We re in a Constitutional Crisis Senator Cory Booker on the Senate Floor

I had a sleepless night last night as I put together in my mind where I think we are as a nation right now. We are a nation that, looking across our great land, shows unequivocally that we are in crisis. We are in a constitutional crisis. And from people in our communities to people in this body, we are seeing grotesque attacks on our most sacred constitutional principles. As I sat last night, I found myself scrolling through words of our founding fathers and something Madison said really stuck out at me, that power needs to be checked. Power needs to be balanced. Balance power derives its right from the consent of the governed, but power itself does not self-correct. I look at what's happening from the executive branch and see over and over again grotesque violations of our constitution, and this body is doing nothing. The list of what's happening is clear. It's actually making headlines. It's not something that can be ignored, but when you see the president of the United States taking power from the people, taking power from the executive, resisting the power of the judiciary, breaking the law, the rule of law, and nothing happens, it reminds me of Frederick Douglass. Find out just what a people will submit to, and that is the exact amount of injustice that will be heaped upon them. Well, what are the constitutional ruptures we are seeing so clear right now? Well, we've seen them with the president's grift, graft, and corruption. I said this to some of my colleagues earlier. If a headline had appeared a few decades ago of the president of the United States and a sheik coming together days before he ascended to the presidency, where that sheik is giving him tens of millions of dollars in what amounts to almost a direct payout, enriching him and his family in a trumped-up crypto scheme, that is clearly seen from our founders as a breach of the Constitution in a clause called the Emoluments Clause. This president is using his position to profit off of as he oversees foreign policy, and we are seeing leaders come to him and give him millions of dollars as they have foreign policy considerations before them. That is a rupture of the Constitution. What is another example? We are literally seeing people in the streets in Minnesota exercising their constitutional rights of protest, their constitutional rights of speech, their constitutional rights to hold law enforcement accountable for doing nothing wrong but filming law enforcement. How many of us have seen the videos of people filming law enforcement and getting beaten, getting literally kicked, getting handcuffed, being put in jail? Or the worst of all constitutional violations is when you attack someone's life, as we saw with Alex Pretty being murdered. We see more ruptures to our Constitution, not just the oppression of basic rights by our people, but that other sacrosanct right that our founders saw when it comes to the right to vote. We have a president saying literally that the Constitution should not apply, that we should federalize elections, and you see the president sending his Justice Department not to investigate the last election or the election before that, not the election he won, but going back to 2020's election and seizing private voting records that belong to the state in a claim that has been proven wrong over and over again that there was some kind of election fraud, the big lie as it's called. That too is a rupture of our Constitution. He is violating voting rights. He is violating speech rights. He is violating the freedom to protest your government. He is violating the Emoluments Clause. He is violating the powers of the legislative branch as he stops funding that was approved in a bipartisan way from this body like he just did in my state with the biggest infrastructure project there is. Again and again and again, this president is violating our Constitution from literally agents masked, jumping out of unmarked cars, going into our churches, going into our schools. This president violates our Constitution over and over and over again. But here is a truth spoken when constitutional rights were violated against an activist named Angela Davis, that this body is now seeing clearly what James Baldwin wrote. You see, the truth of our land has always been injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, as Martin Luther King says. As the great Langston Hughes wrote in poetry, there's a dream in this land with its back against the wall. To save the dream for one, you must save the dream for all. Well here is the rights. Here is the sacrosanct document that we swear oaths to the Constitution. Here is the truth that the injustices we are seeing and the violations will be visited upon this body because as James Baldwin wrote so clearly, if they come for you in the morning, where they're going to come for me at night. Well, we have now seen last night that they were coming for members of this body. And no, I'm not talking about House members like LaMonica MacGyver that has been thrown down, handcuffed, and is on trial right now. No, I'm not talking about Adam Schiff who was investigated for trumped up charges. No, I'm not talking about Alex Padilla who was thrown to the ground and handcuffed in a federal building. No, I'm talking about my colleagues Alyssa Slotkin and Mark Kelly who literally quoted military manuals that say it's illegal to follow unjust and illegal laws. That they have a right to not follow unjust, illegal orders. Literally quoting what is the law of the land. And what did this out-of-control executive do? What did this out-of-control executive do? An executive that has already reached and taken away the power of the purse. An executive that has already violated court orders that we've seen come from the highest office in the land, the Supreme Court. An executive who's violated the Emoluments Clause. A president who brags about taking away states' rights to control their own elections. A president that has violated the law time and time again. What did he do with his Justice Department? He called together a grand jury, used officials from our Justice Department that should be keeping us safe, used them to go after two members of this body in an attempt to criminally charge them for their constitutional rights, protected in the Constitution, the Speech and Debate Clause. There are books that have been written from On Tyranny to How Democracies Die, long before this administration that predicted that this country's real threat will not be from some foreign enemy, it will be from internal corruption that goes unchecked. That this nation's real threat is not from any adversary that cannot beat this nation, this mighty country. The real threat to this nation is when the Constitution we swear an oath to is eroded and the people with the power to stop it do nothing. That is how great nations have falled in the past. Not from those who violate Constitution, who violate the rule of law, who violate the freedom of the people. Nations fall when the people that have the power to do something about it remain silent, sit on the sidelines, remain quiet, or submit to the will of an out-of-control executive. The road to hell is paved with people who have the power to stop bad things from happening but say nothing. Our constitutional norms, the laws of our land, the principles upon which we stand are being violated every week in our nation. Americans being swept up off of our streets, Americans' freedom of speech, Americans' privacy, the lives of American citizens being taken, even people in the Senate being arrested. So now I say unequivocally. The Senator's time has expired. I ask unanimous consent for two more minutes. Is there an objection? Without objection. Thank you. In this body I see cowardice now. I see people afraid that the President will retaliate against them if they stand up and say something. Well, Thomas Jefferson said it clearly. When the people are afraid of government, there is tyranny. When the government is afraid of the people, there is liberty. We have a President that calls people up and threatens to run primaries against my colleague. We have billionaires that say, I'll put $20 million in opposition if you don't submit to the unconstitutional actions of the executive. Two of our colleagues arrested for their free speech, put a grand jury summoned to try to arrest them for their free speech. And I hear silence. We are in a constitutional crisis. The silence is complicity. The failure to stand up and speak up is an insult to our ancestry. We are in a moment of crisis. I fear for this body. I fear for this institution. I fear for our Constitution. But I still have faith on the people. We can stop this erosion of our constitutional norms. We can stop this democratic backsliding. We can protect our rights and our values. But more people need to speak up. And it is a shame upon this body that those who have power and position now do nothing. I yield the floor.