Trump Administration

Floor Speech

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. I am very grateful for the opportunity to ask a question and for the Senator from Oregon yielding to me.

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. First of all, I want to thank him for his leadership, his fortitude, and his determination exhibited so eloquently over these last 24 hours. He is really providing a model for all of us in standing up and speaking out.

Let me say that after listening to the eloquent words of my colleague from Massachusetts, that the destruction Donald Trump is doing to the White House is emblematic of the wrecking ball he is taking to our democracy.

Put aside the waste of money that could be used to improve our education system, to solve food insecurity, to guarantee the election integrity of this Nation, the damage that he is doing to this iconic symbol of America is so costly to our image and esteem around the world.

The White House is a symbol of America, and he is destroying a part of it. What he intends to build as a replacement to the East Wing is a gargantuan insult to America, and it is unfortunately emblematic of a lot of the other destruction he is doing in so many other areas as we watch the norms and laws that protect our great experiment in democracy erode under his destructive action.

In some ways, it is a little bit like the frog in the pot. The water begins to heat without our noticing it. The acts seem benign when taken individually, but cumulatively, they will boil and destroy our democracy.

The President has turned the Oval Office into an auction house. He has put a ``for sale'' sign on the White House lawn. Influence and power are the way to a quick profit, whether it is crypto or pardons or many of the other perks of office. He is using it for his own personal ends and weaponizing the Department of Justice against his personal opponents, his political adversaries--a violation of basic norms of the Department of Justice and of our democracy.

He is prosecuting political enemies in courts that he has filled with MAGA zealots and has a Department of Justice that is run by his personal lawyers. He is punishing constituents of Democrats by canceling billions in Federal programs and firing dedicated public servants during a government shutdown when he simply fails to find them worthy.

Last week, he announced that the administration is sending $20 billion in bailout money to Argentina and perhaps another $20 billion in private funding. What he is doing in tariffs has been eclipsed by all the other stuff, but it hits Americans in their pocketbooks. Groceries are skyrocketing in price. Americans are finding it more difficult to put food on the table. Farmers are being crushed by these tariffs as well.

Healthcare. The tax credits that make healthcare insurance affordable to millions of Americans will end at the conclusion of this year because he has failed to provide leadership in extending them, and that is why the government has been shut down by Republicans--because they have refused to agree to extend those healthcare tax credits.

But maybe most alarmingly--most alarmingly--as is visible in the streets of Oregon, California, Chicago, Los Angeles, is the deployment of our military, our National Guard.

The Senator from Oregon has spoken so powerfully and eloquently to bring a critical lens to this desecration of democracy and the impact on our military itself, because they are being used for a purpose that goes against the fundamental purpose of our military in this country.

The Founding Fathers were deeply worried about the use of a standing army, potentially, within the homeland, and many were opposed to a standing army because of that concern.

So we have laws--Posse Comitatus--that forbid the use of the military against American citizens on American soil. The health of our Republic depends on the proper use of our military against foreign adversaries and threats from abroad.

But the President of the United States, in effect, has decided that he will use our National Guard as a police force, supplanting local and State police. And the damage is done not only to institutions--which should be supported and we should be providing more resources to local and State Police, more training and equipment to them so they can do the job of keeping order and maintaining our democracy--but, also, to the military itself, which is demoralized and potentially degraded by the misuse of these resources that are designed to support them in countering adversaries abroad, and, of course, to the faith and trust of Americans in the military, as they see it misused.

So I want to ask my colleague from Oregon about perhaps his personal experience as he watches this deployment of the National Guard in his State. How are the people of Oregon reacting to the misuse of our National Guard? Is there faith and trust in the military affected by the President's deployment of the National Guard in a circumstance that a Federal judge has found is unnecessary because whatever protests have happened in the past weeks and months have been peaceful and without the necessity for this kind of military intervention?

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. If my colleague would yield for one more quick question.

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. I think he is absolutely right to call attention to the extraordinary professionalism of the National Guard, which, hopefully, will avoid the provoked violence that President Trump, unfortunately, would welcome, apparently, here. But we know that the President has said that if the courts deny him the opportunity to deploy the National Guard, he will consider using the military under the Insurrection Act.

Yesterday, I came to the floor in support of reforms that I have proposed to the Insurrection Act that would reduce the unbridled and unchecked powers that he has right now. The Insurrection Act makes modifications to the Posse Comitatus law in ways that potentially provide him with unbridled authority.

My reform bill would require accountability. It would enable use of the military in the event of a claimed rebellion or insurrection for a limited amount of time, require the President then to come to Congress and make the case, and Congress to approve a set of reforms that would protect the American people against misuse of the military in the event that he could not deploy the National Guard in this way.

I want to ask my friend from Oregon--and I believe I know the answer because he has supported reforms in the past--whether these kinds of reforms to the Insurrection Act are important and necessary to protect the American people and the military itself against the kinds of misuse of powers that could occur.

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Mr. BLUMENTHAL. I thank the Senator from Oregon.

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