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A full transcript of the speech can be found here

WASHINGTON, D.C.— U.S. Senator Angus King (I-ME) shared his growing concerns over the Trump Administration’s largely unconstitutional and unprecedented overreach – including the usurpation of Congressional Authority that has now reached the constitutionally-directed ‘power of the purse.’ During the floor speech, King also shared the detrimental impacts of reckless, indiscriminate government cuts on critical federal functions like management of the national parks and care for our veterans:

“We're not only making a mistake now, but we're altering the essential structure of our Constitution that's there for a reason, that's there to protect our freedom. And the people cheering this on I fear, in a reasonably short period of time, are going to say where did this go? How did this happen? How did we make our president into a monarch? How did this happen? How it happened is we gave it up! James Madison thought we would fight for our power, but no. Right now, we're just sitting back and watching it happen. Article 2 of the Constitution, the President said, oh, Article 2 gives me a lot of power,” King began. “No, it doesn't. It makes the president Commander-in-Chief. That's true. Here's the key sentence in Article 2 of the Constitution, which defines the President's power, the key sentence is not the power of the President. The responsibility of the President is to take care that the laws being faithfully executed. Not write the laws. Not deny the laws. Not ignore the laws. Not pick which laws he or she [likes. It is] to take care that the laws are faithfully executed. That's the responsibility of the President. Right now, those laws are being ignored.”

King then discussed the critical vulnerability of Congress relieving its duties to the courts – an abdication that would be hard to reverse no matter what administration is next elected into office.

“There's criticism in the press saying people are talking about a constitutional crisis, they're crying wolf. This is a constitutional crisis. It's the most serious assault on our Constitution in the history of this country. It's the most serious assault on the very structure of our Constitution, which is designed to protect our freedoms and liberty, in the history of this country. It is a constitutional crisis, and I'll tell you what makes it worse, the President and the Vice President are already hinting that they're not going to obey decisions of the courts,” King continued. “Many of my friends in this body say it will be hard, we don't want to buck the President, we'll let the courts take care of it. Number one, that's a cop out. It's our responsibility to protect the Constitution. That's what we swear to when we enter this body. To stand back and say we're going to watch all this happen, and the courts will take care of it, that's an abdication of our responsibility.”

Lastly, he emphasized the profound importance of ‘protecting this institution’ that the Framers delicately created.

King concluded, “So, Mr. President, this is a constitutional crisis, and we've got to respond to it. I'm just waiting for this whole body to stand up and say no, no, we don't do it this way. We don't do it this way. We do things constitutionally. Yes, it's more cumbersome, it's slower, that's what the framers intended. They didn't intend to have an efficient dictatorship, and that's what we're headed for. Mr. President, this is a very dangerous moment. We've got to wake up, protect this institution, but much more importantly protect the people of the United States of America. Thank you, Mr. President.”

Senator King has been consistently sounding the alarm on President Donald Trump’s existential threat to the Constitution. He previously gave a speech on the Senate floor sharing that this administration is doing ‘exactly what the Framers [of the Constitution] most feared.” Senator King also previously declared that the proposal to halt all federal grant and loan disbursement was illegal and a direct assault on the Constitution. More recently, he joined 36 Senators in a letter to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, sharing the detrimental effects of  the Trump Administration’s dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). He also joined fellow Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (SSCI) colleagues in writing a letter to the White House about the risks to national security by allowing unvetted Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) staff and representatives to access classified and sensitive government materials.

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