Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the Department of Energy Relating to ``Energy Conservation Program for Appliance Standards: Certification Requirements, Labeling Requirements, and Enforcement Provisions for Certain Consumer Products and Commercial Equipment''
Floor Speech
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Ms. WARREN. Mr. President, I want to say how much I appreciate the remarks of Senator Alsobrooks.
It is an honor to fight alongside you.
So here we are--100 days, 100 acts of corruption.
Today, I am reading into the Congressional Record 100 reports of corruption from Donald Trump's first 100 days in office.
Now, when he ran for office, Trump promised repeatedly--repeatedly-- that he would lower costs ``on day one.'' But instead of following through on his promise, Trump and his Trump administration have paved the way for the President, his top officials, and his billionaire buddies to personally feed at the trough of government corruption.
So count with me. In just 100 days, Donald Trump, his family, and his administration have:
No. 1, turned the White House into a Tesla dealership.
No. 2, fired independent Commissioners at the Federal Trade Commission.
No. 3, punished former officials who opposed his 2020 election lies.
No. 4, paid for the White House Easter Egg Roll by soliciting corporate sponsors who have business pending before the government.
No. 5, helped Trump's son set up a club--pay $500,000 for access to Trump's Cabinet.
No. 6, declared that there would be no tariff exceptions, then permitted Apple's CEO behind-the-scenes access, and, poof, iPhone tariffs were cut.
No. 7, created an opening for insider trading by reportedly giving Wall Street exclusive information about how trade talks were going.
No. 8, hosted million-dollar dinners between Big Pharma CEOs and their regulator, R.F.K., Jr.
No. 9, launched crypto meme coin right before the inauguration to make millions of dollars, then increased the value of those coins by signing Executive orders, making crypto a priority.
No. 10, launched a meme coin for Melania too.
No. 11, promised his ``rich-as-hell'' donors a giant tax handout and is working hard to deliver.
No. 12, weakened rules insulating government workers from politics.
No. 13, limited corporate foreign bribery investigations.
No. 14, halted enforcement of the Corporate Transparency Act-- wouldn't want people to know what is going on.
No. 15, offered a private dinner with Trump himself and a special tour of the White House for the top 220 holders of his meme coin, permitting Trump and his family to profit both from the runup in the value of the coin and the increase in trading on the Trump platform.
No. 16, accepted $40 million for First Lady Melania's documentary from Jeff Bezos--way above the market rate.
No. 17, pointed to Bezos's multimillion-dollar documentary payment as a model when Warner Bros. asked Trump's team how to improve its own relationship with the White House.
No. 18, struck a deal with Amazon to stream Trump's old show, ``The Apprentice,'' which will mean more money for Trump, as Amazon is seeking tax breaks and other Federal benefits.
No. 19, coercing law firms to offer almost $1 billion in free legal work in an arrangement that experts say could run afoul of anti-bribery laws.
No. 20, started undermining Medicare's ability to negotiate drug prices after Big Pharma gave millions to Trump's inauguration.
No. 21, filed a meritless lawsuit against ``60 Minutes'' and launched a baseless FCC investigation.
No. 22, tried to get the AP to bend the knee and kicked them out of the White House briefing room when they refused to bend the knee.
No. 23, hired Defense Secretary Hegseth's younger brother to serve in a key role.
No. 24, hired a longtime former partner of Don, Jr., to serve as Ambassador to Greece.
No. 25, nominated Jared Kushner's father to serve as Ambassador to France.
No. 26, selected Tiffany Trump's father-in-law to serve as an adviser.
No. 27, appointed an oil and gas executive to lead the Department of Energy.
No. 28, selected a Chief of Staff who was a big-time lobbyist for clients like tobacco and mining companies.
No. 29, named officials who had recently lobbied for oil and chemical giants to help write EPA rules. What could possibly go wrong?
No. 30, appointed Mehmet Oz, who had close ties to Medicare Advantage insurers--in fact, sold it on TV--to lead CMS to set payment rates and otherwise help out whom? Medicare Advantage insurers.
No. 31, appointed John Phelan, a major donor with no military or government experience, to lead the Navy and hand out Navy construction contracts.
No. 32, appointed Pam Bondi, a former lobbyist for a Federal detention contractor, to lead the DOJ.
No. 33, announced that the DOJ would stop prioritizing enforcement of restrictions on foreign lobbyists under the leadership of Bondi, who herself is a former foreign lobbyist for Qatar.
No. 34, appointed Howard Lutnick, who has billions invested in companies accused of illegally facilitating crypto money laundering, as the guy to lead the Commerce Department.
No. 35, appointed Marty Makary, the former executive of a company selling weight-loss drugs, to lead the FDA, which would be the Agency that would regulate his company.
No. 36, appointed Sean Duffy, who lobbied for the airline industry, to be the Transportation Secretary to regulate the airline industry.
No. 37, tapped Pete Hegseth, whose wife owns stock in large defense contractors, to lead the Defense Department and help hand out those defense contracts.
No. 38, tapped Doug Burgum, who made money from leasing land to Big Oil, to lead the Interior Department and manage the leasing to oil companies.
No. 39, nominated a Big Oil lobbyist to run the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management.
No. 40, nominated as IRS head Billy Long, an aggressive salesman for a fraud-riddled tax credit who received donations after being nominated so he could clear out old campaign debts.
No. 41, tapped Paul Atkins, a former crypto lobbyist, to lead the SEC that will regulate crypto.
No. 42, appointed a former tax lobbyist to lead tax policy.
No. 43, appointed Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., who planned to get paid for anti-vax lawsuits while he was heading up HHS and could affect the outcome of exactly those same lawsuits.
No. 44, appointed a top Pentagon official who led a firm investing in defense contractors and has directed DOD to outsource as much as possible to defense contractors.
No. 45, appointed someone who lobbied to privatize Medicare to lead OMB's healthcare budget.
No. 46, installed Steve Davis to effectively lead DOGE, while also leading another Musk company.
No. 47, installed another DOGE leader to control Treasury's payment system, while still holding down his day job, oh, as a software CEO.
No. 48, handed the power over crypto policy to a White House crypto czar, who leads a venture capital firm that heavily invests in crypto.
No. 49, selected a border czar, who led a firm that got tens of millions of dollars of Federal contracts for Homeland Security companies.
No. 50, appointed Treasury Secretary Bessent, who is gutting the IRS so that it can't audit rich tax cheats because he himself is a tax- dodging megamillionaire.
No. 51, pardoned Rod Blagojevich, the former Illinois Governor convicted for corruption after his vocal support for Trump.
No. 52, pardoned January 6 insurrectionists who tried to overturn an election that Trump lost.
No. 53, pardoned a Trump loyalist found guilty of wire fraud.
No. 54, pardoned the son of a longtime Republican donor.
No. 55, pardoned a corporation that had been fined $100 million for money laundering.
No. 56, watched his own stablecoin while preparing to sign legislation that will help stablecoin and let Donald Trump oversee it.
No. 57, sold merch with Presidential branding.
No. 58, disbanded DOJ's crypto unit after business talks between Binance and a Trump-backed crypto company ramped up.
No. 59, halted SEC enforcement actions against crypto companies that enriched Trump personally.
No. 60, met with crypto executives who are asking Treasury to back off of oversight of their companies, all while simultaneously exploring a deal to list a Trump-linked crypto company's new stablecoin.
No. 61, maintain financial ties between Trump officials and Trump's media company that includes FBI Director Kash Patel, who was given a huge award of Trump media company stock.
No. 62, nominated Attorney General Bondi, who owned $2 million in DJT shares.
No. 63, paid the Education Secretary almost $1 million in Trump media company shares.
No. 64, nominated Intelligence Board nominees who have millions in Trump media company shares.
No. 65, selected a special envoy to the Middle East who wants to develop real estate in Gaza while running his own real estate firm while he is Special Envoy to the Middle East.
No. 66, appointed an FBI Director who consulted for the Qatari Government.
No. 67, picked that FBI Director, even though he also received millions of dollars from a Cayman Island holding company with ties to China.
No. 68, decided to cancel the Direct File Program. The cancellation of this program that lets taxpayers file their taxes online for free will help the bottom line of Intuit, which charges people for filing their taxes and that gave $1 million to Trump's inauguration.
No. 69, took its largest inauguration donation from a poultry company that was under DOJ's scrutiny. After the donation, the SEC approved its parent company for the New York Stock Exchange.
No. 70, dropped a probe into sexual misconduct allegations against Trump's Education Secretary's husband.
No. 71, hosted dozens of foreign Federal and State officials at Mar- a-Lago, helping enrich Trump.
No. 72, hosted a GOP retreat at another one of Trump's resorts, for which Trump's resorts get paid.
No. 73, circumvented the normal contracting process to pick a company with close ties to Trump's former campaign manager.
No. 74, awarded a $30 million ICE contract to Trump insider Peter Thiel.
No. 75, continued developing new Trump properties overseas, including in Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
No. 76, hatched a plan for the State Department to pay Tesla $400 million.
No. 77, accepted a $4 million inauguration donation from a GOP megadonor and then nominated him as UK Ambassador on the same day.
Did anyone miss the message here?
And Donald Trump took actions so that he could advance the personal interests of his ``co-President,'' Elon Musk. How? Well, he fired EEOC leaders that were investigating and suing Tesla. He illegally fired the NLRB Chair, which had filed a complaint against SpaceX, one of Musk's companies. He gutted the CFPB staff and fired the Director after they investigated complaints against Musk's companies. He gutted the Department of Labor office investigating Tesla and SpaceX and fired the USAID inspector general who launched a probe into satellite terminals made by Musk's Starlink.
No. 83, targeted the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration staff who were reportedly ``a thorn in Tesla's side.'' That is enough to fire them.
No. 84, said Musk would self-police his conflicts of interest--yeah, right.
No. 85, pressured the Administrator of the FAA, which fined Musk's SpaceX, to resign.
And No. 86, permitted Musk to keep his financial disclosure hidden. And, by the way, I have a new bill to fix that one in particular.
No. 87, allowed Musk's Starlink to start working with the FAA after Musk criticized the FAA's air traffic telecom system.
No. 88, made Musk's SpaceX the frontrunner for a new, lucrative Golden Dome contract.
No. 89, stood by Musk when his X executives told an advertising firm to increase ad revenue, threatening that Musk could interfere with their pending merger if they didn't play along.
No. 90, permitted Musk to join Trump's interview with the Air Force Secretary nominee while SpaceX held billions of dollars in contracts with the Air Force.
No. 91, permitted the National Transportation Safety Board to share news related to the airplane crashes in Washington and Philadelphia only on Musk-owned X.
No. 92, permitted the Social Security Administration to share important public communication only on X.
No. 93, dropped the Department of Justice's anti-discrimination complaint against Musk's SpaceX.
No. 94, fired FDA staffers reviewing Elon Musk's Neuralink clinical trial applications--a lot of benefits for Elon Musk there.
And for our closing six moves that make every bit of this corruption even harder to root out, Trump got rid of the cops on the beat.
No. 95, fired 18 inspectors general who make sure that Federal Agencies follow the law.
No. 96, fired the head of the Office of Special Counsel, who protects whistleblowers and makes sure that civil service laws are followed.
No. 97, fired the head of the Office of Government Ethics, who watches to see that the President and his administration follow the laws on conflicts of interest, bribery, and other ethical issues. The guy is gone.
No. 98, fired DOJ prosecutors who worked on the January 6 investigations.
No. 99, sidelined DOJ's office that reviews the legality of Executive orders.
And No. 100, gutted DOJ's office that prosecutes misconduct by public officials.
That is 100 corrupt acts in 100 days. Americans deserve accountability. We need to fight back--all of us.
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Ms. WARREN. Of course.
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Ms. WARREN. I appreciate the question. I want to say here that I have never seen, anytime in American history, this level of corruption over 8 years in the White House, much less in just 100 days.
This level of corruption is everywhere, all the time, and it truly undermines the ability of our country to function. It undermines our economy. It undermines our position in the world. It undermines the economic stability of our families. And it undermines our entire democracy.
I thank the Senator for the question.
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