Thom Tillis

Mr. President, I come to the floor today to maybe lower my own temperature but explain what I was getting at in the Judiciary Committee hearing this morning. We had the Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem before the committee, and I have not been shy about some of my criticism for the Secretary of Homeland Security really on two fronts. I think I was primarily focused on—what I wanted to focus on was the failure, in my opinion, of the FEMA response for Hurricane Helene really across the Southeast but particularly in North Carolina, where it hit hardest.

Mr. President, I actually want to thank my colleague from Pennsylvania for bringing up what I think is a very important subject. I am proud, as you are, coming from a State that had voter ID. Senator McCormick, you wouldn't necessarily know this, but we passed the first voter ID when I was speaker. I heard all of these arguments, and they fall on deaf ears. As a matter of fact, if you take a look at the Help America Vote Act and other things, we can make it easy to vote. But we have to make it hard to cheat.

Mr. President, sometimes when I hear floor speeches down here, I think of my wife, whom I love dearly, and I will be married to her for 39 years in June, but for about the first 5 or 10 years of our relationship, I would do something stupid, and she would rightfully get mad. And then I felt like I had to hear every other stupid thing I had done since I had met her 5 or 10 years before. There are a lot of very valid points being made here today, and very few of them have anything to do with what is ahead of us this weekend.

Mr. President, nearly a year ago, Secretary Noem visited Western North Carolina to see the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene firsthand. That day, the Secretary told the crowd in Bat Cave, NC, that "the previous administration failed in many areas and we're going to learn from that and do better," a sentiment that I shared wholeheartedly. Secretary Noem highlighted some of the actions taken in the early days of President Trump's second term to remove all of the redtape that previously slowed the Department down and Western North Carolina's recovery.