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Floor Speech

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Mr. KENNEDY. Madam President, a lot of history has unfolded in this room. The U.S. Senate has been home to some of the most formative debates in our Nation's tenure. These are fierce arguments among passionate, intelligent people. It is not all that different from the debates today.

The Senate has always welcomed these sometimes intense disagreements by respecting the rules and the traditions of the institution. It is how a Senator like me, who is a Member of the minority party, can stand here and speak freely about the issues that matter to the American people and to the people of Louisiana.

Now, my Democratic colleagues in the Senate, today, may be about to make some new history in this room. Apparently, they think it is a brave new world, and they want to set a dangerous new precedent. For the very first time, Senate Democrats are seeking to table--maybe even dismiss--an impeachment of a sitting Cabinet official without even holding a trial. They are summoning spirits they won't be able to control.

Please, my colleagues, don't do it.

I fear though that Senate Democrats are going to try to take the Articles of Impeachment that our colleagues in the U.S. House of Representatives thoughtfully crafted and passed with a majority vote and toss them into the trash without hearing from either side.

They don't want to let the House impeachment managers make their case. They don't want to let Secretary Mayorkas make his case. They just want to ignore the House's evidence, summarily sweep it under the rug, and move on. And that is wrong.

The Senate has never in its history tabled an impeachment--never. In the more than 200 years that this body has existed, the House of Representatives has impeached an official 21 times, and we have never once tabled the impeachment--not once.

Now, Senator Schumer may also try to dismiss these charges instead of tabling them, but that has never been done before, either. If the Senate dismisses these charges without a trial, it will be the first time in the Senate's long history that it has dismissed impeachment charges against an official it has jurisdiction over without that official first resigning. And that is a fact.

I want you to consider this: The U.S. House of Representatives has voted to impeach an official 21 times--only 21 times--in our long history. The U.S. Senate has only dismissed 3 of those cases--3 out of 21.

Now, why did they dismiss them? In two of those cases, the impeached official chose to resign instead of facing a trial. As a result, the Senate dismissed the charges. In this case, Secretary Mayorkas has not resigned. In one of those dismissed cases, the impeached official was a U.S. Senator, and the Senate concluded that the Constitution did not give it jurisdiction to remove a U.S. Senator through the impeachment process.

Here, everyone agrees that the Constitution gives Congress the power to impeach and remove a sitting Cabinet Secretary.

Now, listen to me carefully on this. The U.S. Senate has the right and the responsibility to hold this trial. Yet Senate Democrats want to ignore our Chamber's history and forfeit our constitutional authority by tabling or dismissing these charges without even considering the evidence--without even considering the evidence.

Americans need to hear what I am about to say, even if my Democratic colleagues won't listen. Let me say it again: A majority of the duly elected Members of the U.S. House of Representatives, who represent all of the communities across America, spent months investigating the allegations against Secretary Mayorkas. They spent months drafting the Articles of Impeachment, and a majority of the House then voted yes to bring two very serious charges.

The Senate Democrats are now treating those charges--those Articles of Impeachment--like spam that landed in their inbox.

Americans, however, are not nearly so sanguine about the border crisis that has brought death, drugs, violence, chaos, criminals, and mayhem into their neighborhoods. The Biden administration's border crisis is as unprecedented as the majority leader's move to bury the evidence of who could be to blame here.

I, for one, want to hear the House's evidence, and so do the American people. The majority leader's move is unprecedented. It is undemocratic. And I am confident that my Democratic colleagues, if they do this--please, don't--but if they do it, will regret this new precedent when they find themselves in the minority, just as they regretted breaking the Senate precedent for confirming judicial nominees.

You see, Republicans do not like to break precedent when we are in the majority. We respect the traditions of this Chamber because we respect the voters who sent all 100 of us here.

If my Democratic colleagues set a new precedent that tramples the rights of the minority party and silences the voices of the Americans who elected them--if they do that--Senate Democrats will have to own that decision and bear its consequences.

Now, I have listened to the loon wing of the Democratic Party spend the better part of the past decade making passionate speeches about how important it is to protect democracy, to uphold the rule of law, and they are right. President Biden even ran his campaign on the idea of ``restoring our norms,'' as he called it, and ``defending democracy.'' Apparently though, the rules of the loon wing were of the ``for thee and not for me'' variety. Whenever protecting democracy and upholding the rule of law becomes politically challenging, the loon wing has been happy to ignore the rule of law and the will of the people. Isn't that special?

Their political expedience is in full view today, but it is not the first time that their cynicism has reared its ugly Democratic head.

I am sure, Madam President, you will remember. I will give you just two examples. The loon wing spent several years promoting a conspiracy that the Trump campaign was an arm of the Kremlin, despite no objective evidence to tie President Trump to Russia. Democrats and several members of the national security community rushed to dismiss any information found on Mr. Hunter Biden's laptop as ``Russian misinformation,'' despite not having any objective evidence, as we now know, to make that claim. And those are just two of many examples that I could give.

Secretary Mayorkas' impeachment may be the best example of this hypocrisy to date. The same Senate Democrats who have shouted for years about defending democracy and upholding the rule of law seem ready to disregard serious impeachment charges without so much as a second glance. These Senators, if they do that, won't just be silencing the House of Representatives. They will be silencing the American people-- the American people who want their border's security back.

You can pick any poll--any one you want--and you will find President Biden's approval rating on the issue of immigration and border security is on a journey to the center of the Earth. A recent Associated Press poll, for example, found that more than two-thirds of Americans--69 percent of Americans--disapprove of how the Biden administration is handling border security.

I can't imagine that these same Americans would approve of Democrats' refusal to even hear the evidence that Americans see play out in their communities every day.

This poll is only surprising if you peaked in high school. Under President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas, the southern border has become an open, bleeding wound. It has become a cesspool of misery. Drug trafficking, human trafficking, sexual abuse of women, sexual abuse of children, drowning, dehydration, widespread illnesses, death--all have become commonplace.

In total, the Border Patrol has encountered illegal immigrants at the southern border more than 9 million times since President Biden took office. That is four Nebraskas. The Biden administration has failed to remove 99 percent of foreign nationals that it has released into this country.

The backlog of immigrant court cases has doubled under the Biden administration's watch. These foreign nationals have overwhelmed American cities. Instead of investing in American citizens, cities throughout the country are raising taxes. They are cutting programs to fund prepaid debit cards for migrants.

America's children have to stay home from school because Democratic officials turned their classrooms into housing units. Democratic leaders in New York City, Chicago, Denver, Houston, and Los Angeles have begged the Biden administration to do something to curb the flow of unvetted people into their cities.

Of course, it is not just people flowing illegally over that border; cartels have flooded the United States with poisonous fentanyl over that border, too. Customs and Border Protection seized nearly 53,000 pounds of fentanyl from 2021 to 2023--not 53,000 grams, 53,000 pounds. That is enough to kill the entire population of our planet. This poison actually did kill more than 70,000 Americans in 2022. It is now the leading cause of death among Americans 18 to 40.

The Biden administration's border policies bring Americans nothing but suffering. If you hate America, however, the Biden border strategy has been a blessing. Cartels' smuggling operations saw revenues increase from $500 million in 2012 to $12 billion--that is ``b'' as in ``billion''--in 2022.

The policies that President Biden and Secretary Mayorkas have implemented are directly responsible for this disaster at our southern border. At every turn, the Biden administration has ignored the laws of this land and this Congress and the will of the American people to facilitate their own broken border security policies.

The House has detailed several examples in their Articles of Impeachment, and we ought to hear their evidence.

To start, the law requires that all foreign nationals who are not clearly admissible must be ``retained for a removal proceeding.'' Instead, Secretary Mayorkas established a catch-and-release--catch, release, repeat--a catch-and-release scheme that incentivized illegal immigrants to flood our country.

The law also requires that law enforcement take an illegal immigrant who commits a crime or has ties to terrorism or both into Federal custody. That is the law. Yet Secretary Mayorkas told his Department not to follow that law regarding the ``mandatory arrest and detention'' of criminal aliens.

Our law also says that law enforcement must detain illegal immigrants. Instead, Secretary Mayorkas has paroled them wholesale by the thousands into our country, where they could catch a bus or a plane to any unsuspecting community they desire. Not only that, Secretary Mayorkas even gave them the money to do it.

Secretary Mayorkas killed the ``Remain in Mexico'' program. He quashed contracts to build a border wall. He ended the safe third country agreements that allowed America to work with other countries to find protection for migrants in need.

By tabling or dismissing the Articles of Impeachment without so much as a trial, my Senate Democratic colleagues will be endorsing the Biden administration's lawless approach to the southern border. They will be setting a precedent that the next administration can ignore the laws of Congress and the will of the American people too.

Impeachment matters. It is an important check we have on the executive branch, and we have an obligation to take it seriously. We have an obligation to give any charges brought the full trial they deserve.

I am going to have a resolution, if I am allowed to present it, that will give the procedures we need to conduct this trial fairly and efficiently. I will be bringing that at the appropriate time. It will be efficient. It will be fair. It will be honest. It won't uproot the longstanding precedent we have given to Articles of Impeachment in the past.

If the majority leader and my Democratic colleagues table or dismiss these charges and destroy Senate precedent--precedent that we have established to conduct full and fair impeachment trials--they will regret it. They will regret it. Senate Democrats, if they do that, will show the world that their proclamations about rule of law and protecting democracy are just tools of their own political experience and arrogance. Senate Democrats will let the American people know that they endorse the lawlessness and the misery the Biden administration's broken border has brought to this country.

I don't think Americans' future should be beholden to the politics of the moment, and that is why I want the Senate to do its job and hear this evidence.

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