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Floor Speech

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Mr. McCONNELL. Mr. President, yesterday, President Biden welcomed the President of Israel, Isaac Herzog, to Washington.

Unfortunately, some of the loudest anti-Israel voices in the President's own party took President Herzog's visit as an opportunity to call the world's only Jewish state racist, and House Democrats' leftwing boycotted President Herzog's joint address to Congress this morning.

These activist theatrics are unbecoming of elected American officials, and they are a distraction from the real threats that America, Israel, and our Arab friends face in the Middle East. I hope these threats were the focus of the conversation between the two Presidents.

Of course, threats to our shared interests have grown, in large part due to the Biden administration's naive approach to the world's largest state sponsor of terror, Iran.

Over the last 2\1/2\ years, Iran has dramatically increased its nuclear activities and even rebuffed the administration's repeated begging for a return to President Obama's flawed deal.

It has consolidated influence in Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon. It funds and equips terrorist groups dedicated to Israel's destruction, and the deadly arm of its IRGC extends right up to Israel's borders.

In the Arabian Gulf, Iranian military vessels have targeted or seized commercial vessels offshore nearly 20 times since 2021. On the Arabian Peninsula, Iranian weapons have rained down on America's Saudi and Emirati partners.

In Iraq, Tehran works directly with Shia paramilitaries that threaten Iraq's sovereignty as well as Iraq's neighbors and U.S. forces and Hezbollah, Hamas, and other terrorist groups channel massive flows of Iranian support into increasing attacks on Israeli and American lives.

Violent flareups along the border with Lebanon earlier this month have Israel's forces on particularly high alert, but as our friends face growing threats, they need more bipartisan solidarity from Washington, not performative BDS or lectures from politicians in glass houses.

Earlier this year, the President warned ominously that Israel ``cannot continue down this road'' in its efforts to pass domestic judicial reforms. According to reports, it is a message he intends to continue delivering to the Israeli Prime Minister in the weeks to come.

Well, Mr. President, nobody here in Congress seems to like it when foreign politicians weigh in on American domestic politics and tell us how to do our job, so I try to stay out of the domestic politics of fellow democracies.

I have confidence in the Israeli people and their democratically elected leaders, including President Herzog, whom we welcomed to the Capitol today, and Prime Minister Netanyahu, who will travel soon to Washington.

Ironically, the radical House Democrats who crowed about boycotting the President's historic address are the ones who could benefit the most from his perspective on guiding a coalition government and a diverse nation toward greater security, prosperity, and peace.

President Herzog's remarks were a reminder to anyone willing to listen that, even in the face of growing threats, Israel and its Arab neighbors continue to offer tremendous opportunities to actually promote peace.

I was in the region earlier this year, and I can assure any skeptics that the promise of the Abraham Accords is real. It is changing the geopolitical and economic climate of a region that remains extremely important to the United States.

I hope President Biden will seize on this progress and help Israel and Saudi Arabia improve their relationship--an achievable and transformational goal. Here in Congress, we have a tremendous opportunity before us to demonstrate our commitment to Israel by prioritizing American strength with the NDAA.

I hope our colleagues will continue to work swiftly to finish this essential business. U.S. Supreme Court

Mr. President, now, on another matter, while Democrats like President Biden may not like the Israeli Government's attempts at judicial reform, they are obsessed with doing it themselves here in the United States.

For the past several months, when they are not rubberstamping radical nominees for the Federal bench, Senate Democrats have been laser- focused on pushing a coequal branch of government and bending it to their political will. To do so, our colleagues plan to steer the Judiciary Committee onto the thinnest constitutional ice.

This week, the committee will mark up what Democrats are calling the Supreme Court Ethics, Recusal, and Transparency Act. But in the interests of actual transparency, let's discuss what our colleagues' intentions here actually are.

For months now, the Justices of the Court have been the subject of an uptick in pearl-clutching and hysterics from the political left and their media allies. We have been told we should be outraged that the Justices dare to buy and sell property and take vacations, that they speak at universities and write children's books, and that their spouses dare to pursue careers of their own.

As I have said before, I believe in the integrity and honesty of each member of the Court, and the Justices and their families should continue to ignore desperate attacks peddled by Democrats and organs of yellow journalism.

But no matter which headline is chosen as a pretext on any given day, it is the same old intimidation campaign by the left to undermine the Court.

By their own example, Senate Democrats have repeatedly told the American people that the entire Federal judiciary exists for no other reason than to fulfill their changing political whims. They have threatened Justices by name from the steps of the Court and threatened the institution itself in unfriendly amicus briefs. In each instance, Democrats have signaled their open disdain for a body that refuses to interpret the Constitution through the lens of their party's platform.

They have shown how afraid they are of a Court that upholds our laws as they were actually written, and they have expressed their profound misunderstanding of the Supreme Court's purpose in our Republic.

But this week, the same Senate Democrats who recently threatened to strip the Court's security budget would like us to believe that they are driven by nothing more than the pursuit of ethics and transparency. The same Democrats who warn solemnly about defending democracy would like to shatter the independence of a coequal pillar of our government.

The partisan bill before the Judiciary Committee this week deserves neither the Court's cooperation nor any Senator's support. I would urge each of our colleagues to reject it.

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