Wyoming Servicemembers

Floor Speech

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Mr. BARRASSO. Mr. President, each year, I look forward to spending Thanksgiving with Wyoming men and women in uniform who are serving overseas. I had the privilege of doing it again this year. This Thanksgiving, I was with Wyoming airmen at Ramstein Air Base, which is in Germany.

These young men and women came from Casper, Cheyenne, and Riverton, serving our Nation. They are doing an outstanding job in their work and supporting missions in Europe, in Asia, and in the Middle East. They are a long way from home--eight time zones away from Wyoming--away from family, away from friends, away for the holidays.

And I go every year, wherever I can find Wyoming troops, to thank them for their service, to thank them for their commitment, to thank them for what they do to keep us safe and to keep us free, and for the sacrifices that they are making. And I also want them to know that the people at home are thinking about them and know that they are a long way from home and caring for all of us.

To me, they are heroes. They wear the uniform not for their safety but for ours. We see it abroad, and we also see it at home.

And what we have seen at home is, since August, National Guard troops have been deployed right here in Washington, DC. As a result, Washington, DC, is safer for residents and for visitors, for people who come from your State and from mine who want to come and see the Nation's Capital. What we have seen since this has begun is that the numbers of murders, rapes, and robberies have fallen dramatically.

Tragically, just 1 day before Thanksgiving, two members of the National Guard were targeted. It was an ambush attack, and it happened just blocks away from the White House. It was an act of terrorism. The act was not only on our National Guardsmen; it was on our entire Nation.

One of the servicemembers was Sarah Beckstrom. She was an Army specialist from West Virginia. She died on Thanksgiving Day. She was only 20 years old.

The other is Andrew Wolfe. He is a staff sergeant in the Air Force, also from West Virginia, and is 24 years old. He remains hospitalized in critical condition, fighting for his life.

We join all Americans in praying for them and their families.

The terrorist who attacked them was an Afghan national. He is one of tens of thousands of Afghans who were flown into our country following Joe Biden's disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan. We now know for a fact that thousands of these individuals were not properly vetted.

I specifically questioned Joe Biden's Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, here in the Senate about this, and I questioned him under oath. Under oath, he testified--Joe Biden's Secretary of State--that ``most of them were not'' vetted.

It didn't matter to Joe Biden. He waved them all into our country.

Republicans warned repeatedly that bringing people without proper clearance from a war-torn country was a major national security risk. The negligent Biden administration ignored the warning.

In 2021, 13 American heroes were killed in the botched withdrawal from Kabul, Afghanistan. One of them was Wyoming's own Rylee McCollum. He embodied the best of Wyoming. He was a marine. He joined the Marines on his 18th birthday.

I spoke at his funeral. He was Wyoming's wrestling champion. He was about to become a father. He was just 20 years old when he died. He was the same age as Sarah Beckstrom from West Virginia.

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