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Floor Speech

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The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Barrasso). The Senator from Maryland.

Mr. VAN HOLLEN. Mr. President, I think all of us know here in the Senate that Senators have the ability to write the titles of their own bills. You can give a bill whatever name you want, whether it is accurate and true or misleading. And in this case, we have a bill that has been entitled the SAVE America Act. But make no mistake, this is not about saving America. That is a fraud on the American people.

And what we are hearing from our Republican colleagues and what we hear from the President of the United States is that there is this rampant noncitizen voting in our elections. Donald Trump says there are so many noncitizens voting at the polls that they are rigged. In fact, that is why he lost in 2020, he says.

But, of course, we know there is zero proof for that. We know, in fact, that it is a big lie.

It is already illegal to vote if you are not a U.S. citizen. And the cases of noncitizen registration and noncitizen voting are vanishingly rare, almost nonexistent.

So what is this really about? Well, it is about Trump's obsession with a Federal takeover of our elections. That is not my word; that is his. He said he wanted to ``takeover'' our elections. And they do-- Donald Trump does--want to make it particularly hard for voters who they think will vote against them. He wants to make it particularly hard for those voters to actually be able to cast their votes.

And that is what this bill is all about. It is about making it more difficult for millions and millions of Americans to exercise their right to vote, and it is calculated to try to make it harder for those Americans who President Trump assesses will vote against him or against Republicans.

Why else would Donald Trump have said it will ``guarantee the midterms''? By ``it,'' he meant this bill. So the President of the United States is saying that if Republicans pass this bill, it will guarantee them the midterm elections.

The only way that could be true is if this bill were designed to try to prevent, slow down, make it harder for millions of Americans to cast their vote who Republicans and Donald Trump think will vote against Republicans in the midterms.

He goes on to say: ``If you don't get it, big trouble''--meaning, if we actually let American citizens vote and we don't put up these additional restrictions, President Trump assesses that Republicans will lose the midterms.

And he is desperate to change that. We already saw that in the redistricting effort in Texas and other places around the country. This is part and parcel of that effort.

Donald Trump said that was the goal, and, in fact, recently fired former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem said the same thing in different words.

Here is what she said, a few weeks ago, in Arizona: ``We have been proactive to make sure that we have the right people [to vote]--

And then she said the other part out loud--

[to vote to elect] the right leaders.

In other words, let's try to shape the electorate by passing this bill so that we--we the Republicans and President Trump--get the voters they want to elect the ``leaders'' they want, meaning Republicans.

That is what this is all about. It is not about saving America. It is about saving Republicans in the midterm elections and beyond.

And they do this by making it harder for citizens to vote. So, yes, it is suppressing the vote. If you make it harder for anyone in this room who is an American citizen or anybody around the country to go out and cast their vote, if you put up hurdles to casting those votes, yes, it is making it more difficult to vote. That is suppressing the vote.

So let's look a little more deeply at the underlying claims behind this bill--the claim that we have all these noncitizens that are voting.

They can't prove it. In fact, the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, said that noncitizens voting is something they know is happening ``intuitively''--``intuitively.''

He went on to say:

But it's not been something that is easily provable.

Not something easily provable--that is ridiculous. Of course, it is provable. People go into a voting booth. They give their name. That is a matter of the official record. And you can go about finding out whether the person who registered and cast their vote, in fact, is an American citizen. It is provable.

And the problem Republicans have is they set out to prove it and came out completely empty--completely empty.

Let's look at the findings of the conservative Heritage Foundation. So this is a conservative think tank, a Republican think tank. They could only find 24 instances in 20 years of somebody who voted without being a citizen, or maybe it was just registered to vote--but 24 instances between the year 2003 and the year 2023. This is what they are calling a rampant problem.

The Cato Institute, which is not a liberal organization, put out a report last month noting that Utah--the State of Utah--reviewed its approximately 2.1 million voters, and found 1 confirmed noncitizen who had registered but never voted.

I mean, it is certainly possible that if you are a permanent resident, if you have a green card, you might mistakenly believe you can vote in an election and register, and then realize you really can't and then not cast the vote.

So Utah looked at 2.1 million voters, and not a single one--not a single noncitizen among them--cast a vote and only 1 registered.

In Georgia, out of 8.2 million registrants, Georgia found only 20 who were noncitizens. I don't even know if they ended up voting or not.

So, obviously, in this country, we want only American citizens to vote, and that is what is happening. American citizens are the ones who are voting, not noncitizens.

And if you think about that, it makes intuitive sense, right? The penalty--the Federal penalty--for providing false information when you register is up to 5 years in prison. And then, if you actually go ahead and cast a vote as a noncitizen, it is up to another 1 year in prison.

Nobody--nobody--is going to risk going to prison for 6 years in order to cast a vote in an election. I mean, that defies common sense, and it also defies the fact, which is why Republicans can't come up with any proof to support their claim, which they argue justifies this bill-- none.

Again, the Speaker says it is an intuition. In other words, it is a feeling he has got, but there is no proof to support it. It is because there isn't any.

So that is the false claim being made to justify this bill. In other words, it is a bill in search of a problem, but actually the problem doesn't exist. So it is obviously in search of something else, and that something else is making it harder for millions of Americans to vote.

As I mentioned, Donald Trump thinks if this bill is passed, it will ``guarantee'' the Republicans ``the midterms.'' The former Secretary of Homeland Security says we need this bill to get the right voters to vote for the ``right leaders.''

Now, I was just listening to one of my Republican colleagues on the floor talk about how we need ID for all sorts of things, and, of course, that is true. You need a license to drive a car. But guess what. That license that you get, that is not proof of citizenship. That doesn't qualify under this bill. Even the new REAL IDs don't qualify for proof of citizenship under this bill because there are noncitizens who have those forms of ID. So when Republican Senators talk about these other forms of ID that we use every day, suggesting that they could be used for this purpose, that is just not true.

What this bill does is essentially narrow the forms of ID that you need to prove that you are a citizen in the first place to essentially two categories.

One is a passport. Now, it turns out that only about half of Americans have a passport. So that means half of the American citizens that are preparing to go out and vote will not be able to vote because they wouldn't have the proof of citizenship. They don't have a passport.

Or it is an original birth certificate. Well, I think we all know that there are lots of Americans that don't have their original birth certificate.

In fact, if you are a woman who has gotten married and changed her name, that original birth certificate won't provide you the proof of citizenship required under this law.

And research at the Brennan Center at the University of Maryland shows that more than 21 million American citizens do not have these required documents readily available--21 million American citizens who will be forced to go through all these additional hoops and, by the way, pay money in order to get the required ID.

And, of course, in America, we are not supposed to have a poll tax. You are not supposed to have to pay the government any money for the right to exercise your right to vote. But that is what this bill does for maybe up to 21 million of our fellow American citizens.

So if there really were proof of an epidemic of noncitizen voting, of course, we would need to look for ways to prevent that from happening. We would have to come up with some form of required ID to meet that problem. But there is no proof there. There is no ``there'' there.

Now, one of the ways that the Trump administration proposed for trying to get to the bottom of all this claimed fraud was to require States to send the Department of Homeland Security their voting information. In fact, the Department of Justice has been asking a lot of States for this information. You may recall that Attorney General Bondi and former Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem were telling people in Minnesota: You know, we will call back ICE and their lawless efforts if you give us your voter ID information.

Of course, in our country, we have State-based elections, thank goodness. Thank goodness we count our elections at the State level. Can you imagine if we did what Donald Trump wants to do, which is federalize the elections and count them at the White House? I mean, do you remember in 2020, after he lost, the President of the United States was calling down to Georgia--Fulton County--and saying: Find me--what was it?--6,000-some votes.

Thank goodness we don't have centralized Federal elections in the United States of America because you can be sure that President Trump would make sure, when he conducted the count at the White House, it would come out his way.

So we don't have that, but we now have a Department of Homeland Security that is essentially demanding that States provide the Federal Government with their voter information. A lot of States are suing. They are fighting back. Some States have been providing that information to the Department of Justice and to other entities. But it turns out that when the States hear back from the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Homeland Security is giving them all sorts of misinformation.

Let's look at a couple examples of States that have already shared their voter roll data with DHS. This was, again, for the purpose of DHS checking to make sure that voter rolls in those States did not include noncitizens. So DHS was going to scrub those records and let the States know what kind of problems they have.

Well, Missouri's records were reviewed by DHS, and it turns out that DHS found hundreds of voters that DHS said were ineligible to vote. Guess what. It turned out that DHS was wrong and that they were eligible voters. So DHS was essentially telling the State of Missouri that eligible American citizen voters in fact were not eligible.

One county clerk in Missouri said of the DHS system:

This is not ready for prime time. And I'm not going to risk the security and constitutional rights of my voters for bad data.

That is a clerk in the State of Missouri.

An election administrator in Texas said:

I really find no merit in any of this.

That was after three eligible Texas voters--in other words, eligible American citizen Texas voters--had been flagged for removal by DHS.

So here is the State of Texas: OK, DHS, take a look at our voter files, and you find all those people that are really not American citizens.

Well, guess what. They didn't get any back that flagged people who were not American citizens. They did get back people that DHS claimed were not eligible, but when Texas inspected it, it turns out they were eligible to vote. That is the kind of operation the Trump administration is running at DHS.

In addition to requiring this essential Federal takeover of review of the voter rolls, this second bill that has been introduced by Republicans in the Senate is even worse than the first. The first was called the SAVE Act. This one is called the SAVE America Act--which, as I said, the real purpose is to ``Save the Republican Party in the Midterm Elections Act.''

But this second one actually makes it harder for people to register to vote and to vote. It includes new provisions that President Trump has demanded prohibiting vote-by-mail except in very, very narrow circumstances.

In order to vote by mail, a voter would have to submit sworn certifications to the specific circumstances, including their health status or travel plans, to their board of elections. Even after that, you can't just drop the ballot in the mailbox; you have to send it by certified mail, with signature verification.

So this isn't a voter ID bill. That is just untrue. It is a specific kind of ID that is required, which millions of American citizens don't have. It is really a ``Show Me Your Papers Voter Purge Bill,'' making it harder for American citizens to exercise their right to vote.

As I said earlier, the real purpose is not to prevent noncitizens from voting; it is to prevent citizens who the Trump administration and Republicans assess will vote against them in the midterm elections--to make it harder for them to vote.

You are seeing many other efforts that are ongoing right now to try to rig the midterm elections. I mentioned earlier the efforts to redistrict in Texas. We see challenges to the Voting Rights Act. We see this bill. It is a sign of desperation. It is a sign that Donald Trump knows that the American people don't like what they see coming out of this administration.

After all, this is a President who, as a candidate, said he would keep us out of wars--especially in the Middle East--and he would focus on lowering prices. That is what Candidate Trump said. What has President Trump delivered? He has gotten us involved in more conflicts than any other President in a very long time--including an illegal war of choice in Iran as we speak. The Economy

Mr. President, prices and costs are going up, up, up. The price of groceries is going up. The price of rent and mortgages is going up. Healthcare is going up.

By the way, we could have at least reduced some people's healthcare costs if this Senate had voted to extend the Affordable Care Act tax credits, but Republicans in this body blocked that effort. So I have constituents in Maryland who now have to pay more because while the Republicans' so-called Big Beautiful Bill permanently extended tax cuts for billionaires, they let the one tax credit that helps middle-class families afford their healthcare--they let that lapse.

Billionaires--permanent tax cuts. American working families' tax credit for healthcare--that one they let die, go away, so healthcare costs are going up really for everybody.

Childcare costs are going up.

Instead of addressing those issues, we have a President who continues to hide portions of the Epstein files from the survivors as well as from the American people, and we have a President who is engaged in driving up costs for the American people instead of bringing them down.

I don't know exactly how many days it has been since the Supreme Court struck down his illegal tariff tax, but it has certainly been enough time for the President and his administration to say that they are going to send the money they stole from the American people back to American households. Mr. President, $1,700 per household is the estimate of what those Trump illegal tariff taxes cost on average.

Give them their money back, President Trump. Do it today.

But that is not what President Trump is doing. Iran

Mr. President, the war in Iran has already cost us the lives of 13 servicemembers. Hundreds more have been injured. Over 2,000 civilians have been killed throughout the region, from Iran, to Lebanon, to Israel, including over 160 Iranian schoolgirls killed, apparently, by a U.S. Tomahawk missile.

That war is making us less safe, not more safe. We all know that the administration has no endgame. They took the lid off Pandora's box.

They, together with Israel, took out a number of members of the Iranian regime. It is a heinous regime, and it has been brutal to its own people. But public reporting indicates that our intelligence Agencies assess that if you got rid of the top-level Iranian leadership, very likely, they would be replaced by even more radical leaders, people who are closer to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard--in other words, people who are even more dangerous and more likely to destabilize the region. And that is what we are seeing.

We are spending a billion dollars of taxpayer money every day-- probably more--on this war that is making us less safe.

By the way, for the President who said he was going to reduce prices, oil and gas prices are going up, up, up. Corruption

Mr. President, the American people don't like what they see. On top of this, it is mixed with a toxic amount of corruption. We have the President's son-in-law Jared Kushner going around and pretending to be the big peacemaker in the Middle East--look how that is going--and at the same time doing big, huge deals with Gulf States, with Saudi Arabia and others.

We know that this is a President who, with his so-called meme coin, has pocketed millions and millions of dollars for himself and his family, accepted a luxury jet from the Qatari royal family and a gold- plated Rolex desk clock from Swiss business leaders, and in exchange for a gold crown, gave South Korea a lower tariff rate.

Probably one of the most corrupt transactions of them all was with the UAE, because what happened with the UAE was just before Donald Trump was inaugurated as President. Someone in the UAE--one of the members of the royal family--made a huge investment in the Trump family stablecoin business--a huge investment.

It wasn't long thereafter that the President's son Eric Trump went to the UAE. And guess what happened. Sheik Tahnoon, who is a member of the royal family, invested billions of dollars in that Trump family stable coin business.

Then it was about 2 weeks later that Donald Trump goes to the UAE and says to the UAE that he is going to relax the restrictions the United States had in place on the transfer of very sophisticated technology to the UAE--semiconductor technology, AI technology.

We were especially worried about transferring that technology to a particular set of companies in the UAE because of their relationships with China. But do you know what? The UAE--a member of the royal family--had just invested a lot of money in the Trump family stablecoin business, and so, hey, Donald Trump relaxed the restrictions on the transfer of U.S. technology to the UAE and put that at risk of transfer to China.

It is massive corruption that benefited the Trump family at the expense of American national security.

So, yes, the American people don't like what they are seeing. We are seeing that in all the polling. S. 1383

So what this bill before us is, is the last-ditch effort by the President of the United States and Republicans in the Senate and the House to try to save themselves in the midterm elections--not by winning fair and square, not by saying that every American citizen should be able to exercise their right to vote, but by making it harder for those American citizens that they think are likely to vote against them and for Democrats--making it harder for those people to vote. It is not the SAVE America Act. It is the ``Save the Republican Party in the Midterm Elections Act.''

You would think that President Trump would recognize that where the American people really want to see action is on meeting the promises that he made--like keep us out of foreign wars, including this illegal war of choice in Iran, actually do something to bring down prices.

I have tried to get the White House interested in the bill I have introduced. It is called Power for the People Act. It has a very simple idea, premise, which is that consumers across America--ratepayers, our constituents--they shouldn't have to be paying higher electricity costs to fund data centers being built by the richest companies and corporations on the planet. In my State of Maryland, we are part of a 13-State grid called PJM. People living in those areas have spent $28 billion in higher electricity costs already for those data centers.

We really need to focus on what candidate Trump said he wanted to focus on--bringing down costs and ending foreign wars--not doing the opposite. And this bill is an attempt by Donald Trump and Republicans in Congress to prevent the American people from expressing their views at the ballot box in November 2026 by making it harder for millions of Americans to vote. That is what this is really about, and I urge my colleagues to strongly oppose it.

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