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Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHMITT. Mr. President, I am going to address two issues. The first is the funding of DHS, and the second will be on the SAVE America Act. I actually agree with the Senator from Hawaii. I don't think we are close, and here is why.

The Democrats have made it very clear they are hell-bent on defunding ICE. They have demonized these husbands, wives, cousins, sisters, brothers, to the point where they have painted themselves into a corner where there is nothing that they will accept, short of eliminating immigration enforcement in this country.

The White House has acted in good faith with the Democrats on this, with some reasonable measures, like more training, body cams, you know, things like that. But here is what they really want. What they really want is--they don't want people deported.

They don't actually believe in the sovereignty of the United States of America. They don't think that as a country we should decide who is here and who has to go. It is a fundamental disagreement that didn't exist before. If you listen to a Bill Clinton speech from not that long ago, he talked about strong borders and deporting people.

Barack Obama deported millions of people. What they want is a dynamic. And if you listen closely, the reason why they want masked agents--or ICE agents not to wear masks is they want them identified. They want the ICE agents' families to be terrorized. They want the facial recognition software that exists on Facebook and others, when people are doxed, to be very clear and usable so that nobody wants to join ICE anymore.

This is the exact same phenomena that happened with the ``defund the police'' movement. What happened was because the police officers were demonized by the left, people retired early. People stopped joining police departments. Recruitment dived. That is what they want with ICE.

They want to muck up the process with this whole idea of judicial warrants, knowing full well that warrants currently exist right now. There is a full disposition for deportation through the process that both Republicans and Democrats have agreed to over the years, including Republican and Democrat Presidents. That is not good enough because they want to make it harder to deport people.

So this fundamental question about whether or not we are going to get funding for DHS is going to be very hard to solve when the Democrats on the other side don't actually want to solve the problem.

And Chuck Schumer, he wants the chaos. I have talked to rank-and-file Democrats who have no idea about the reasonable nature of what the White House has offered because the minority leader doesn't want them to know because this is what he wants.

He wants the chaos. He wants people stranded on spring break at airports because he creates a bigger problem and he thinks that all goes back to Trump. This is not like rocket science, but it is--it is dirty.

And what the Republicans have said is: The White House is dealing in good faith. These people deserve to be paid. We shouldn't be holding all these people hostage, these TSA agents who are now going to miss their third paycheck here pretty soon. Listen, I fly back and forth every week. People can't afford that. Real people can't do that.

So this is where we are at. I think they want to create a dynamic like they did with the ``defund the police'' movement that they were so supportive of a decade ago with the defund ICE movement so that they can't do their jobs and their jobs become so difficult and their families are terrorized that nobody wants to be an ICE agent anymore.

And then what do you have? You have amnesty for the 15 million people who are here illegally, de facto amnesty because they are not going to be deported. That is the truth.

Now, they are not going to say it on the Senate floor, but that is really what is going on. And so as far as I am concerned, we are not going to do anything that kneecaps ICE's ability to do their jobs. The American people--this was on the ballot--they support deportations. They don't think that rapists and murderers who are here in this country illegally are more important than American wives and daughters.

So that is the dynamic. S. 1383

Mr. President, I also point out, as we talk about the SAVE America Act, the graveyards of history are littered with the bones of once great republics that chose to die, not because foreign armies stormed their gates in a single dramatic assault, but because their own leaders slowly, deliberately, and cowardly surrendered the thing that made them nations in the first place. Rome didn't fall in a day. Constantinople didn't collapse overnight. They died by a thousand small surrenders, each one dressed up as compassion, progress, or decency, until there was nothing left worth defending.

Today, this Senate stands at the same crossroads. Great republics don't die by accident; they commit suicide. And the suicide always begins when the ruling class loses the moral courage to defend citizenship, truth, and the innocence of the next generation.

The SAVE America Act before us is not three unrelated titles; it is one urgent existential question: Will America still have the will to live or do we join the long list of civilizations that quietly chose decline?

Yesterday, I answered the Democrats' lies with the actual text of the bill. Today, I rise to warn the body. We are watching a nation decide whether or not it chooses to exist.

It won't happen overnight, but over time, this is what happens. First comes the surrender of citizenship itself, and that is title I of the substitute that I have offered, SAVE American Voters.

We just endured 4 years of the wildest open border in American history. Millions and millions and millions and millions of military- aged men from 160 different countries flooded into this Nation while Democrats cheered diversity and equity.

Now, those same Democrats have the audacity to claim that simply asking people to prove that they are American citizens before they register to vote is somehow voter suppression.

Let me translate what they are really saying. They want those people who came here illegally to vote for them to suppress the vote of actual Americans. They fear actual American citizens voting more than they fear the fraud.

American elections are for Americans, and we need safeguards. When I was Missouri's attorney general, I stood in court and fought the left's dark money lawyers to defend these very safeguards. Missouri fought back. We didn't settle. We fought back, and we won. The American people deserve that same victory here because, when citizenship becomes optional at the ballot box, the Republic itself becomes optional.

Next comes the surrender of truth--title II of the SAVE American Sports provision of this underlying substitute.

A civilization that lies about something as basic as the difference between men and women has already begun a death spiral. Title II simply says what every normal American already knows: Women's and girls' sports are for women and girls. Biological males cannot declare themselves women and steal scholarships, records, locker rooms, and safety from actual females.

We have watched this fraud unfold in realtime--boys with superior strength and bone density dominating girls' competitions while the ruling class calls it inclusion.

Isn't this wonderful? Isn't this progress while they sip champagne at their cocktail parties?

That is theft. That is cruelty. It is the law conscripted into service of a lie.

I have two daughters in Missouri who love sports. They should never ever be forced to surrender fairness, privacy, or physical safety so that Washington elites can pretend their biology is a mere suggestion and feel good about themselves at cocktail parties. A nation that tells its own daughters they must accept boys in their locker rooms has already lost the will to tell the truth about anything.

Finally, we reach the most unforgivable surrender of all--the betrayal of our children, title III of SAVE American Children.

This title draws on a clear moral line against the genital mutilation and chemical castration of minors. It says that confused children do not need scalpels, cross-sex hormones, or lifelong medical dependency. They need protection. They need patience, truth, and love.

What the other side calls ``gender-affirming care'' is nothing less than a profit-driven scandal, and Big Pharma and activist doctors turn childhood confusion into permanent patients and permanent revenue streams.

Children are not ideological property. They are not raw material for adult experiments or corporate greed. A decent civilization does not answer a child's distress with irreversible harm. The final sign of a dying civilization is when it sacrifices its own sons and daughters on the altar of adult delusion.

I look around this Chamber right now. Watch the Democrats on this floor today, melting down, screaming about Elon Musk, challenging and changing the subject on everything except the actual text of the bill before us. Democrats are not debating this legislation because they cannot defend what this bill exposes--open borders and open season on America's daughters and children. They prefer managed decline so long as they are in power.

This Senate was not sent here to manage decline. Enough with the slow-motion suicide of this Republic. The American people did not send us here to preside over the death of a country. They sent us here to fight for its life and for renewal.

Working families in Missouri and across this Nation are done--done with citizenship being treated like a suggestion, done with their daughters being erased in the name of inclusion, done with their children being targeted by an ideology that profits from permanent harm. This is the moment of truth.

To my Democratic colleagues, stand up right now. Defend what you really believe. Tell the American people on the record--on the record-- that citizenship should mean nothing at the ballot box; that boys belong in girls' sports; and that children should be chemically castrated and surgically mutilated in the name of ``care.'' Tell us that. Tell it to the American people. Tell it to your voters who don't support that. Say it plainly. Own it.

To every Republican in this Chamber, this is why the people gave us the majority. This is the reason we exist in this moment--no more excuses, no more polite theater, no more managed decline. Pass the SAVE America Act. Restore the ballot to American citizens. Defend our daughters from fraud. Shield our children from harm. Prove, once and for all, that America still has the will to live. The age of excuses is over. The time to fight for the life of this Republic has arrived.

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