Providing for Congressional Disapproval Under Chapter 8 of Title United States Code, of the Rule Submitted By the Bureau of Land Management Relating to ``Central Yukon Record of Decision and Approved Resource Management Plan''

Floor Speech

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Mr. SCHIFF. Mr. President, I want to take a look at the last 9 months in this country, at the first 9 months of this administration, and see just how far we have traveled down the road toward dictatorship in 9 months. So let me see if in less than 9 minutes I can summarize 9 months.

First, let's look at the President's early attacks on our universities and the President withholding Federal funding from universities that are using a curriculum he doesn't like or employing professors he doesn't want or that are unwilling to make changes that sacrifice their academic freedom and that suit the ideological predilections of the administration. An attack on our institutions of higher learning is unprecedented in our history. Some of the first attacks on the freedom of the American people were attacks on our universities.

They were, in quick succession, followed by attacks on law firms; that is, the President of the United States telling law firms that you must not represent these unpopular clients--unpopular to the President--because they took action against the President or they spoke out against the President or they belonged to the Justice Department when the Justice Department was investigating the President's corruption. So the President has tried to dictate to the legal community who it can defend and who it cannot.

In our country, our Founders underscored the importance of the right of representation, of the right to a jury trial, of the right even for unpopular causes to have representation. Indeed, John Adams took on one of the most unpopular cases of his time and represented those clients because he wanted to establish the principle in American jurisprudence that everyone is entitled to counsel, but under this administration, that is not true.

This administration has attacked law firms and said: You shall not represent these clients, and if you do, we will cut off your access to courthouses or we will cut off your access to Federal contracts or security clearances that you would need to represent your clients.

Sadly, as in the case of universities, many law firms have crumbled. Having given years of lip service--decades of lip service--to the idea that everyone is entitled to vigorous representation, they have crumbled.

But the administration wasn't content to try to silence universities or professors or to silence law firms. The censorship and the intimidation campaign continued in the President using the power of the regulatory body of the Federal Communications Commission to try to silence late-night comedians because they told jokes about the President. Effectively, with Paramount, which wanted to merge with Skydance, it was made abundantly clear that that merger--that multimillion-dollar merger--wouldn't go forward unless you paid off the President in his litigation against CBS. Unless you paid the President millions of dollars, personally, that merger was not going to go through. And what is more, that pesky, late-night comedian Stephen Colbert needs to go. So Stephen Colbert gets his show canceled. Jimmy Kimmel gets his show canceled. His show was, thankfully, brought back, but the administration is using regulatory power to censor late-night comedians.

He is going after the press, the freedom of the press, telling the AP: If you don't use my Gulf of America lexicon instead of the Gulf of Mexico, you are not going to be able to cover certain things at the White House. You are not going to be able to accompany the President on certain trips.

He is suing the Wall Street Journal because they are reporting about his contacts with Jeffrey Epstein.

He is trying to silence the media, intimidate the media, chill the media, and it is working. You see the Washington Post change their editorial policy. You see the LA Times withhold its editorial of the Presidential election. The censorship is working.

But it is not just the press. It is not just late-night comedy. It is not just universities. It is not just law firms. The President is telling corporate America: You can't hire this person. Microsoft, you can't hire this person.

The threat is, if they do, they won't get government contracts.

The President is saying to other companies: You want to export your product? You have got to give the U.S. Government a share. You have got to make the U.S. Government an equity partner in your company.

And if under Bill Clinton the era of Big Government was over, the era of Big Government is back with Donald Trump--a Big Government that can make decisions about whom corporations can do business with and where and what they can export and whom they can hire.

But it doesn't stop there, of course, because now the President is using the Justice Department to go after his political enemies. This week, it is James Comey. Next week, it will be someone else, and the week after that, who knows? It is a long and growing list of enemies with the President tweeting out whom he wants prosecuted, whom he wants investigated--commanding, dictating vindictive prosecutions almost every day--abusing the Department that I once served in for almost 6 years in a way we have never seen before in this country. He is threatening to take people's liberty away from them if they stand up to the President.

Now we have this--what brings us to the floor tonight--and that is the unprecedented use of the military, the U.S. military, and our Guard against our own people.

You have the President telling a roomful of generals and admirals that there is an enemy within, and that enemy is the American people or at least those American people who didn't vote for him. They are the enemy within, and he is going to go after them. He wants the military to use those American cities that didn't vote for him as their training grounds. No sooner is it said than we see helicopters over the skies in Chicago, and we see military troops rappelling from Black Hawks. We see the military being used against their own citizens. We see children shackled, crying for their parents in the middle of the night. We see signs of horror and chaos.

We see a President so determined to use the military against our own people that, when a Governor says: No, you cannot use our National Guard in this lawless way, he commandeers the military anyway. California was the test case. We were the first. Los Angeles was the first. Over the objections of the mayor of Los Angeles and the objections of the Governor of California, the President of the United States commandeered California's National Guard to be used against our own people to increase the risk of violence and disorder so that the President might have a pretext to order in more military troops.

Now, in California, like in most States, we revere our National Guard for what they do for us during good times and hard times; how they protect us from fire and flood. So to abuse the Guard in that way, to try to breach the trust the Guard has with our own citizens, is a calamity. It is gravely damaging the morale of the troops in the Guard even as it is damaging the trust of the people of the State in their Guard.

Now we see this replicated in Portland--this militarization, this attack on American cities. We see this in court in Portland, wherein the judge, in hearing the government's case for the use and misuse of this military force, says that its presentation is untethered to fact-- untethered to fact; that there is no lawful basis, no factual basis, to use the military in this way.

Now they are doing the same in Chicago, and they are threatening San Francisco. And if they can't get a State's own National Guard to be used against its own citizens, they are now inviting the Guard from other States, like Texas, to leave their State, with a willing Governor, to send them to another State.

I was grateful to hear the Republican Governor of Oklahoma speak out against this terrible abuse of the National Guard, which not only undermines the military readiness of our forces to be abused in this way but is so deliberately divisive that we would have one State now turn against another State; that we would have Texas against Illinois and deploy Texas's military in that way--its Guard in that way--was previously unthinkable. It should be unthinkable today.

Today, it is California. Today, it is Illinois. Today, it is Oregon. Where will it be tomorrow? Where does this end? I will tell you where it ends. It ends in more civil strife. It ends in more morale problems in the military. It ends in a lesser democracy. If we are here in 9 months, where will we be with 4 years of this? I will tell you this: We will not be a democracy. At the pace we are going, in 4 years, we will not be a democracy.

But today, 9 months into this, it is not too late to put a stop to this. All that it would require is a handful of my colleagues on the other side of the aisle to say: Enough. Enough already. Enough of the attacks on our universities and our press. Enough of the attacks on our cities. Enough of the weaponization of our Department of Justice. Enough of the lawlessness. We are going to be Senators once again. We are going to assert the power of Congress once again to put an end, to put a stop to this lawlessness.

That is all it would take, is a few people of conscience to stand up to this President and say: Enough.

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