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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Ms. DUCKWORTH. Mr. President, one of the proudest moments of my life was the first time I ever laced up my boots, put on my uniform, and raised my right hand to swear my oath to the Constitution as a member of the Illinois Army National Guard, and I cherished every day that I got to wake up and call myself a soldier.

And it is because I love our military so deeply that I refuse to let a five-time, draft-dodging coward abuse it for his own personal gain. At Quantico last week, Trump told our top military leaders that he wants American servicemembers to ``train'' against the same citizens they swear an oath to protect.

Last month, he essentially declared war on Chicago, one of the largest cities in the country that he leads, with a meme from a Vietnam war movie about the loss of all humanity when military action is unchecked by ethics or the laws of war. And this week, he made good on his threats, forcing hundreds of National Guardsmen into our city, against the will of the people of Illinois or its legally elected representatives.

For months, Trump has fabricated claims of chaos and crime on American streets to justify false claims that there is a need to deploy troops into our cities against local officials' wishes--first to L.A., then DC. And he isn't stopping there. He is also attempting to deploy troops to Portland, though a Federal judge he appointed blocked his efforts there twice because, in his own hand-picked appointee's words, Trump's claims about why they are needed were ``untethered to facts.'' Another way to put that is that he is lying.

In the last few weeks in Chicago, we have seen Trump's agents detain innocent Americans, deny citizens their right to legal representation, point weapons at civilians, zip-tie children, arrest elected officials, ransack apartment buildings, injure journalists, and shoot a priest in the head with pepper balls for the so-called crime of peacefully praying for nonviolence. They have even shot two people, leaving one--a father of two young children--dead, making dubious and unsubstantiated claims in their attempt to justify their use of lethal force.

It is obvious what Trump is doing. He is targeting and punishing the cities who dare to push back against his abuse of power. And while he is currently targeting blue cities with his lies, if these deployments are not stopped, there will be nothing to stop him--or any future President--from doing this to anyone, anywhere, for any made-up reason that is also untethered to reality.

So let's be clear. Ordering our troops to intimidate Americans in their own communities doesn't make our Nation safer. Policing Americans in their own communities is not the National Guard's job. They can't make arrests, and they are not adequately trained to carry out police duties in urban environments.

These deployments are yet another Trump move straight out of the Authoritarian 101 textbook. They further jeopardize civil rights while distracting our troops from executing their core mission of keeping Americans safe from the real adversaries who wish us harm.

We know that Trump's actions are not about law and order--because if he cared about law and order, he wouldn't gleefully refuse to coordinate with State and local officials. He wouldn't have literally defunded our police by freezing and slashing Federal dollars that help hire, train, and equip law enforcement. He wouldn't be diverting Federal resources and agents away from operations that investigate drug cartels and drug traffickers, from missions that identify and disrupt foreign terrorist plots, and from actions that protect our families from cyber attacks to do it. But he is.

And instead of supporting and expanding proven violent crime prevention strategies, he is wasting millions of taxpayer dollars to terrorize law-abiding citizens who are exercising their First Amendment rights.

Trump is taking our troops away from their missions just to do his personal bidding, forcing them to confront peacefully protesting Americans, instead of using their time to train to protect our Nation in case of future conflicts with America's adversaries around the world.

Our troops didn't sign up for this. They signed up to defend Americans' rights to free speech, not to intimidate Americans from exercising that right. Our troops are willing to die to defend this country, not to defend one man's ego.

Los Angeles did not ask for this; Washington, DC, did not ask for this; Portland did not ask for this; Chicago did not ask for this; our servicemembers did not ask for this.

I am relieved to announce that just moments ago I secured a Senate hearing in the coming weeks with witnesses from the Trump administration where I will ask tough questions and demand answers on these unjustifiable actions because I refuse to stay silent as our military and our servicemembers' sacrifices are disrespected and abused by a man who was never brave enough to serve himself.

I cannot let him keep giving our troops the middle finger while eroding the hard-won trust and confidence they have earned from the American public over generations of military service. These days, I may no longer be wearing my Army uniform, but it still hangs proudly in my Senate office. And now, I spend a lot of my time seated on the Senate floor rather than beneath my Black Hawk's main rotors, but my core mission is still the same as when I was in the National Guard: to keep America as strong and as safe as she should be.

If only Donald Trump cared about doing the same.

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