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September 22, 2025

                                    

                                
                            
                        
                        
                    
                    
                    
                    

                        

                        

                            

                                

                                    

                                    

                                    

                                        

                                            

                                                
Senate Update: The Fall Fights Ahead
Over the past eight months, Donald Trump and Republicans have made clear where their priorities lie. Instead of attempting to tackle rising costs, the Trump Administration is selling out working families to stuff the pockets of billionaires, special interests, and his own family. 


Americans are suffering the consequences, and our democracy is fraying. But across the country, more and more people are seeing through their lies, standing up, and fighting back—for an economy where everyone can afford a decent quality of life and for a democracy that preserves our freedoms, values, and rights. 


These are troubling, stormy, and downright terrifying times. Rising political violence has shocked our nation’s conscience. The assassination of Charlie Kirk was a tragedy. Political violence has no place in our democracy. We must speak out for what we believe in vigorously, courageously, and peacefully. 


But that’s not what the Trump Administration is doing. The President could have used this moment to unite the country. Instead, Donald Trump is weaponizing the murder to attack free speech, including by using the FCC to try to drive Jimmy Kimmel off the air and to threaten others. I’m fighting back with legislation to protect freedom of speech, and I will keep fighting until all our rights are secure. 


As I told patriots who marched from Philadelphia to Washington last week, we must stand with those who stand up to Donald Trump’s bullying and call out those who don’t. In my remarks to the marchers, I called out ABC for caving to Trump when they didn’t have to. I am glad ABC has reversed course and rehired Kimmel. Those who appease Trump only feed his appetite and put the rights of all of us at greater risk. 


Here’s the latest. 

The One Big Ugly Betrayal 
Trump and Republicans are hoping that the American people don’t learn the truth about what they call their “One Big Beautiful Bill.” They jammed it through Congress so fast that many of them didn’t even read it. Since so few of them seem to know the facts, I laid it out clearly on the Senate Floor. You can learn more about how the bill will affect Marylanders and all Americans—including the inconvenient truths Republicans are trying to hide—by reading this fact sheet on my website. 


Did you know Republicans are now trying to rebrand their bill? That’s because the American people are learning more and more about what’s in it—and they don’t like what they see. The Republicans don’t want to call their law the “Big Beautiful Bill” anymore because the American people can tell that it’s only “beautiful” if you’re a billionaire or a very wealthy person who is getting a windfall tax break. To help pay for those tax giveaways to the richest of the rich, their bill slashes health care, food assistance, and energy programs that working families depend on. Millions will lose health insurance. Hospitals and nursing homes across the country will close. One study estimates that the bill’s health care cuts could result in 51,000 preventable deaths every year. And they left in place a ticking time bomb: at the end of this year, many of the Affordable Care Act tax credits will expire. When that happens, not only will 4 million of our fellow Americans lose health care and become uninsured, but nearly 20 million Americans will see a huge spike in their premiums. 


I recently held a roundtable in Prince George’s County to discuss these devastating cuts to our social safety net with service and health providers that see their impact each day. They know more than anyone the ways that this bill will hurt families. 


And even with all these cuts, the bill still adds trillions to the national debt to pay for their tax cuts for billionaires. 


Once again, Republicans in Congress did not have the guts to stand up to Donald Trump—they were his rubber stamps. They made clear where their values lie—supporting the ultra-rich at the expense of everyone else. 


This summer, Republicans in Congress also obeyed President Trump’s demand to cut public investments that they had previously voted for, and he had signed into law—using what is known as the “rescissions process,” rescinding previously agreed-to funds. That bill eliminated what had been bipartisan funding for public television and public radio because Donald Trump doesn’t like news stations that provide the facts or tell the truth. Their rescissions bill also kneecapped our foreign assistance efforts to combat public health risks and advance American interests abroad. Under Trump and Congressional Republicans, the billionaires and our foreign adversaries win; everyone else loses. 


Now the Trump Administration is going even further, pursuing a lawless effort to cancel funding—that has been approved by Congress and signed into law—without even a vote in Congress. Specifically, Trump’s Office of Management and Budget Director, Russell Vought, terminated $5 billion in Congressionally appropriated funding and said that the cancellation would stand even if Congress did not vote on it. This maneuver, called a “pocket rescission,” is blatantly unconstitutional. As the Constitution makes clear and the independent, nonpartisan Government Accountability Office has reaffirmed, the President of the United States does not have the power to unilaterally cancel laws that are already on the books.

The Looming Trump Shutdown
The next major fight before us is over keeping the federal government open. Congressional Republicans have surrendered their constitutional duties to Trump. They have become his rubber stamps. He is the only one calling the shots for Republicans, and he had publicly declared that he would not work with Democrats to fund the government. Only after we blocked his blank check House Republican bill in the Senate on Friday did he finally agree to meet with Democratic leaders to discuss the way forward. 


I, for one, will not vote to give Donald Trump a blank check to pursue his extreme and lawless agenda. There are no adequate safeguards in the Republicans' proposal to prevent him from continuing to illegally withhold and transfer public funds at his whim. Without those guardrails, it’s not worth the paper it’s written on. Moreover, there is nothing to defuse the ticking time bomb he left on Americans’ health care that will explode at the end of the year and result in millions of Americans losing access to care and huge spikes in premiums for others. Trump has refused to work with us to address these and other issues. He has chosen instead to send us barreling toward a shutdown. I explained all of this in the last few days—see more here.

Combatting Trump's Authoritarian Overreach
Trump’s quest for absolute power is corroding our judicial and democratic institutions. As discussed earlier, he is doubling down on his attacks on free speech. He is also weaponizing the Department of Justice by firing officials for not bringing cases against his adversaries. He is creating a culture of fear throughout the government for anyone who presents facts that don’t fit his political narrative. These pressures are corrupting our institutions. 


His politicization of the National Guard is another abuse of power. I have worked successfully over the last few years to increase the presence of FBI, DEA, and ATF agents in Baltimore to work in coordination with Mayor Scott and local law enforcement. As a result of these and other measures taken in partnership with the Mayor and others, we have seen important progress in strengthening public safety. There is certainly more work ahead, and we always welcome additional federal resources to support local efforts, but unilaterally deploying the National Guard there — as Trump has threatened — is not the answer. The Posse Comitatus Act states—and a federal district court judge recently affirmed—that the president is barred from deploying the military for domestic law enforcement. Trump’s real objective is clear: trying to normalize the idea that — despite the law — he can do whatever he wants with the military.


Beyond deploying the National Guard, Trump also partially took over DC’s Metropolitan Police Department, and he tried to seize total control until a federal judge warned that she would block such a move. He has also diverted important federal law enforcement resources away from national priorities—like fighting drug kingpins and going after the nation’s most wanted criminals—to engage in traffic stops in DC neighborhoods.


If Republicans wanted to address public safety in the District of Columbia, they wouldn't have blocked a billion dollars of the District’s own local funding for police, firefighters, schools, and other essential services earlier this year. Senator Collins and I passed a measure in the Senate to allow DC to implement its plan to use its own tax monies for these purposes, but House Republicans have not taken up our bill.


Trump’s actions in DC also highlight another issue—the lack of self-determination for the people who reside in our nation’s capital. Since 2020, I’ve been working to advance legislation that would give DC control over its own National Guard and revoke the president’s ability to federalize the DC police force. Ultimately, the answer is to give the people of the District of Columbia full voting representation in the House and Senate by granting them statehood. I am the Senate’s lead sponsor of the bill to do that. It is a stain on our democracy that the people of DC, the capital of our country, with a larger population than two states, don’t have full representation and voting rights in the House and Senate.

Seeking the Truth and Fighting for Humanity in Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank  
As I have long said, Israel was not only justified, but had a duty to its people, to defend itself against Hamas, which murdered over 1,200 people and seized over 250 hostages on October 7. We must not rest until every hostage comes home. There must be no more October 7s. But the extremist Netanyahu government has gone far beyond targeting Hamas to imposing collective punishment on all the people of Gaza.


The situation in Gaza has gone from horrible to hell on earth. As the Netanyahu government restricts food, the people of Gaza are starving. This latest stage of food deprivation began on March 2, when the Netanyahu government imposed a total blockade for 78 days on all food and other humanitarian assistance entering Gaza. Then, Netanyahu pushed out the relatively effective, UN-backed aid delivery infrastructure and replaced it, in part, with the so-called Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF), a private group backed by $30 million from the Trump Administration. 


The head of the GHF quit immediately upon its launch because, as he said, “it is not possible to implement this plan while also strictly adhering to the humanitarian principles of humanity, neutrality, impartiality, and independence, which I will not abandon.” The GHF was allowed to establish only four sites—three of them concentrated in southern Gaza and none in the north—to feed over 2 million people. That replaced the UN and World Food Program system that had previously served about 400 sites throughout Gaza. 


Recently, I traveled to the Middle East with Senator Jeff Merkley, where we investigated these and other issues firsthand. We visited Israel, the West Bank, Jordan, and Egypt, including points along the border with Gaza. During our trip, we also spoke with government officials, local communities, international humanitarian aid organizations, U.S. personnel, civil society organizations, and more. 


One of our first meetings of the trip took place in Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, where we sat down with families whose loved ones were taken hostage by Hamas in their heinous terrorist attack on October 7. The families we spoke with all told us that Netanyahu has placed his own political survival over the survival of the hostages. We also visited Kfar Aza, the site of one of the worst massacres on October 7. The thriving kibbutz we had visited before the war, in the summer of 2023, has become a much emptier and somber place. But the community remains strong, and a community leader there gave us the same message we received from other hostage families: end the war, return the hostages, and find a way for Israelis and Palestinians to live in peace with security, dignity, and human rights—including the right of self-determination—for all.


We also visited communities in the West Bank, where we discussed the increasing, ongoing violence by extremist settlers, including meeting with American citizens whose family members have been killed by the IDF and violent settlers. We also met with members of the Christian community of Taybeh, which was recently attacked by violent settlers. We closely examined the very broken system for the distribution of humanitarian aid to Gaza, including visiting the Rafah and Kerem Shalom border crossings into Gaza and the Jordan aid corridor.


What we learned firsthand reinforced the reports of devastation, starvation, and the Netanyahu government’s use of hunger as a weapon of war as it pursues its openly stated current war aim of removing Palestinians from Gaza. We recently issued a full report on our findings, titled “The Netanyahu Government is Implementing a Plan to Ethnically Cleanse Gaza of Palestinians. America is Complicit. The World Must Stop It.” 


I have been very deliberate in distinguishing between the actions of the extremist Netanyahu government and the people of Israel—in the same way that I believe Americans have a duty to stand up against the extremist actions of Donald Trump. We have a duty to ensure that our tax dollars do not support actions by the Netanyahu government that violate our laws and our values. That’s why I have consistently opposed the transfer of US-funded weapons for use in Gaza as the Netanyahu government conducts its campaign of ethnic cleansing. America has leverage. We must use that leverage to demand adherence to American law and American values. We must demand a ceasefire, a return of all hostages, and a flood of humanitarian aid into Gaza NOW.

Action in Our Communities   
Over the last few months, I have visited communities across Maryland to discuss their priorities, to stand up to Trump’s abuses, and speak with people about how, together, we’re fighting back against these betrayals. 


Senator Alsobrooks and Representatives Mfume, Ivey, Olszewski, Elfreth, and I attempted to visit the Baltimore ICE facility where the Trump Administration is holding people in inhumane conditions before working to deport them. The first time we went, they blocked us from entering their facility. We told them that denying us the opportunity to inspect the facility was a violation of the law, and I read that very provision in law to them. They later relented, and Representatives Mfume, Elfreth, and I returned to inspect the facility. The rooms are only equipped for 12-hour holds, but ICE is detaining people there for much longer. ICE would not let us speak to the detainees to learn directly from them about their experiences or conditions. If ICE had nothing to hide, they wouldn’t be throwing up roadblocks at every point. 


Here's the truth: Trump is not fixing our broken immigration system. He said his Administration would focus on the “worst of the worst,” but—according to ICE’s own data from this summer—84% of ICE’s detainees pose no public safety risk. ICE has since removed that data from its dashboard, so the public can no longer see it. They want to hide what they’re doing to people in ICE facilities from the American people; we can’t let them get away with that. 


Our immigration system is broken and needs to be fixed. That's why I support strong border security, removing the worst of the worst, and improving our legal immigration system. But we must say no to mass deportation, no to tearing families apart, no to concentration camps, and no to surrendering the right of due process. We will not snuff out Lady Liberty’s flame. 


I also recently met with Erick Oribio, an American citizen and Baltimore resident, who the Venezuelan government wrongfully detained for seven months. I worked quietly with a bipartisan team of Senators, the nonprofit hostage advocacy group the Foley Foundation, and others to help secure his release. I’m grateful to the special envoy and our partners in that effort, and I will keep working for the liberty of EVERY American wrongfully detained.


I’m also working with my Team Maryland colleagues to call on the IRS to expedite tax refunds for constituents facing financial hardship. We’ve heard from Marylanders, both individual taxpayers and business owners, waiting years for refunds they’re owed. The Trump Administration’s mass staff cuts at the IRS have likely contributed to these processing delays. 


On the Eastern Shore, I held a town hall with over 400 Marylanders at Chesapeake College. I took questions from residents on a range of topics, from the threats to our democracy to ways we work together for the Eastern Shore and our state. You can watch the full town hall here. From there, I spent time with our local leaders at the annual conference of the Maryland Association of Counties (MACo), joined the Salisbury Area and Greater Ocean City Chambers of Commerce for a forum to discuss Eastern Shore priorities, and also visited the City of Crisfield, where Trump canceled a $36 million FEMA grant designed to harden the community’s resilience against floods that regularly cause damage to local residents' homes and businesses. We are pushing, on a bipartisan basis, to restore this funding. 


I’m also continuing to support the recovery effort after the floods that devastated Allegany and Garrett Counties this spring. Senator Alsobrooks, Representative Delaney, and I led federal Team Maryland in urging the Trump Administration to approve the State of Maryland’s request for a presidential disaster declaration, which would unlock more funds to support local recovery efforts. Donald Trump denied that request last month, abandoning Western Maryland in its moment of need. Thankfully, following encouragement from Team Maryland, the federal government has made some resources available to farmers and small businesses through the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) Farm Service Agency (FSA) Emergency Farm Loan program and the Small Business Administration Disaster Assistance program. But there is more to do. Maryland is appealing the denial of the disaster declaration for broader FEMA relief, and the entire Maryland Congressional Delegation has sent a bipartisan letter in support of this appeal so that Western Maryland can get the funds it needs. 


As extreme weather becomes more intense and more frequent, the federal government should have our communities’ backs. I will fight tooth and nail to stop this Administration from dismantling FEMA and throwing up bureaucratic red tape that delays life-saving disaster relief.   


These are just some of the conversations I had with Marylanders recently. In every place I’ve visited, patriots are answering Trump’s betrayal with solidarity. While President Trump uses the Oval Office to cash in for himself, his family, and his donors, Marylanders are fighting for their neighbors. Together, we will save our democracy, our Constitution, and the country we love. 


Onwards, 


                                            
                                            
                                        

                                                

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June 25, 2025

                                    

                                
                            
                        
                        
                    
                    
                    
                    

                        

                        

                            

                                

                                    

                                    

                                    

                                        

                                            

                                                
TOMORROW: Join Our Telephone Town Hall 
Tomorrow, Thursday, June 26th at 5:30 pm, Senator Angela Alsobrooks and I are hosting a Telephone Town Hall to answer your questions and provide an update on Donald Trump and the Republicans’ bill to gut Medicaid, the Affordable Care Act, and SNAP in order to pay for billionaire tax giveaways.  

To join our call, you can sign up to be dialed in here. By signing up, you will receive a phone call to join our Telephone Town Hall at approximately 5:30 tomorrow evening. The deadline to sign up to receive this call is Thursday afternoon at 2:00 PM. If you’d like to listen in but not join the call via phone—or if you miss the sign-up deadline—you can also join our livestream of the town hall on my website here. 
  





The Trump/Republican plan, currently moving through the Senate, would strip health insurance from 16 million Americans, including 229,000 Marylanders, make groceries and electricity bills more expensive for working families, and blow up our national debt. Why? To pay for tax giveaways for the richest of the rich. 
 
Senator Alsobrooks and I will give everything we have to stop this bill from passing. 
 
We hope you can tune in tomorrow evening as we take your questions and provide answers on how we’re fighting back during this unprecedented and challenging time. 



Chris Van Hollen

                                            
                                            

                                                

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Thank you for e-mailing me your message. It is important that I know the concerns of my fellow Marylanders so I can carry out my responsibilities in the United States Senate. For individual assistance with a federal agency, please visit https://vanhollen.senate.gov/help.



I appreciate hearing from you and I look forward to considering your message further. I will try to respond more fully to your e-mail as soon as possible.



Sincerely,





Chris Van Hollen

United States Senator