undo that program can only be done by a bipartisan bill in the future, which is the way we do rescissions now.

We have money that is left over from a program or this program, and we say that money can be brought back in, that it is not needed, but we do it in a bipartisan manner, not in a manner that gives the power of the purse to the President of the United States.

This is a collective effort that all of our Republican and Democratic colleagues should be involved in. I mean, collectively, we need to be defending our role in the Constitution. And this is central to the separation between authoritarian power and a democracy.

I have been on the Senate floor to ring the alarm bells for a long time--since somewhere around 6:25 yesterday--and I want to thank the people who have been here with me the whole time, people who made this happen.

My Team Merkley staff, and I see a few of them--quite a few of them are here. I appreciate the support.

I thank the Capitol Police who had to stay through the night and the Democratic and Republican floor staff who had to stay and go forward without being, if you will, the center of attention. They had to make sure everything went right, and they did.

The Senate pages who have come and gone through the night--but I think it is cool that you were here. Every now and then, when I was a little lonely, I would look over, and I would see some heads peeking around the corner over on this side and this side. That was great.

The page program is extraordinary, and I hope all of you will think about how you find a path in life to build a better world. There is no better mission for a soul on this planet than to find a way to build a better world--a million ways to do it.

The Senate Doorkeepers, thank you. I so appreciate you all.

Senate Parliamentarians, oh my goodness. I don't know what kind of flowers I can possibly bring, but I will be in your debt for a long time. Thank you.

The Presiding Officers. So many of my colleagues from across the aisle had to come. And I know how hard it is to sit in that chair. I did my 100 hours in that chair, plus quite a few. And I know it is awfully hard to be there and not even be able to respond when maybe someone disagrees profoundly. Yet you are here making it possible that I could carry this conversation, ringing the alarm bells about authoritarianism. It couldn't have been done if you all hadn't come and held the floor, so thank you.

All of you colleagues who came to give a little dissertation and ask a question and sometimes a longer dissertation, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that so much.

We are in the most perilous moment, the biggest threat to our Republic since the Civil War. President Trump is shredding our Constitution. Our Nation has spent 250 years striving toward a vision of equal justice. Of course, we had our Declaration of Independence. It took a few years to get our Constitution that we now have in place-- 1787. But we have been striving toward this vision in which everyone is empowered in this country.

I always think about how the foundation of the law is carved into the facade above the Supreme Court pillars, and it says ``Equal Justice Under Law.''

You know, the very first political act I took was when I was a junior in high school and I read an article in the evening paper--back when there was often a business paper in the morning and a labor paper in the evening--in the Oregon Journal. The article said that Vice President Agnew had been convicted of bribery, convicted of taking $100,000, the article said, and he had been given a fine of $10,000.

I was like, what? For the rich and powerful, they get to keep 90 percent of their proceeds? So I fired off a letter to the Oregon Journal and said: This is not right in a nation that values equal justice under law. And they printed it. They are long out of business. I would like to get a copy of that. Long out of business.

But the vision Trump is putting forward is unequal injustice. It is a huge assault on the foundation for our Nation. What we have is a nation in which the Founders--and many of you spoke so eloquently to this--a nation in which the Founders said: We do not want to have a King. We want to have government that flows up from the people, not down from a monarch.

So they put together their best ideas. They wrestled with it at the Constitutional Convention. They went through many versions of what the Senate would look like and even what our terms would look like--at one point, 12 years; at one point, lifetime. Right now, I wish it was a little less than 6 years myself.

But the challenge we have is that that vision of a separation of powers, of checks and balances, is being steadily destroyed by President Trump.

In the book that I was using as kind of a framework for discussing these issues, it says that most people even today think it is still that republics die with men wielding guns. It is essential that we understand that is not the way most republics die today. Most republics die because someone is elected who starts working systematically to reduce those checks and balances. Then perhaps they are aided by a rubberstamp Congress, and perhaps they are aided by a Supreme Court that vests more power in the Executive's key decisions, and, of course, it takes that aggressive authoritarian personality.

We have all three. We are fully in the authoritative moment right now. The President believes that he is the King of this country and that he can control everything, regardless of what the law says or what we send him. We have to collectively--and it should be a bipartisan effort--collectively say: Hell no.

We took an oath to the Constitution, to the division of government by and for the people, not government by and for the powerful. And we are going to keep fighting to restore that vision.

Today, so many of you highlighted so many pieces of what is going wrong in our country in terms of erosion--a President who wants to tell universities what they can teach and is holding research grants over their heads; a President who wants to tell law firms who they can give pro bono help to and has forced them to--various firms--chuck up a billion dollars to do pro bono work on the places and organizations that Trump wants them to spend it on; a President who is using every tool available to try to get court decisions that will allow him to use both the National Guard and the troops to be able to go where in the country he wants them domestically even if there is no insurrection, no rebellion, and no invasion; a President who is weaponizing the judiciary to go after person after person coming off his enemies list. Whoever it might be that is next--one of us may be next. One of our colleagues has certainly been publicized by Trump as being on Trump's enemies list. And this is just not to be allowed in government by and for the people.

There is the crushing of due process. And I appreciate the comments of my colleague from Illinois about due process and all of the challenges regarding immigration and due process. Let's find a way to finally pass an immigration bill after coming so close so many times.

Senator Durbin, I know you are retiring, but let's get the immigration fix done before you leave us, with all of your expertise. The group of 8 that you put together before did incredibly fabulous work, and this is way past due, that we have that foundation of law with many pieces of improvements for justice.

We saw on day one of this administration Trump down there in the Rotunda with the billionaires standing behind him, and from that moment, it was apparent that is what his government was about--by and for the wealthy and the powerful.

If we had any doubts, then it was resolved when he put forward his version of the bill, which he called the Big Beautiful Bill and we often called--many of us--the ``Big Ugly Betrayal.''

Only an authoritarian President who believes that the people answer to him rather than him being accountable to the people would come up with a strategy of decimating the healthcare through the ACA to fund tax breaks for billionaires.

Only an authoritarian President would say: Let's demolish Medicaid and, between Medicaid and ACA, have 15 million people lose their healthcare--235,000 projected in my State.

Only an authoritarian would say ``Let's cut child nutrition to fund even more tax breaks for billionaires'' and then, of course, on top of all that, put forward a plan that runs up $30 trillion in additional debt over 30 years--probably the most fiscally irresponsible bill ever to pass through this Chamber. That $30 trillion of additional debt will so compromise our efforts to take on the foundations for ordinary families--for healthcare, for housing, for education, for good-paying jobs--the four foundations that give families a chance to stand on their feet and thrive.

So we all have taken an oath to the Constitution, so let's all work together in every possible way to ring the alarm bells because it is a fact that if we do not ring the alarm bells, well, the longer you are in an authoritarian state, it becomes more and more entrenched. So we have to fight it in every possible way.

I am so proud of the 7 million Americans who took to the street in every one of our States at those 2,700 different locations all across the country to say ``No Kings.'' They were ringing the alarm bells. They were saying that it is absolutely unacceptable to have an authoritarian government. And that is the largest demonstration in U.S. history.

For each of those 7 million, they have families, they have friends who knew that they were doing this, who are becoming educated about the challenge that we are facing right now.

We have to recognize that the next election is absolutely critical if we are going to save our Republic because the strategy of an authoritarian is to rig the elections, and the more time they have, the more entrenched it becomes.

Already, here is Trump trying to do a national voter registration file that can be more easily manipulated for the elections next year. Here is President Trump trying to do massive gerrymandering in a whole bunch of States in order to offset the balance between Democrats and Republicans that are representing the House of Representatives. Here is President Trump saying he will do everything possible to stop the use of vote-by-mail across the country because--we know why--because vote- by-mail has such integrity. It can't be manipulated on election day like precincts can.

In precincts, you can move your location. You can put them where there is no parking. You can understaff them. The machines can break down. You can send intimidators. You can proceed to put out fake information about your location. You can put out information that the election was last week when it is really this coming Tuesday.

You can't do that in vote by mail. And when we have the majority, we must pass the For the People Freedom to Vote bill and lock down the integrity of our elections, so we will not worry for a generation about the people having a fair voice in our government by and for the people.

I am proud to be colleagues with all of you in this effort. Thank you very much.

(Applause.)

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source