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Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, it is getting late, too late for some of the people we serve to even be awake--though I imagine many are. Not by choice, a mother in the Central Valley is awake, staring at her kitchen table, trying to work out where her sick child can receive the medical care that child needs now that a Federal grant supporting the only rural healthcare center in her community is in limbo.

A Federal employee is awake trying to figure out how they will make the rent next month if they are laid off. Maybe they spent a few decades serving this country overseas and were just called back home. Now what?

People around the world are awake watching humanitarian help that means their next meal or safe harbor from disease has disappeared, wondering why, in their time of most need, their longtime ally has decided to abandon them, because the Trump administration has turned their lives, turned so many of our lives, into a series of question marks, because this President and his cronies like Elon Musk and Russ Vought are putting politics and profits over people's lives, over people's livelihoods, over lives.

They are creating chaos, and then, somehow, worst of all, they are gloating about it. Imagine gloating about acts so callous. ``Chaos'' seems to be the watchword of this administration, but the chaos is not a consequence of this. The chaos is the goal. The chaos is the purpose. By throwing everything at the wall, they can create confusion. They hope to muddy the waters while opening the floodgates: unconstitutional Executive orders, illegal memos, illegally accessing private citizens' data. The scope and the speed of these actions are almost impossible to comprehend, and the impact is incalculable.

This is all part of a larger effort to consolidate power, every possible power, in the control of one man--well, maybe two men--so they can plunder the country to benefit themselves and their billionaire buddies.

What is this all about, what we have witnessed in the first couple weeks of this administration? What do these disparate acts have in common? What is the through line? What is it that the seizure of data belonging to millions and millions of Americans by Elon Musk--what does that have in common with the efforts to shutter American development assistance around the world through USAID? What does that have in common with efforts to fire top prosecutors at the Justice Department and purge FBI agents at the Federal Bureau of Investigation? What does this have in common, too, with pardoning violent criminals who attacked this building? What does it have in common with a funding freeze and then a memorandum to implement the funding freeze and then the repeal of the memorandum and all the confusion that has caused? What does the mass deportation order have in common with all of this? What is the story of what they are doing here? How does this all fit together?

It fits together in this way: This is an effort to try to consolidate power--all of the power of this government--in the hands of Donald Trump and a few of his handpicked, very wealthy, billionaire friends. It is designed to consolidate that power to essentially take the resources of this country and enrich themselves and their friends--an effort to enrich themselves which would not be possible, will not be possible, if our system of checks and balances work. But if they can somehow take apart these institutions; if they can somehow persuade or demand or cow the people in this institution and the House of Representatives and the courts and the Supreme Court; if they can prevent us from playing our institutional role as a check and balance, then what is left between them and the Treasury? Nothing. Nothing.

So this is the goal: Discredit the government, dismember the government, dismember checks and balances so they can raid the till. Make government purposefully dysfunctional, discredit every institution so that all that is left is the power of the strongman, and the wealth of this country can be stripped away.

Checks and balances be damned. Congressional authority be damned. The President wants to steamroll all of that, and at the moment, it appears he is succeeding. But Donald Trump can't do this on his own. He needs enablers--enablers to subvert our laws, enablers to divert congressionally approved funds.

Sure, everyone knows Elon Musk, but it is not just Elon Musk. And today, we consider the nomination of the system's engineer to lead the Office of Management and Budget--probably the most important Agency no one has heard of. That engineer, that architect of this effort to strip the country of its resources so they can be plundered by the President and his wealthy friends; the architect, the engineer of this, the one who will make the trains run on time, the guy that stops the train to allow the highway robbery of that train, is a man named Russ Vought.

We all recall Project 2025. Project 2025--Russ Vought helped to write it. That funding freeze? Vought helped orchestrate the plan for it. And the slew of outrageous, dangerous actions taken by this administration over the past several weeks were in many ways a direct result of Vought and his plan to dismantle and destroy the government in the service of Donald Trump and his wealthy friends.

One analysis found that two-thirds of the Executive orders that Trump has signed come from--that is right--Project 2025.

Russ Vought doesn't believe in government except as a vehicle to take from the poor and take from the middle class and give to the wealthy people, who should be running everything. He doesn't believe in the simple idea that we the people compose our institutions; we the people are the government--a government that is supposed to be for the people, not for a handful of very wealthy people. No, Russ Vought believes in dismantling that government of the people piece by piece, brick by brick, until what remains is a hollowed-out bureaucracy that serves the interests of the wealthy and abandons everyone else, to make it so small they can drown it in a bathtub, because that is what this is all about.

This is all about taking the Nation's resources for themselves. It is about using the infrastructure, the architecture of the government to enrich themselves. This is about plunder. That is what they are trying to do.

The last few weeks are not incompetence. It isn't mismanagement, although there is plenty of that. No. This is a deliberate effort to break the Federal Government so completely that people lose faith in its ability to function at all. When people lose faith in the government of the people, when they stop believing it is for the people, that is when the real damage begins. That is when they can dismantle the safety net program by program. That is when they can make the people beholden to the strongman. That is when Federal workers-- scientists, economists, social workers, public health experts--are replaced by unqualified ideologues or driven out entirely. Turn the Federal workforce--or what is left of it--into an arm of the President, beholden only to the President. No more oath to the Constitution but an oath to the person of the President, a loyalty oath demanded of our Federal employees.

That is when the next disaster--whether it is a pandemic, a financial collapse, or a natural disaster--becomes unmanageable, because the very institutions designed to respond have been gutted, because that is their end goal--not just to shrink the government of the people but to sabotage it, to make it dysfunctional, to make it ineffective, to paralyze it, and then to turn around and say ``Hey, see, it doesn't work. The government of the people doesn't work'' because of course they don't want it to work except to the degree that it can be used to take the resources of the American people and give them to their wealthy friends and to large corporations, to distribute every possible dime amongst the privileged few and not working families.

This is why they are elevating Russ Vought, because when you need someone to dismantle the very machinery of governance, to turn the government of the people into an engine of destruction rather than an agency of stewardship, Russ Vought is your guy. And now he has a second chance--a second chance to make sure that when that mother in the Central Valley reaches for help, there is nothing there.

We are seeing, of course, Head Starts around the country--the Head Start Program--wonder whether they are going to be able to open their doors the next day, wondering what is going to happen to--if they are supported. Of course, all the parents that have their kids in Head Start are wondering what the future holds for their kids. But the view of this administration is, hey, that Head Start is getting valuable money they would rather give to themselves and to their wealthy friends. If it means the sacrifice of those kids in the Head Start, well, that is just the price you have to pay for oligarchy.

Russ Vought is your guy.

A second chance--he has a second chance now to turn Social Security and Medicare into bargaining chips in a political game that none of us have agreed to play, keeping seniors up at night worrying whether a Social Security check might not make it to them after all.

He has a second chance to rewrite the rules in a way that ensures that the wealthy and well connected are taken care of while everyone else is left behind.

We should be clear about what this nomination represents. Russ Vought wants to oversee the erosion of the very services that millions of Americans rely on every day--every single day; to lead the charge to remake the United States into a country where people are left to fend for themselves, where the government doesn't work because they don't mean it to. They don't want it to. They don't want a government of the people or a government by the people or government for the people; they want a government of them, they want a government by them, and they want a government for them.

But let's be very clear. It does not have to be this way. We can reject this vision. We can reject this nominee. We can reject the idea that our government exists only to serve the powerful or to punish the vulnerable. And we will reject it because if we do nothing, if we simply sit back and let Russ Vought take the reins of OMB once again, then we will be complicit in the destruction that follows.

So let's take a closer look at the last few weeks. Let's take a closer look at Donald Trump and Elon Musk's hostile takeover of the Federal Government and the targeting of our institutions one after another, over and over again. Let's take a closer look at this effort to gut critical programs to pay for their enormous tax breaks and what that means for all of us. Let's start with access to your personal data.

As of today, Elon Musk, an unelected billionaire--I think maybe the wealthiest man in the world--with a vested financial interest in this administration's success--you would think that being the wealthiest man in the world or one of the top wealthiest people in the world would be enough, but no. He has a vested interest in the administration's success and billions in government contracts--because apparently the billions he has already are not enough.

He has deployed a team of loyalists who infiltrate government Agencies to help with the plunder of the public fisc. So let's think about that for a moment. Let's try to take this in. The world's richest man has brought in his loyalists--some of them apparently just teenagers--to breach Federal Departments to access sensitive data, classified information, and who knows what. Are we supposed to think that is OK? Are we supposed to pretend this is normal, to have the wealthiest man in the world run roughshod over private data, over our Agencies? Are we supposed to act like this is anything other than what it is--a blatant and unconstitutional grab of power and our personal data, a takeover of government by a billionaire who has decided that the rules and laws don't apply to him and our national security doesn't matter?

But why? Why go to these lengths? Again, we have to follow the money. Trump's 2017 billionaire tax cuts--the ones that handed corporations and the ultrawealthy an unfathomable windfall while exploding the deficit--are set to expire this year, and Elon Musk and his buddies want to keep these tax cuts in place. If they are going to do that, then Donald Trump and Elon Musk--Donald and Elon--have to find $4 trillion somewhere. So where do they look? Not to the billionaires who profited from these tax cuts, not to the corporations that benefited the most--no. They are going to go after money where the cuts will hurt the most. They are going to go after what they consider low-hanging fruit. After all, what is the power of the poor, what is the power of even the middle class compared to the power of the oligarchs?

They are going to go after where the money is easiest to grab. So they are going to go after Medicaid.

They are going to go after Medicaid.

After all, it is just seniors or folks who are disabled or folks who are working class or struggling to get by and reliant on it for their healthcare. What is that weighed against more money for Elon Musk and his friends? What is that in the balance with Donald Trump and his desire to enrich himself?

There was a press conference about a week and a half ago. It kind of got lost in the blizzard of everything happening. But I found it very striking at this press conference. The President was asked by a reporter whether he was going to stop trading in his own personal interests and his meme coin.

What followed was this discussion between the President and this reporter while the cameras were rolling where the reporter says: You are making a lot of money.

And the President asked: How much money am I making from this meme coin?

Well, a lot.

I don't know what the exact language of this dialogue was, but it was blatant. It was so out in the open. I mean, it takes your breath away.

I remember, because it seems quaint, the beginning of the first Trump administration, when you remember he had that press conference and he was talking about how he was--I don't know--going to make sure that his business interests were somehow separated from his interest as President or the country's interest. And he had those stacks of--I don't know--binders or white paper. I don't think anybody knew what was in those stacks of paper or whether it was blank paper. But at least there was a superficial effort to suggest that he was going to have some walling off of his personal financial interests.

Of course, what we saw of those 4 years was there was none of that walling off. There were Gulf nations that were essentially paying tribute by staying in his hotels and all kinds of other graft going on.

But now, there is no effort to even hide the profit-taking with this meme coin or the distribution from his social media platform to people like Kash Patel. I mean, the grift is out there right in the open.

But that is really still small potatoes compared to the ability to raid the Treasury, compared to the ability to take all the money that goes into providing healthcare for sick people and Medicaid and using that to enrich yourself. Now, that is where the money is.

Part of what they are targeting is also USAID, and they are targeting Federal workers. They want Federal workers to resign. They sent Federal workers a letter that says, basically: Hey, you can reply to this message and say you quit and have basically a paid vacation until September.

Of course, there is no money to pay for that. It is unlawful what they are offering. But if people respond to that message, then they are on a list.

Why do Elon Musk and Donald Trump want all these Federal workers to quit? That is more money for them. That is more money for those tax cuts. They have to find those trillions somewhere. Let's see if we can push people who work for the government out the door.

Education of our kids--let's close down the Department of Education. OK, comparatively, you look at the Department of Education and you look at the Department of Defense. There is not a whole lot of money already in the Department of Education, but, hey, if it helps to pay for one more of those tax cuts, let's do away with the Department of Education.

Essential public services. OK, Federal grants for firefighters or firefighting equipment--what is that in the scale of things when we are talking about another tax cut for very wealthy folks? Take it from those who need it to fund giveaways for those who need it least.

It is kind of your reverse Robin Hood.

And who is leading the charge? A billionaire with billions in government contracts who stands to benefit financially if this administration stays in power and these cuts go through. That is what is happening.

That is what they are trying to do. That is what this is about. This is about consolidating power, doing away with the checks and the balances, consolidating power so that you can raid the Treasury. If we saw it during the financial collapse, banks that were too big to fail, this is a caper too big to stop--but only if we don't do our jobs in this building.

Strip government to the bone, funnel money to people who already have more than they could ever spend--how many lifetimes would it take to spend all those billions--and use the Federal Government as an instrument of personal gain, without accountability and without justice.

And, tragically, one of the things that makes this whole caper so possible now was something that took place in the building just across the street from here, when the Supreme Court of the United States said to the President of the United States: You can commit criminal acts while you are President and they can't touch you. If you use the Justice Department, you have absolute immunity. If you use other Departments, your immunity is so strong, you can argue the presumption is pretty much irrebuttable. They gave the President immunity to commit crimes.

His pardoning of all these violent criminals that attacked this building is a message that says: Hey, can't hold the President accountable--not anymore, not after this Supreme Court gave him that ``get out of jail free'' card. You do things for me that are unlawful; you do things for me that are unethical--I have your back. There is a pardon waiting for you at the end of all this.

Let's turn to USAID. What is the deal with USAID? USAID has been kind of a favorite issue Agency--idea, theme--that conservatives have loved to attack for a long time. And why? Because I think, reflexively, the idea of providing assistance around the world isn't the highest priority for many people. I totally get that. Of course, what we don't realize, unless we dig into what that money goes for, is a couple of things.

One, the money we invest in development around the world ultimately helps the United States a great deal. If we are looking at this just from a fairly selfish point of view, the money we invest in USAID helps us a great deal. Why is that? Well, if there are diseases halfway around the world like Ebola, like other potential dangers to the United States if they were to get to our shores, if we can work with our friends overseas and we can stop these viruses where they are, it means we don't have to deal with them here. If we can stop the instability in places around the world, it means less fertile soil for terrorism and terrorists who might attack us here. It improves our security. It improves our health. It wins friends for the United States around the world.

Now, I realize the administration has an America-first policy, which I think the way they are executing it means everyone else last. Of course, not a policy ``everyone else last'' that is doubly endearing to your allies, but this administration doesn't seem to think we need any friends around the world.

But even as we, through this administration, decide, well, we are done with development around the world, guess who stands to benefit. Certainly not the people around the world, not the people fighting HIV/ AIDS, not the people fighting malaria, not the people fighting poverty, not the people fighting starvation. No, our adversaries benefit. Probably the biggest beneficiary is China.

Why does China benefit from our abandoning the field? Because it opens the field for China. China is already around the world investing in other countries and doing so with strings attached. It is making debtor nations of other countries. It is making them obligated to China--countries that are rich in rare minerals. It is giving China the foothold or, even more explicitly, giving China military bases and naval bases. And they are using development systems to leverage other countries.

These other countries, so many of them will tell us: We don't want to work with China. They are not doing this for altruistic reasons. We know what China is all about. But if America is going to abandon the field, if we have no choice but to seek friends elsewhere, we will do what is necessary to feed our people. We will go to where we need to go to get help when we confront disease. And if America abandons the field, we will go to China.

China is winning so much in these last 2 weeks, it is getting tired of winning.

Just today, we learned that, apparently, some list, according to public reports, of officers at the CIA was sent to the White House in an unclassified email. Now, I remember a time that seems very quaint, when Donald Trump was always talking about Hillary's emails. What about this email that potentially exposes the identity of people who are working at the CIA, who want to work at the CIA, and according to public reports, the administration response is: Don't worry. That unclassified email only contained their first name and the first initial of their last name.

Well, I am sure that China, with all of its big data analytics will have no trouble with that at all. With an answer like that, the administration may think they can pull the wool over our eyes, but they can't. What is more, they cannot pull the wool over the prying eyes of our competitors, our adversaries around the world.

So USAID. First of all, let's start with a rather mundane point, it would appear, in this administration. What they are doing is illegal. I guess if you have absolute immunity, you don't worry about those things. But we in this body should worry about that. We should worry about whether the President and some wealthy billionaire are violating the law. We are in the business of making laws. We used to cherish our institutional prerogative. We used to think it was valuable in the scheme of things. We used to believe the Founders were quite brilliant in how they established each institution as a check on the other so none would have absolute power. But here we are faced with something which I think we have to acknowledge is plainly unlawful, and not a peep--not a peep--about that by those who could most strongly resist this.

It is harder for us in the minority. We don't control anything in the Senate. We don't control anything in the House. If this administration succeeds in neutering the Congress of the United States, there is little we in the minority alone can do without the help of others who cherish this institution. We just cannot do that alone.

We will do all that we can. We are here all night. We will be here as many nights as it takes. We will raise public awareness of this unlawful scheme. We will use litigation, and we are. We will use every tool at our disposal. But it shouldn't be just us. It shouldn't be just us.

I think a lot of Americans are wondering now whether the Constitution is so brilliant after all, whether it is adequate to meet this moment-- a moment that our Founders really anticipated when we would have a demagogue who would ride the whirlwind of the confusion that he sows. Well, I think it is a brilliant Constitution. I think it is the best in the world, but it is not self-effectuating; it depends on all of us. To work, it depends on all of us.

The genius of the Constitution is not that we are today where we are, where we have a Supreme Court that said the President is above the law; where we have a President acting like he is above the law; where we have the administration bringing in unelected billionaires to take data and who knows what else; where we have terrible national security breaches and not a murmur of dissent about them. The genius of the Constitution is not that this is happening but that it was forestalled until now; that we have gone through these more than two centuries without confronting this. But this is where we are, and this will be the real test of our Constitution--what it will mean in this moment when the President and a wealthy billionaire--the world's richest man--are engaged in things that are plainly unlawful. Doing away with an Agency like USAID is plainly unlawful.

Even if you don't care about what USAID does, even if you are content to let China take over development around the world and win over friends and mineral rights and turn our allies into debtor nations, even if you are OK ceding global leadership to China--which I am most certainly not--the moment you say it is OK for them to violate the law--to shut down this one Agency--you have said it is OK for them to violate the law and shut down anything--anything.

If they can do this with USAID, they can do this with the Department of Ed. If they can do it with the Department of Ed, they can do it with Head Start. If they can do it with Head Start, they can do it with Medicaid. If they can do it with Medicaid, they can do it with Social Security. They can do anything.

The USAID was established by the U.S. Congress. It cannot and should not be eliminated on the whims of a President or his unelected billionaire friend. Shutting down USAID or pausing its work will have devastating global and potentially irreversible consequences, but the biggest consequence will be to us. It is the world's largest provider of humanitarian aid, and through it, the United States saves countless lives every year.

I have to say, as I have had the opportunity as chair of the Intelligence Committee, and even prior to that position in the House, to travel to some of the most dangerous parts of the world--to Iraq, to Afghanistan, to Pakistan, to Yemen--you name it--I have met these USAID employees, the ones who just got this order: You need to get on a plane and come back. You are on leave whether you like it or not. I have met these folks. They are so patriotic and passionate about their work and such dedicated public servants.

I remember being in Afghanistan fairly early in the war, and I met this young man with USAID. He looked to me to be in his early twenties. His deployment was for 1 year in Afghanistan. He had only been there for a few months. These folks were operating without much of a safety net, and in order to be effective, they needed to be out in the villages. They couldn't just stay on their base. They had to be out, exposed. This USAID worker--this young man--had been there only for a few months of a 1-year deployment, and he told me he had already signed up for his second year.

I remember saying: Wow, that is pretty impressive. You like it here? You like your work that much where you have only been here for a few months and you have already decided you are going to re-up for another year?

And he said: No. It is not that. We are in the development business. You really can't see the fruits of your labor in a single year. I want to be here long enough where I can see the results of the projects that I am working on, where I can see them come to fruition.

This was the kind of public servant who populates USAID all over the world. This is the kind of public servant--I don't know if this young man is still with the USAID, but if he is--wherever he is in whatever part of the world where he is doing God's work--he just got an email saying: You are on involuntary leave. Thank you for nothing. Don't let the door hit you on the backside on the way out. Sincerely, Uncle Sam.

What a hell of a way to treat people.

These folks at USAID are stopping diseases from spreading. They are helping to feed communities that are starving. They are showing the United States cares about people around the world; that it cares about others; that the most powerful Nation in the world hasn't forgotten about the most powerless communities in the world. USAID represents decades of soft power that the United States has built. It has shown allies in developing nations that we stand by them in crises; building partnerships that last; protecting our national security.

I remember visiting Pakistan. Now, Pakistan probably doesn't have a lot of great things to say about the United States much of the time, which I think and I recognize is frustrating--when you are trying to help and it doesn't seem like anything you do is enough. I get that. I totally get that. But I remember when an earthquake struck northwest Pakistan, and American helicopters were helicoptering in relief, and a toy became very popular in Pakistan. It was a replica of an American helicopter because we suddenly became associated with helping people in their time of need. It was probably the single most valuable diplomacy we had done in years. I guess we are not going to do that anymore.

All of that--all of that effort--to show that the United States is concerned about the well-being not just of ourselves but of others all over the world--all of that is at risk. Well, there are champagne bottles being popped right now in Beijing--and probably quite a few in Moscow--at the idea tonight that we are abandoning the field and that we are poised to confirm the architect of that abandonment--an otherwise obscure man named Russ Vought.

Alliances and decades of work are going out the window. Russia's and China's influence are on the rise. And for what? USAID represents less than 1 percent of the Federal budget, but that 1 percent gets Elon Musk and Donald Trump closer to the $4 trillion hole they need to fill to give another tax cut to the wealthy; so it is on the chopping block, plain and simple.

Let's look at some of the other events of the last couple of weeks and put them in perspective. Let's look at the firing of these top Department of Justice officials.

Within hours of Donald Trump's order, the Justice Department fired more than a dozen prosecutors--many career public servants--who had worked on criminal cases involving the people who attacked this building or maybe they worked on criminal cases involving the one who incited the attack on this building. They weren't removed for incompetence, and they weren't removed for corruption. They were removed because they did their jobs patriotically. They were removed because they had the audacity to try to hold a powerful man accountable.

The official justification for their firing was that these prosecutors--many of whom had worked under Special Counsel Jack Smith-- could not be trusted to implement Trump's agenda.

Let's think about that.

A President of the United States who spent years railing against the so-called weaponization of the government, which is the expression he would use for holding him accountable for law-breaking--that President who railed against the Department for weaponizing government has now purged his own Justice Department of the very people who investigated his many crimes. This purge was a product of the White House. The order came from Donald Trump himself. The firings were executed by his appointed allies in the Justice Department.

When it was done, his administration made the end game clear: The Justice Department no longer represents the American people. It no longer enforces the law. It enforces Donald Trump's will. This is not a Department that can be counted on anymore to investigate corruption but to defend Donald Trump. It is a Justice Department that doesn't prosecute certain criminals. It protects them as long as they serve the President's interests or are the President himself. This is the new normal in Donald Trump's second term--a government that exists not as a check on his power but as an extension of it.

The message was unmistakable to prosecutors, to judges, and to anyone working in law enforcement who still believes in the rule of law or an idea now which seems quaint--that no one is above the law. Do your job. Protect the person of the President, not the people of the country or you and your job may be next because, in Trump's America, there is only loyalty--not to Constitution, not to country, but to the person of the President.

Now with the firings complete, the vacancies will be filled not with independent prosecutors but with loyalists; with lawyers who will spend the next 4 years reshaping the very foundation of the Justice Department, ensuring that the next time Donald Trump or anyone like him breaks the law, there won't be anyone left to prosecute. They will be there to go after Trump's enemies whether they are real or just perceived.

We are not inevitably headed toward authoritarianism or one-man rule, but firing these top prosecutors takes us one step closer. If we don't stop it now, if we don't draw a line here, there will be little justice left in the Department to save.

I spent almost 6 years with that Department. I was an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles--one of the best jobs I ever had. I worked with a cadre of prosecutors who was just top notch, some of the brightest lawyers in Los Angeles. They gravitated to that office. They were some of the most capable and idealistic young lawyers who wanted to do justice. The office was completely apolitical. I had no idea whether my fellow prosecutors were Democrats or Republicans. And, yes, when U.S. attorneys changed and Presidents changed, there might be different priorities in the office, but they were broad policy priorities. There might be more of an emphasis on drug cases or there might be more of an emphasis on white-collar crime cases, but it was a difference of policy; it was never about the politics of vengeance or retribution. No one in that office had any misunderstanding or misapprehension of what their role was, and their role was to do justice.

Now, I think the Department made a mistake after this building was attacked, after our police officers were savagely beaten, after our President--this President--sat in that White House dining room and watched that violence occur, I think the Department of Justice made a mistake--not by investigating that massive crime on this building, on our police, on the peaceful transfer of power, on our democracy, but in taking so long. I think they made a mistake in focusing on the foot soldiers of that attack who broke into this building rather than those who incited it and organized it.

But I understand why that mistake was made. That mistake was made because there was a desire, after the first 4 years of Donald Trump and the terrible politicization of that Department by Bill Barr, there was a desire to restore the independence of the Department. There was a reluctance to follow the evidence where it would lead. That reluctance, that desire to insulate the Department from criticism resulted in justice being delayed and ultimately justice being denied.

One of the biggest culprits in that failure of the justice system was that building across the street and, indeed, the entire court system because that court system, and most particularly the High Court, understood what was happening, understood the endless delays in bringing to justice the ones who incited those attacks. They understood exactly what was happening, and they permitted it to happen.

More than that, the High Court not only permitted it to happen, but by countenancing these endless delays by letting the President play rope-a-dope in the courts, they ensured that justice would be delayed so that justice might be denied. And in fact, it was denied. That was the mistake of the Department: excessive caution. And that mistake means that a court that has become a partisan court could use delay as a weapon to defeat justice, and it did.

But in this Alice in Wonderland world in which we live, Donald Trump would make that desire to move the Department away from the politicization of Bill Barr, restore a reputation for independence, that laudable goal, would turn that in some Alice in Wonderland way into a weaponization of the government.

Why? Because it believed that the rule of law applies to everyone, even the most powerful man in the world.

So why get rid of these prosecutors? Why purge the FBI agents? Why after promising in their nominees--Pam Bondi, Kash Patel--we have learned how much we can rely on the promises, the commitments they made in their confirmation: zero.

But why is this firing the FBI agents such an important piece of this whole effort by Donald Trump, Elon Musk, and their enablers? Because if they are going to take money from the public fisc, if they are going to enrich themselves with their meme coins, if they are going to raid the Treasury, if they are going to take people's private data, if they are going to try to illegally shut down Agencies, they don't want a Department, God forbid, to say no, that violates the law. They don't want an FBI that is going to examine anything they are doing. So stripping the Department of its independence, instilling fear in thousands and thousands of FBI agents, telling them you are just one wrong step away from being fired, this is the way to ensure that when they raid the Treasury, there is no one there to call out what they are doing.

This is also part and parcel of what these pardons were all about. What role did these pardons play in this effort to bring about one-man rule and to enable that one man to raid the public fisc?

So on his first day and with the stroke of a pen pardoning 1,550 people--people who violently beat law enforcement--the President wished to make something abundantly clear: If you use violence in my service, I will have your back.

So people who came in through these doors and bear-sprayed police officers and beat them with flagpoles, took apart metal barricades and beat them with that, crushed them in the doors--Officer Daniel Hodges, I will never forget the images of him being crushed in that revolving door.

The people who did that, they got a pardon. He pardoned the ring leaders or gave them clemency, leaders of the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers, violent, unrepentant White nationalists who conspired to overthrow the peaceful transfer of power. I mean, how did we get here, where a President of the United States would pardon people for doing that?

Some were convicted of seditious conspiracy, one of the most serious crimes in our legal system. Others were convicted of dragging police officers into violent crowds and of beating them, of bear-spraying them, of crushing them. We witnessed it. We were here. I was here, not on this side of the Capitol, but on the other side. I was here. I was here when they were breaking windows to get in. I was here on the House floor with one of the floor managers that day, opposing the efforts to overturn the election. I was here when the Speaker was whisked out of her chair. I was here when the Capitol Police first informed us there were rioters in the building.

I was here when the Capitol Police told us that we needed to get our gas masks out. I was here when we struggled to open the damn things that were in these steel plastic pouches. I was here when those masks were deployed. It was a polyurethane bag you were supposed to pull over your head with an elastic band around your neck. I was here when the fan that circulates the air in those masks so that you don't asphyxiate, when the sound of those fans was everywhere on the House floor and in the Gallery.

I was here when the Capitol Police told us that we needed to get out, that they cleared an exit route and we needed to get out. I was here when some of my Republican colleagues in the House--as I waited on the House floor, we could really hear those people banging on the doors to get in--said: You can't let them see you.

One of them said: I know these people. I can talk to these people. I can talk my way through these people. You are in a whole different category.

I have to say, at first, I was oddly touched by their evident concern for my safety. But my next impression was, if they hadn't been lying about the election, I wouldn't need to worry about my safety. None of us would.

Donald Trump pardoning the folks who were attacking police officers that day, this wasn't about mercy. This wasn't about justice. These people hadn't made restitution or shown any--far from it. This was about power. This was about a hope to erase the crimes that they committed in his name. This was a message to his supporters that the violence and illegal acts aren't just to be tolerated; they are to be rewarded because that is what this was.

This was a message--a message that if you fight for him, if you storm the Capitol, if you brutalize police officers, if you try to overthrow an election, you will be protected; you will be hailed, even. They will make choirs with you, like Kash Patel. You will be absolved because he, the President, so desperately wants to be absolved. He wants to somehow remove the stain of his impeachments, of the violent attack in his name.

So what has happened to some of these criminals since they have been pardoned by Donald Trump? One of those pardoned was killed in a shootout with police in Indiana--a model citizen, I am sure.

One of them was arrested four times between storming the Capitol and being pardoned by Donald Trump. Another was rearrested for unlawfully possessing a gun as a felon. That was for his 2017 conviction for a domestic violence battery by strangulation. Seems like a worthy candidate for a pardon by Donald Trump.

One rioter who attacked police with bear spray and a metal whip on January 6 is now grappling with unresolved charges of soliciting a minor--a third-degree felony carrying up to 10 years in prison. Maybe he will be pardoned for that.

These are the people whom Donald Trump pardoned, that he celebrated because they showed loyalty to him; and in Trump's world, nothing else matters.

In order to carry out this plunder of the Treasury, to make the whole of government the vehicle for his self-enrichment and self- aggrandizement, he must have a loyal cadre willing to do even the most violent acts in his service.

``Stand back and stand by.''

So let's turn quickly to the funding freeze. How does that fit into this effort?

There was a memo, as we know, to freeze all Federal funding, Federal loans, and assistance. We saw the reports, the days of chaos. We saw hospitals wondering whether they would get funding to keep their clinic doors open. We saw parents wondering whether their childcare would be available, seniors wondering whether they would have the services that they needed. And for what?

Once again, this is an effort to prepare to raid the Treasury, to take the resources that belong to the American people and use them to fund a massive tax cut for those who don't need it.

I represent a State that has been battered by natural disaster, so I take this very personally, this freeze on Federal funding, because my constituents need the help of FEMA. They need the help of the SBA. They need to know that as the government has been there for every other State in a natural disaster, it will be there for us.

The idea of freezing that funding and inhibiting that recovery so that there can be just a bit more money for Donald Trump and Elon Musk and his allies is anathema to my constituents, and it should be unacceptable for all the rest of us.

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