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Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHUMER. Mr. President, American democracy faces a test of survival in 2024.

Almost 8 years ago, Donald Trump was elected President and commenced one of the most chaotic periods our country has seen in our lifetimes. Under a Trump Presidency, Republicans tried to rip away affordable healthcare for tens of millions of American families, and they nearly succeeded. Under a Trump Presidency, Republicans packed our courts with radical judges who took America back half a century by repealing Roe v. Wade.

This week, the Senate will take up a simple resolution cosponsored by every female Senator in our caucus and myself that asks a very simple question: Where do Senators stand on freedom of choice? Do we believe that a woman should have the basic right to reproductive care? Do we agree that the rights protected under Roe should be Federal law?

Freedom of choice is perhaps the defining issue for Americans this year, and, this week, every Senator must show where he or she stands.

Of course, there is more. Under a Trump Presidency, megacorporations and the richest of the rich--the very, very wealthy--saw their taxes go down and profits go up, while middle-class families kept paying more for prescription drugs, childcare, and basic necessities.

Under the Trump Presidency, America was plunged into utter chaos. The pandemic was far worse than it needed to be because Donald Trump refused to confront it head-on and refused to be honest to the American people. We lived in constant anxiety about the next tweet from the White House.

Our allies saw Trump and questioned if they could trust him, while autocrats saw Trump and wanted to be like him. It is no wonder that Trump went out of his way to pay fealty to dictators like Putin and buddy up to Kim Jong Un. It was downright un-American.

Four years later, Trump wants to do it all again. But there is a big difference between then and now. For all the chaos and disaster of the first Trump Presidency, it pales in comparison to the threat of a second Trump Presidency and the threat it would pose to our democracy.

Over the last few weeks, there has been a whole lot of attention about a policy platform drafted by the Heritage Foundation, arguably the most influential conservative think tank in America. The platform, in effect, is the Trump manifesto. The project is staffed by over 200 former officials of the Trump Presidency and is connected to Trump Cabinet members, former campaign advisers, political appointees, and more.

If you read through this Trump manifesto, it is very clear what the hard right is telling America: Put us in power, and we will gut America from the inside out.

Trump's manifesto calls for the most conservative agenda America has ever seen, one that makes 1964 Barry Goldwater look like a moderate.

The Trump manifesto lays the groundwork for a nationwide abortion ban and calls for removing mifepristone from the market. It calls for defunding the Department of Education.

The Trump manifesto calls for reversing Democrats' clean energy agenda, while empowering the Nation's biggest oil and gas polluters.

The Trump manifesto calls for silencing and attacking all of Donald Trump's political enemies. The hard right is done speaking in euphemisms. They are saying it straight to our faces: If you disagree with Donald Trump, watch your back.

To see this happen in America is bone-chilling.

MAGA's political threats are reminiscent of the autocratic fervor we saw in Europe in the early 20th century, and for the first time, we are wondering: Could it ever happen here in America?

I hope not, but it all keeps going.

The Trump manifesto also calls for defunding Federal law enforcement and replacing thousands of Federal personnel with individuals loyal, above all, to Donald Trump.

And, finally, of course, the Trump manifesto calls for more tax cuts for the very wealthy, more tax cuts for corporate elites, more tax cuts for megacorporations, and oil and gas polluters. This is really the end goal of MAGA extremism: tax cuts for the top 1 percent, dystopia for everybody else.

Donald Trump promised that he would be a dictator on day one, and this manifesto is the playbook for how he will follow through on that threat. It is dangerous. The damage may be irreversible. The destruction could be unthinkable. And it would be a betrayal of everything that our Framers fought for, that the Union fought for, that the ``greatest generation'' fought for.

Donald Trump cannot--must not--be allowed within 10 miles of the Oval Office ever again.

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