00:00Okay, well, thank you all for coming, and to my great colleagues, great Judiciary Committee members, Durbin and White House and Hirono.
00:10So, we all know that Donald Trump sees himself as a king more than a president.
00:18Trump is not a king.
00:21The Republican so-called Big Beautiful Bill will effectively place a crown on Donald Trump's head.
00:28Buried deep in the Republican bill is a really nasty provision that would strip federal judges of one of their most critical powers, the ability to force their own rulings.
00:41In other words, Republicans want to codify into law Donald Trump's attacks on our judicial system.
00:49They want to gut our federal courts until they're utterly powerless.
00:54They want to buck the Constitution and bulldoze the rule of law.
00:58This is dangerous, it's reckless, it's un-American.
01:04And it isn't just a policy difference.
01:06This is an assault.
01:08An assault on the rule of law.
01:10An assault on the independence of the judiciary.
01:12And on the very checks and balances that have defined this country since its inception.
01:17So, today, I'm announcing that Democrats will fight with every tool we have to stop this provision from becoming law.
01:27This evil, un-American provision that flies in the total face, in the face of the Constitution completely.
01:35This provision, as I said, is one of the most direct assaults on the separation of powers in recent memory.
01:46It essentially hands the government officials, including Donald Trump, the license to ignore any ruling from a federal judge that they don't like.
01:59And it strips the courts of any power to hold people accountable if they violate court orders, including the Supreme Court.
02:08Shame on the House of Representatives putting this in, on the Republicans in the House of Representatives.
02:14Shame.
02:15Shame.
02:16Shame.
02:16Shame.
02:16Shame.
02:17Shame.
02:18Shame.
02:19Shame.
02:20Shame.
02:21Shame.
02:22Shame.
02:23So, as we all know, one of the most essential things that the judiciary has, its ability to enforce its own orders.
02:30That's the authority we've given the judiciary.
02:33And this, this proposal would effectively render judicial rulings meaningless.
02:40Just words on paper with no power to hold anyone accountable.
02:45Let's call it for what it is.
02:47It's the get out of jail free card for Donald Trump.
02:50This is the get out of jail free card for Donald Trump.
02:56Now, let's see here.
03:03This is also a death sentence for judicial independence in America.
03:09It's not democracy.
03:11It's authoritarianism.
03:13It's a move ripped right straight from a playbook of a dictator.
03:17And we all know Donald Trump is a would-be dictator.
03:21So, you have to ask yourself, why now?
03:24Why is he doing it now?
03:26Well, Donald Trump's losing in court over and over and over again.
03:30Our analysis showed that just in the last month, the Trump administration lost a whopping 97% of rulings in federal district courts.
03:39And this came from judges across the political spectrum.
03:43For many of them were Trump appointees or Bush appointees, including judges that Donald Trump appointed have ruled against him.
03:54It drives him crazy that the judges he appointed are actually following the law instead of following his whim, his wish, his desire to be a dictator.
04:04So, rather than respect these rulings, as any president before would have done, Trump and his allies want to rewrite the rules to make himself untouchable.
04:15And so, congressional Republicans, sadly, in a great tragic day for democracy, are trying to bend their knees and bend the Constitution and bail Donald Trump out by letting him ignore the courts and all these court rulings that have been against him.
04:34And listen to this one, one House Republican even admitted at a town hall meeting in his district that he didn't know this provision was in the bill when he voted for it.
04:45What about all the other Republicans who voted for it?
04:49Republicans in Congress have been happy to roll over and hand the keys of the House and Senate to Donald Trump and unelected billionaires like Elon Musk.
04:59They're allowing them to run this country in the ground, into the ground.
05:03They're allowed, they're allowed, they're allowing the whole sinew, the whole fabric of what America is all about, to be ripped apart and upended in a way we have never, ever seen before.
05:17The Republicans in the House were so eager to rubber-stant Donald Trump's monstrosity of a bill that they didn't even read all of it.
05:25Or worse, some of them read it and then didn't care.
05:30Because protecting Trump matters more to them than protecting our democracy, than protecting the rule of law, than protecting the Constitution.
05:39Because whether it's Trump or Musk or any other corrupt official, Republicans are trying to create a world in which powerful people face no consequences,
05:49no matter what they do, that's not democracy, that's oligarchy.
05:56No one, not Donald Trump, not Elon Musk, not any crooked politician or billionaire is above the law.
06:05And if Republicans think they can pull a fast one on the American people by slipping this provision into their bill, they've got another thing coming.
06:15So we Democrats are here to sound the alarm.
06:18We're united.
06:19We'll fight like hell using every tool in our toolbox to stop this provision from becoming law.
06:25Next is Senator Durbin.
06:27Let me just take all my papers here.
