| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Generations of students. | |
| The four-year degree college model has been seen for the last hundred years at least as the surefire ticket to better jobs, to the corner office, being a doctor or a lawyer. | ||
| And so that's been the aspiration, particularly in the last 50 years, right, for families for their children to be successful. | ||
| And I think that's beginning to break down to the point where even the haves, if you think about the haves and the have-nots, even the haves are recognizing that the degree, the four-year degree, is not necessarily achieving the American dream for them or their children. | ||
| And it's becoming, you know, the affordability issue, has kind of reached a fever pitch. | ||
| And we're kind of looking at how jobs are changing and how quickly skills become obsolete. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Kathleen Dulaski with her book, Who Needs College Anymore. | |
| Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's QA. | ||
| You can listen to Q&A and all of our podcasts on the C-SPAN Now app or wherever you get your podcasts. | ||
| Small Business Administrator Kelly Loeffler, Senator Joni Ernst, and Representative Roger Williams announcing new legislation that would double the amount of loans and loan guarantees available through the Federal Small Business Administration from $5 million to $10 million. | ||
| Here are their remarks from Capitol Hill. | ||
| All right, Senator Van Halen and I will get us started. | ||
| Senator Schumer is on the way. | ||
| I'm really happy to be joined with my friend and my colleague, Senator Van Holland. | ||
| We work on so much Virginia, Maryland stuff, but we're also both on the Foreign Relations Committee and we try to work on global human rights issues, issues that we care about so deeply. | ||
| Senator Van Holland has an amazing track record and reputation as being a human rights champion, most recently standing up for the rule of law in the United States in the case of his constituent, wrongfully deported via a Trump-era mistake to El Salvador with both the President of the United States and the President of El Salvador pretending that they don't have the power to return him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All of the colleagues are just really admiring of the work that Chris has done. | |
| But the answer is this is not something that the Article I branch can take lying down. | ||
| When a President of the United States is flouting a 7-2 Supreme Court order and saying he doesn't have the power to retract a mistake that his administration admits he's made and thinks that's the end of the story, we're here to say that is not the end of the story. | ||
| There is a privileged motion that any senator can file that Senator Van Holland and I, together with Senator Schumer and Senator Padilla, are filing today to force the State Department, the Trump administration, to issue a human rights report about El Salvador. | ||
|
unidentified
|
This is a little used privileged motion, but it's designed like the other privileges are designed to enable the Article I branch to check executive overreach. | |
| In this case, President Trump has facilitated the deportation of American residents, many here completely lawfully, to El Salvador without due process. | ||
|
unidentified
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In some instances, people who are being deported by mistake, as the administration admits. | |
| And the president has even gone beyond this and said that he would like to cut a deal to send U.S. citizens to be imprisoned in El Salvador. | ||
| So we are filing a resolution today under Section 502BC of the Foreign Assistance Act of 1961 to require the State Department to issue a report on the situation about human rights in El Salvador, particularly the conditions in the prison where Americans are being held, whether El Salvador is taking steps together with the administration to facilitate compliance with the Supreme Court's ruling. | ||
|
unidentified
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Are they interested in following the rule of law or not? | |
| This is a procedure where within 10 calendar days this becomes business of the Senate that we can take up. | ||
| We are guaranteed a vote on it, and we will seek a vote on it at a time that our leader, Senator Schumer, will negotiate with Senator Thun. | ||
| And I want to send a message not only to the administration, if you think you can take steps like this without Congress challenging your executive overreach, you're wrong. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're going to challenge your overreach at every instance when we can. | |
| And I also send a message to the government of El Salvador. | ||
| You might think it's cute right now to grab attention by a bromance with President Trump. | ||
| He's going to be a president for Pocomás, Teresaños Más, pero la relación enter de los estados unidos y El Salvador es para siempre. | ||
| And if you think we'll forget you violating the human rights of American citizens, you're wrong. | ||
| We will remember this forever, and there will be significant and challenging downstream consequences for any nation that violates the rights of Americans. | ||
| The follow-up for this report can include a privileged vote to terminate all security assistance to the nation of El Salvador. | ||
| Whether or not that's the will of the body, we'll see what the report has, but we're going to put all of our colleagues on the record. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If Americans are being sent in violation of the rule of law to El Salvador, we should all want to get a human rights report to see whether this nation is following the rule of law or not. | |
| I'm very glad to be joined by Senator Van Holland, our leader, Senator Schumer, and Senator Padilla, who is unable to join us today in the filing of this privilege resolution. | ||
| With that, I introduce my colleague from Maryland, Senator Van Holland. | ||
| I'm sorry. | ||
| I now introduce our leader who is moving between a million things, our friend Senator Chuck Schumer. | ||
| Yo agrio. | ||
| Did I say it right? | ||
|
unidentified
|
No. | |
| No. | ||
| Okay. | ||
| That's why I should stop. | ||
| Anyway, I want to thank my great colleagues, Senator Kane and Van Holland, for their unwavering leadership on this and so many other issues. | ||
| Now, we're here today because we know a threat to one is a threat to all. | ||
| We're here today because we all know Donald Trump's fondness for autocrats. | ||
| We all heard Donald Trump's when he said he'd like to be a dictator on day one. | ||
| And we know he sees the rule of law as a nuisance. | ||
| He considers the truth to be an inconvenience. | ||
| Trump wields the government as a rep weapon against his enemies. | ||
| And now he's taking a page out of the book of the dictators and autocrats he admires, like Bukhay, and expelling American citizens with no due process. | ||
| He recently deported, I think it's now four innocent U.S. children, citizens, and one had very serious cancer with no acceptable due process. | ||
| And let me repeat, Donald Trump is deporting American citizens with no due process. | ||
| A threat against one is a threat against all. | ||
| Without a shadow of a doubt, he's violating the founding principles of this country, and we're not going to let him get away with it. | ||
| And here's the amazing thing: when you look at the polling data, Americans care deeply about this issue. | ||
| I always knew they'd care deeply about the economic issues we're going after them on, like tariffs, like tax cuts for billionaires, cutting Medicaid and Social Security. | ||
| But the polling data shows this is very deep as well. | ||
| Americans' foundation and love of democracy is deep, and they understand that Trump is violating that due process. | ||
| When you take people without any due process, without any acknowledgement and publication of what they did wrong, and refuse to allow it to go to a court with an impartial judge and let the public hear it, you are trampling on what America is all about. | ||
| And the American people realize it. | ||
| Donald Trump may not, but the American people do. | ||
| So we're going to force a vote on legislation to require this lawless administration to explain its actions to the American public. | ||
| Donald Trump himself has raised the illegal and insane notion of sending American citizens to foreign prisons, like the awful prison in El Salvador. | ||
| And if he gets away with it in one case, he can get away with it in many, many more. | ||
| So no one should rest easy. | ||
| Trust me, the American people have a lot of concerns. | ||
| They have a lot of grave concerns because the rule of law is clear and it's deep in the American bosom. | ||
| Deep in the American bosom. | ||
| So this is a threat to everybody. | ||
| We're going to do Donald Trump doesn't believe in checks and balances. | ||
| We do, the American people do. | ||
| We're going to fight this all the way. | ||
| Thank you, Judge. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Sorry, I have to go. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Right. | ||
| Bye. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Thank you, Chuck. | ||
| And I want to start by thanking my good friend, partner across the Potomac, Tim Kaine. | ||
| As he said, we work on lots of issues together for this region, for our states, but we also work very closely on foreign policy issues. | ||
| And there's nobody who knows the Western Hemisphere and Latin America better than Senator Tim Kaine. | ||
| He, as you know, chaired and now is the ranking member of the subcommittee on the Western Hemisphere, and that jurisdiction also includes human rights and democracy. | ||
| So thank you for your passion for universal human rights in our hemisphere and around the world. | ||
| And that's what this is all about, because the right to due process is a bedright, bedrock American principle. | ||
| And in his first 100 days, Donald Trump is shredding the Constitution of the United States. | ||
| He's violated these rights in many instances, including the illegal abduction and deportation of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, who was snatched off the streets of Maryland while driving with his five-year-old son, who has autism. | ||
| And he was shipped to Baltimore, then Texas, and then shackled and handcuffed, put in a plane not knowing where he's going, and ended up in the notorious prison of Seacott, one of the real gulags of Latin America. | ||
| The Trump administration admitted in court, admitted in court that Abrego Garcia had been wrongfully shipped to El Salvador, and the Supreme Court, by a nine-to-nothing vote, ordered the Trump administration to facilitate his return. | ||
| You don't see nine-to-nothing rulings out of the court very often. | ||
| And of course, Donald Trump could easily bring him back by simply picking up the phone on the resolute desk. | ||
| How do we know that? | ||
| Because President Trump said so himself within the last 48 hours. | ||
| So we also know that the government of El Salvador is prepared to release him if they can hear from the President of the United States and they facilitate his return. | ||
| How do we know that? | ||
| Because when I spoke to the vice president of El Salvador, he was very clear. | ||
| He said the ball is not in El Salvador's court. | ||
| The ball is in the Trump administration's court. | ||
| And he said that the only reason the government of El Salvador is holding him is because the Trump administration is paying him to do so. | ||
| So Donald Trump should stop trampling on constitutional rights of people who reside in America. | ||
| And the government of El Salvador should stop conspiring with the Trump administration to violate the constitutional rights of those who reside in America, including Abrego Garcia and others. | ||
| President Bukeley and El Salvador are complicit in this illegal scheme. | ||
| This is a cash-for-collusion deal. | ||
| Not surprisingly, Donald Trump chose President Bukeley as his co-conspirator in this effort. | ||
| President Bukeley has referred to himself as the world's, quote, coolest dictator. | ||
| When I traveled recently to El Salvador, I met with many Salvadorian human rights groups who described the gross violations of human rights and due process in El Salvador by President Bukeley and his government. | ||
| And the 2023 State Department Human Rights Report found that in Bukeley's prisons, there were credible reports of, and I'm quoting, torture and other cruel, inhuman, or degrading punishment. | ||
| They went on to say in that report that that degrading inhuman punishment includes beatings with batons, electric shocks on wet floors to shock an entire cell, overcrowding, underfeeding, and life-threatening medical neglect. | ||
| That was the 2023 State Department Human Rights report. | ||
| No one can communicate with Obrego Garcia or others in those prisons of El Salvador either. | ||
| Not his wife, not his mother, not his lawyer. | ||
| That is a violation of international law. | ||
| And yet, that is where the Trump administration dispatched this person because of an administrative error. | ||
| And now we've learned that the Trump administration wants to excise those provisions from the Human Rights Report regarding prison conditions and actually give El Salvador preferential treatment. | ||
| So that's why we're introducing this resolution today. | ||
| And again, I want to thank my friend and colleague, Senator Kaine. | ||
| I want to thank Senator Schumer, Senator Padilla, and our House colleagues. | ||
| We're doing this both to require the Trump administration to answer for its unconstitutional violations of due process and send a message to President Bukeley that no, it is not cool to collude with Trump to deprive people living in America the right to due process. | ||
| Donald Trump, he may want to adopt El Salvador's approach to violating human rights, but we don't. | ||
| We will not model our judicial system on El Salvador's kangaroo courts. | ||
| In addition to this resolution, I've called upon all Americans who care about their due process rights to vote with their feet. | ||
| Don't go to El Salvador as tourists so long as the government of El Salvador is violating the constitutional rights of people who reside in America. | ||
| There are lots of other nice countries in the region like Costa Rica or Guatemala or others. | ||
| I've also called upon states to divest pension fund holdings from companies that do business in El Salvador. | ||
| And I was pleased to see Governor Pritzker of Illinois announce he planned to do that. | ||
| And finally, stay tuned because Senator Kaine and I, along with Senator Schumer and others, are planning to also introduce sanctions legislation targeting President Bukeley and all those who are part of his government conspiring with Donald Trump to deprive residents of the United States of their constitutional rights. | ||
| And thank all of you for being here. | ||
| And again, thanks to my friend Tim Kaine for all his leadership on this and so many issues. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| We're going to now open it up for questions. | ||
| Again, just to remind that Senator Padilla is also a co-sponsor of the resolution we're introducing today. | ||
| Couldn't be with us. | ||
| A companion bill is being introduced on the House side by Representative Castro. | ||
| But we're glad to open it up, please. | ||
| Actually, right here and then right here. | ||
| Please. | ||
| Senator McCollum, have you got any update on Obrego Garcia's conditions since you're visiting? | ||
| I have not, and that's because nobody is able to communicate with Obrego Garcia from the outside world. | ||
| Not before my visit and not since my visit. | ||
| Again, not his wife, not his mom, not his lawyers, which is a violation of international law. | ||
| But to my knowledge, I'm the only person from the outside world that he's met with today. | ||
|
unidentified
|
A Trump-appointed federal judge of Texas just ruled that the administration's abuse of the Alien Enemies Act, forced with deportations, is illegal, saying that it's only supposed to be used when we're under an actual armed attack. | |
| You're flying. | ||
| Well, I'm not surprised at that ruling. | ||
| The Alien Sedition Act was designed for a very particular purpose. | ||
| And like so many laws, like the IEPA law, you know, we had a vote on tariffs last night. | ||
| That law allows a president to declare a state of emergency, but nothing in the law allows the imposition of tariffs, essentially a tax at the say-so of one person. | ||
| So President Trump doesn't really care about the law, but I'm glad that judges, even those appointed by President Trump, are standing up against him. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We need courts, Congress, states, activism, and elections to work together to check the tendencies toward tyranny in this presidency. | |
| Senator, after the report, what happens and what happens if the administration refuses to produce it, as we've been seeing play out within the legal? | ||
| It's an unusual procedure, so let me walk through it. | ||
| Within 10 days of the filing of the resolution, this may be called up on the Senate floor. | ||
| The first vote would be a vote to discharge the resolution from committee. | ||
| And, you know, our pitch to our colleagues would be, why wouldn't you want a human rights report? | ||
| If Americans are being sent there, you would want a human rights report about the conditions. | ||
| So we have high hopes that we'll be able to get it passed. | ||
| This is a resolution that doesn't need to go to the House. | ||
| If it passes in the Senate, there is a requirement for the State Department to produce the human rights report. | ||
| The text of the bill poses a number of questions that the report must answer. | ||
| If no report is produced within 30 days, the law specifies that all security assistance to El Salvador will be cut off. | ||
| If the report is produced, whether it's good, bad, a whitewash, insufficient, you know, a two-pager, we then have a privileged motion that we can bring up to terminate security assistance to El Salvador. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That privileged motion would need to be acted on by both houses and survive a presidential veto. | |
| But this is the start of a two-step process. | ||
| Get the report, decide whether it's legit or not, and then put pressure on and potentially move to the termination of security assistance to the nation. | ||
| Have any Republicans committed to voting for this? | ||
| No. | ||
| We do believe that the case on this is fairly straightforward. | ||
| Why wouldn't you want a human rights report from the Trump administration when American citizens are being sent there? | ||
| And I'll tell you, the president is talking to other nations about sending U.S. citizens to Rwanda and other places. | ||
|
unidentified
|
If he starts doing that, we're going to be fine with the same bill to get human rights reports about those nations too, with the potential for cutting off security assistance. | |
| Yes. | ||
| Have you had any conversations with any Republicans about this at all? | ||
| This is a brand new one today. | ||
| So once it's out, and obviously we have this 10-day period while it's pending before it becomes active. | ||
| I know Senator Van Holland and I will be talking to a lot of our colleagues, both on the Foreign Relations Committee and others. | ||
| I mean, I can say that apart from this resolution, I've had colleagues with Republican senators who have definitely expressed real misgivings with Donald Trump's violation of constitutional due process rights. | ||
| I mean, I have heard that from a number of Republican senators. | ||
| This will be their opportunity to actually vote on that. | ||
| And as you know from public surveys, I mean, the public overwhelmingly supports making sure we protect due process rights for people who reside in America. | ||
| That is very clear from the response that we're seeing in these public surveys. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Please, right here. | |
| DHS has revealed that the wife of Garcia filed a second petition for a protective order in 2020. | ||
| Does this at all weaken the case that you guys are making? | ||
| You know, this can be state of Maryland now? | ||
| The case that we're making is based upon a Supreme Court decision ordering President Trump to return a wrongfully deported person to the United States. | ||
| And the president thus far is flouting a Supreme Court order, which verges on a constitutional crisis. | ||
| The district court is now grappling with is the administration following the order of the Supreme Court to facilitate return or not. | ||
| We are fighting to end lawlessness. | ||
| And the lawlessness of this administration in this case is to ignore a final ruling of the Supreme Court. | ||
| If a president can ignore a ruling of the Supreme Court without consequence, we are on a slide toward tyranny. | ||
|
unidentified
|
And Chris and I are very dedicated to stopping that slide. | |
| Yeah, if I could just put an exclamation point after what Senator Kaine said, I have repeatedly said that we're not vouching for Kilmar Abrego Garcia. | ||
| We are vouching for his constitutional rights because if you trample over his constitutional rights, you threaten them for every American and everybody who resides in America. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Can you review what you know about what the U.S. and the Trump administration is paying El Salvador to actually house prisoners in CECON? | |
| I think Chris knows a little more about this than I do, but what we know and what we can say might be slightly different. | ||
| But do you want to? | ||
| Yeah, look, my understanding is the Trump administration is planning to pay El Salvador about $15 million to, again, house these individuals who were illegally snatched from the United States in violation of their due process. | ||
| My understanding also is that to date, they paid them about $4 million of that. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We'll go here and then see if there's any over on this side, please. | |
| Do you need your senators any comment on the Michael Waltz news that just wrote? | ||
| Not surprised, but in the words of the late, great John McCain, there's more shoes to fall off this centipede. | ||
| Anyone over on this side? | ||
| Okay, yeah, please. | ||
| You mentioned the IEPA vote last night. | ||
| What comes next about having to try the presidential overreach in Paris? | ||
| There's a couple of things. | ||
| So anything done under IEPA is subject to challenge and will be challenged, including the president imposed this global tariff regime under a single emergency order, but now is apparently cutting deals with individual nations. | ||
|
unidentified
|
That I'm not sure the president can do that without that being a new order that would be subject to congressional challenge. | |
| Congress has the trade power under Article 1, and so if the president is cutting deals, we're going to try to haul the deals into Congress for close review and approval because we want to make sure that the deals aren't corrupt. | ||
| That some nation didn't cut a deal after being forced to buy a StarterLink system or something like that. | ||
| So we want to put these deals under the microscope. | ||
| But basically, if you look at what motions are privileged in the Senate, either by statute or by Senate rules, almost all privileged motions to stop a war initiated by an executive, to challenge an arms transfer, to challenge the use of emergency power, to force a human rights report, to challenge an executive regulation. | ||
|
unidentified
|
All of the privilege motions are in the same kind of zip code, which is letting the Article I branch be a check against the executive. | |
| And senators of both parties should take that Article I responsibility very seriously. | ||
| Question of Carolina from Talabundo. | ||
| If you are able to explain in Spanish, please, specifically the importance of this motion right now and the likelihood of this Human Rights Board actually becoming a reality. | ||
| Tenemos un propuesto de ley para tener un reporte sobre derechos humanos en El Salvador. | ||
| Es un tiempo, es un proceso de privilege, entonces tenemos una garantía de un voto después de diez días sobre El Salvador y estamos mandando un mensaje a Presidente Trump que él necesita follow, que seguir la ley y también. | ||
| Estamos mandandano en menzaje el presidente buquele que no vamos a holvidar si el govern de el Salvador está rompiendo los deros humano tes Americanos. | ||
| Vamos a tener un voto días días y despueste este voto especially que vamos a cuartar todo lo recoursos para segoridad para el Salvador. | ||
| Si eos nos sigu en la le Americano. | ||
| All right, thanks so much. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| Okay, it worked. | ||
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| Sunday night on C-SPAN's Q&A. | ||
| Education Design Lab founder Kathleen Delasky, author of Who Needs College Anymore? | ||
| Questions if the U.S. higher education system with its skyrocketing costs and declining enrollment is currently suited to meet the needs of future generations of students. | ||
| The four-year degree college model has been seen for the last hundred years at least as the surefire ticket to better jobs, to the corner office, being a doctor or a lawyer. | ||
| And so that's been the aspiration, particularly in the last 50 years, right, for families for their children to be successful. | ||
| And I think that's beginning to break down to the point where even the haves, if you think about the haves and the have-nots, even the haves are recognizing that the degree, the four-year degree is not necessarily achieving the American dream for them or their children. | ||
| And it's becoming, you know, the affordability issue, has kind of reached a fever pitch. | ||
| And we're kind of looking at how jobs are changing and how quickly skills become obsolete. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Kathleen Delasky with her book, Who Needs College Anymore. | |
| Sunday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on C-SPAN's Q ⁇ A. |