Scott Kelly

Pete Hegseth announced that the Department of Defense would publicly execute Nidal Hasan and live stream the execution. There is no doubt that Nidal Hasan is a murderer who took the lives of 13 people and injured dozens. He should face justice for that. But a public execution? Here in the United States? It’s the kind of thing Iran and the Taliban do. Is this who we want to be associated with? Pete Hegseth’s campaign of “maximum lethality” and his comments about “killing people” and now his desire to publicly execute a prisoner indicate to me that his expiration date in this job has long passed. He should be removed immediately. And this administration needs to reevaluate its priorities. How about they trade glorifying violence for solving some problems and delivering for the American people? We need to be reminded of the nation we can be at our best. As President Ronald Reagan said “compassion, vision, and a fundamental sense of decency are the hallmarks of our national character.” That is not what we’ve seen from this President and his administration. We need to find that again.

Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy flew farther from Earth than any humans in history. They deserve to be honored for their mission and for inspiring millions around the world. Apollo 11 waited over 40 years for the Congressional Gold Medal. I introduced legislation to give the Artemis II crew the recognition they deserve.

This past Thursday, I spent the morning at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. I was there to hear the arguments in my lawsuit against Pete Hegseth for violating my First Amendment rights. I appreciate that the court made this case a priority because it has a significant impact on the First Amendment rights of over 2 million retired servicemembers. This case matters. Let me tell you what also matters. Right now, we have servicemembers putting their lives at risk because this President took our country to war against Iran without a strategic goal or a plan. Because of his reckless decision, parents can’t afford the gas to drive their kids to school, people can’t afford to drive to work and seniors can’t afford to drive to their doctor’s appointments. Millions of Americans can’t afford rent, healthcare, and in many cases food. As this President builds his new gilded ballroom, upgrades his new plane, builds his arch, and works on his next business deal that personally enriches him and his family, the American people continue to suffer. I didn’t vote for Donald Trump but after he was elected I wanted him to succeed and I hoped that as President he would at least try to make some things better. Instead he kicked millions of Americans off of their healthcare and took away free lunches for kids in order to deliver a tax cut to millionaires and billionaires. And recently Donald Trump has asked Congress for $1.5 trillion for next year's defense budget. That is more than double of what it was in my first year in the Senate just 5 years ago. It is nearly the amount that all other countries combined spend on defense. And this is for a department that is being managed by the least qualified secretary of defense in our country’s history. Where will this money go? Some of it will be used to fund the President’s top priorities like Golden Dome, an idea that Donald Trump, a real estate developer, had after seeing the success of Israel’s Iron Dome system, which is essentially a point defense system. That’s very different than what he envisions, which is a shield against all ballistic and hypersonic missiles. I understand the physics of the challenge of intercepting hypersonic missiles in space or in the glide phase and it looks like they will spend hundreds of billions of dollars building a system that will not work. And even worse some of this money will certainly go to companies that Donald Trump’s sons have recently invested in. The corruption in and around this President and his friends and family is almost unimaginable in its scale and scope. We have real problems that are being ignored and others that aren’t being addressed with a reasonable and rational approach. The top 1% of the wealthiest Americans now own more of our collective wealth than the middle class and if you are in the middle class you often can’t afford your life because this President and others in Washington DC have passed laws to give your money to them. It didn’t start with this President, but my hope is that perhaps it ends with him. We have to get this country back on track. We have to pass policies that help hard working Americans so that their hard work pays off for them, not for someone else. We have to address our country’s growing debt and we have to find solutions that will improve people's lives. Whether it is the outrageous cost of health care or the fact that young people can’t afford homes and young families can’t afford childcare — there are solutions to these problems. Corruption, cronyism, and a system designed to help the very few at the expense of the many is a significant challenge but it isn’t an insurmountable one.