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Congressional Daily Record
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June 18, 2026
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Download official Senate Record PDFReturn to issue contextMr. SCHMITT. Mr. President, on July 4, 1776, 56 men crossed a line from which there was no return. These men knew the King they defied. They knew the empire would come for them. They knew the prisons that could hold them and the gallows that could take them. They had wives, children, homes, names, property, and honor. They signed anyway. They made a bold declaration to the world that had never been made before. It was, in fact, revolutionary.
Our rights come from God. Government rests on consent. Citizens are not subjects. America is a nation. Those truths made America possible, and every generation that inherits America must decide whether or not those truths still command it. That is why I rise today in support of repassing the Declaration of Independence.
The declaration is America's birth certificate. It is the first great act of an American union. It is the character of a free people. It is the public oath by which 13 Colonies became one American nation. It presupposes America is one people, and that matters because a people is more than a population. A people has memory. A people has duties. A people receives an inheritance and decides whether to defend it.
received an inheritance and would have to defend it. It is an oath of liberty under God. It is an oath of self-government under law. It is an oath of one people bound across generations, accountable to the Creator, responsible for the Republic, and charged to carry freedom forward. That oath still binds us. That errand has not expired.
America's deepest crisis is a loss of memory. We do not lack experts; we lack fathers. We do not lack managers; we lack patriots. We do not need more people trained to administer decline. We need citizens formed to love and defend the good.
The Constitution can divide power. It cannot supply virtue. That is why the declaration still matters. It tells every King, every court, every Agency, every President, every Congress, and every officeholder the same exact thing: Your power is borrowed. Your authority is limited. Your office exists to serve a people whose rights you did not create and cannot erase.
power at all. The truths of the declaration entered history through flesh-and-blood men—men with names, men with families, men with property, reputations, and everything to lose.
Adams saw the break before others would name it. Jefferson gave cause its words. Franklin faced danger with wisdom and wit. Hancock signed with a boldness that made caution look small.
They were men in danger. They acted when delay would have been easy. They acted when fear could have been dressed up as prudence. They acted because the hour had arrived.
Heroes see that line. Then they cross it. The first American heroes chose sacred honor over safe submission. They acted when the safe men counseled waiting.
Heroes do not wait for permission from the powerful. Heroes do not ask whether courage is fashionable. Heroes do not poll cowardice before obeying duty. Liberty was won by men who risked everything. America was born from courage, conviction, duty, and faith in almighty God.
The oldest lie in politics says that the many exist for the few. The declaration broke that lie. Once they signed, the words had to travel. A declaration made in the name of people had to reach the people. Then the declaration moved. Copies went out on a rider. They entered churches, courthouses, taverns, army camps, town squares, and homes. The declaration belonged to the people before it belonged to the archives.
Americans had to hear they were free. They had to hear what freedom would require. One of those copies reached George Washington in New York, where he was preparing to face the empire the signers had defied. He had it read aloud to the army. His men already knew what they were fighting for. They had left their farms, their shops, their families, and their homes because they knew liberty was worth the cost.
But now Congress has spoken for the country. Now their cause had been declared before the world. The British were coming. The army was raw, exposed, and outmatched. So Washington put the words before his men. He let them hear from the voice of their own Congress that they were no longer fighting for grievances; they were fighting for a nation of their own.
At Valley Forge, men endured because liberty demanded endurance. They endured because their children deserved more than submission. They
[G]ive me liberty, or give me death!
The same fire moved beyond the army. It entered the life of the people. It traveled wherever Americans carried the sense and cause of liberty. It moved from hand to hand, from town to town, from father to son, from battlefield to courthouse, from pulpit to schoolhouse. Then it moved west.
As the American people moved west, the Declaration moved with them. It moved into river towns, frontier trails, farms, churches, courthouses, and homes.
I come from the great State of Missouri. In Missouri, we know the Declaration did not stay on the Atlantic coast. It moved through St. Louis and Jefferson City. It moved with Lewis and Clark. It moved with Daniel Boone and the frontier families who cut homes out of the wilderness. It moved with farmers and soldiers and preachers, rivermen, mothers, fathers, shopkeepers, builders, and pioneers.
and Defiance. Missouri is what the Declaration looks like when it walks west and builds a country.
that discovers, a nation that dares, a nation that refuses to live on its knees.
preach, settle, invent, and die so their descendants could be taught to apologize for existing. That inheritance now rests in our hands, and too many powerful voices in this country teach the next generation to receive it with suspicion instead of gratitude.
We are done being ashamed of America.
We love our country. We honor the men that built it. We give thanks for the inheritance they placed in our hands, and we intend to keep it. America 250 is a time to remember that inheritance and renew national pride.
We can see the damage in the numbers. A generation ago, American pride was nearly universal. After 9/11, more than 90 percent of Americans said they were proud to be an American. Today, Gallup puts that number at 58 percent. PRRI puts it at 51 percent.
On the left, the collapse is even sharper. Gallup found that only 36 percent of Democrats are extremely or very proud to be an American. I take no pleasure in saying that. PRRI puts Democrat pride at 31 percent. Only 28 percent of Democrats say they are proud of America's 250-year history. Only 11 percent say America is the greatest country in the world. Only 27 percent plan to display the American flag this Fourth of July.
That is a national forgetting made visible. Elite culture gives that damage a vocabulary. A recent essay in the New Yorker Magazine set out to answer the question: Is national pride worth trying to salvage? It asks: Is patriotism problematic?
education means learning to forget. No serious country—no serious country—can survive that kind of contempt for gratitude.
America does not need historical amnesia; America needs honest memory, memory of sin and sacrifice, failure in correction, courage in renewal, fathers and sons, graves and glory, memories strong enough to produce citizens.
That phrase reveals the deeper fight. A fight over patriotism is a fight over memory. Memory matters. A people that forget its heroes will soon be ruled by men who despise them.
A nation that sneers at its fathers will leave its children orphans. A republic that mocks sacrifice will produce citizens unworthy of freedom. The dead, the living, and the unborn are joined in one chain of obligation; we receive before we create, we owe before we choose, we hand down what we did not make.
That is why citizenship is not just paperwork. That is why borders matter. That is why children matter. That is why memory matters. That is why the Declaration matters.
Memory carries authority with it. A people that remembers its inheritance also remembers its right to govern. The Declaration says the people are sovereign; no king, no queen, the people.
The modern regime says the people are a problem to be managed. That is the fight. A great nation needs men who can say what is true. The old founding is enough. The question is whether we are enough for it.
If all men are created equal, that is final. If they are
all endowed with inalienable rights, that is final. If
governments derive their just powers from the consent of the
governed, that is final.
And that is final. No real progress moves beyond those truths. Every movement away from them leads us backwards.
Coolidge said that in America's 150th. We stand at the threshold of her 250th. America 250 cannot become a fireworks show arranged by people embarrassed by their country. A nation cannot celebrate its birthday while forgetting why it was born in the first place.
America 250 should tell the country one thing: The founding was good, the Declaration is true, and the American people still have the right to govern themselves. The American people are real. The American flag is not a symbol of shame. The American Nation is not an administrative unit.
a free people. We should act like it. We should speak like it. We should teach like it. We should govern like it. That is why Congress should act. That is why the Declaration should be spoken again from the center of American government.
Adams' fire and Franklin's wit, of Hancock's signature and Henry's thunder, of Lexington and Concord, of the Delaware crossing, of Valley Forge, of river towns and frontier trails, of farms and factories, of steeples and courthouses, of soldiers and sheriffs, of mothers and fathers, of sons and daughters who deserve a country of their own.
inheritance across real farms, frontiers, battlefields, churches, courthouses, and graves. This is America: a nation, a people, a place, a bold declaration, a grand experiment, an inheritance, a duty, a country with a soul.
That country is now in our hands. We were asked to prove that the blood, labor, prayer, sacrifice, and courage of those who came before us were not wasted on a generation too timid to say what is true.
Let Congress repass the Declaration of Independence. Let the American people hear it again. Let the children of this Republic learn that they are heirs to heroes.
they are, and let this generation take its place in the long line of patriots who understood that freedom is inherited only when it is fought for.
Mr. President, not withstanding rule XXII, I ask unanimous consent that the Senate proceed to the immediate consideration of S. 4828, which is at the desk.
The PRESIDING OFFICER (Mr. Hagerty). The clerk will report the bill by title.
The senior assistant legislative clerk read as follows:
A bill (S. 4828) to reaffirm the Declaration of
Independence as an Organic Law of the United States.
There being no objection, the Senate proceeded to consider the bill.
Mr. SCHMITT. I ask unanimous consent that the bill be considered read a third time and passed, and that the motion to reconsider be considered made and laid upon the table.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. Without objection, it is so ordered.
The bill (S. 4828) was ordered to be engrossed for a third reading, was read the third time, and passed as follows:
S. 4828
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of
the United States of America in Congress assembled,
SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.
This Act may be cited as the “Declaration of Independence
Reaffirmation Act of 2026”.
SEC. 2. FINDINGS.
Congress finds the following:
(1) On July 4, 1776, the Continental Congress adopted the
Declaration of Independence.
(2) The Declaration of Independence announced that the
United States of America were free and independent States.
(3) The Declaration of Independence declares that all men
are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator
with certain unalienable rights, and that governments derive
their just powers from the consent of the governed.
(4) The Declaration of Independence is recognized among the
Organic Laws of the United States.
(5) The Northwest Ordinance was adopted by the Congress of
the Confederation in 1787, and was thereafter reenacted by
the First Congress in 1789, so that it could continue to have
full effect under the Constitution of the United States.
(6) Congress has authority to recognize, reaffirm, and
carry forward the foundational laws and principles of the
American political order.
(7) The 250th anniversary of American independence calls
upon Congress to reaffirm the Declaration of Independence as
the charter of American sovereignty, natural rights, equal
citizenship, and government by consent.
(8) The Constitution of the United States gives lawful form
and enduring structure to the principles of republican self-
government announced in the Declaration of Independence.
(9) The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of
the United States together establish a political order in
which the people are sovereign and public officers are their
servants.
(10) The Declaration of Independence presupposes that
Americans are “one people” with the right to govern
themselves as a distinct political community, to preserve
their national independence, and to secure the rights and
liberties of their own citizens.
SEC. 3. REAFFIRMATION OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
Congress reaffirms and re-adopts the Declaration of
Independence as an Organic Law of the United States and as
the enduring charter of American independence, national
sovereignty, natural rights, equal citizenship, and
government by consent.
SEC. 4. TEXT OF THE DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE.
In commemoration of the 250th anniversary of American
independence, Congress sets forth the text of the Declaration
of Independence as follows:
“The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States
of America,
“When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary
for one people to dissolve the political bands which have
connected them with another, and to assume among the Powers
of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the
Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent
respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should
declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are
created equal, that they are endowed, by their Creator, with
certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life,
Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness.—That to secure these
rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their
just powers from the consent of the governed,—That whenever
any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it
is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and to
institute new Government, laying its foundation on such
principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to
them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and
Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments
long established should not be changed for light and
transient causes; and, accordingly, all experience hath
shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils
are sufferable, than to right themselves, by abolishing the
forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of
abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object,
evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it
is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such
Government, and to provide new Guards for their future
security.—Such has been the patient sufferance of these
Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them
to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of
the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated
injuries and usurpations, all having, in direct object, the
establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To
prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.
“He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and
necessary for the public good.
“He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate
and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation
till his Assent should be obtained; and, when so suspended,
he has utterly neglected to attend to them.
“He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation
of large districts of people, unless those people would
relinquish the Right of Representation in the Legislature; a
right inestimable to them, and formidable to tyrants only.
“He has called together legislative bodies at places
unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of
their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them
into compliance with his measures.
“He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for
opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of
the people.
“He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions,
to cause others to be elected; whereby the Legislative
Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the
People at large for their exercise; the State remaining, in
the meantime, exposed to all the dangers of invasion from
without, and convulsions within.
“He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these
States; for that purpose, obstructing the Laws for
Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to
encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions
of new Appropriations of Lands.
“He has obstructed the Administration of Justice, by
refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary
Powers.
“He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone, for the
tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their
salaries.
“He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent
hither swarms of Officers to harass our People, and eat out
their substance.
“He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies,
without the Consent of our legislatures.
“He has affected to render the Military independent of and
superior to the Civil Power.
“He has combined with others to subject us to a
jurisdiction foreign to our Constitution and unacknowledged
by our Laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended
Legislation:
“For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
“For protecting them, by a mock Trial, from punishment for
any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of
these States:
“For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
“For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
“For depriving us, in many cases, of the benefits of Trial
by Jury:
“For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended
offences:
“For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a
neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary
government, and enlarging its Boundaries, so as to render it
at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the
same absolute rule into these Colonies:
“For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most
valuable Laws, and altering fundamentally the Forms of our
Governments:
“For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring
themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all
cases whatsoever.
“He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of
his Protection and waging War against us.
“He has plundered our seas, ravaged our Coasts, burnt our
towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.
“He is, at this time, transporting large Armies of foreign
Mercenaries to complete the works of death, desolation, and
tyranny, already begun, with circumstances of Cruelty and
Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and
totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.
“He has constrained our fellow Citizens, taken Captive on
the high Seas, to bear Arms against their Country, to become
the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall
themselves by their Hands.
“He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has
endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers the
merciless Indian Savages, whose known rule of warfare is an
undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes, and
conditions.
“In every stage of these Oppressions, We have Petitioned
for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions
have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose
character is thus marked by every act which may define a
Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.
“Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British
brethren. We have warned them, from time to time, of attempts
by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction
over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our
emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their
native Justice and Magnanimity, and We have conjured them, by
the ties of our common kindred, to disavow these usurpations,
which would inevitably interrupt our connections and
correspondence. They, too, have been deaf to the voice of
justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce
in the necessity which denounces our Separation, and hold
them, as We hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in
Peace Friends.
“We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States
of America, in General Congress assembled, appealing to the
Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our
intentions, do, in the Name and by the Authority of the good
People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That
these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be, Free and
Independent States; that they are Absolved from all
Allegiance to the British Crown; and that all political
connection between them and the State of Great Britain is,
and ought to be, totally dissolved; and that, as Free and
Independent States, they have full Power to levy War,
conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and
do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of
right do.
“And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm
reliance on the protection of divine Providence, We mutually
pledge to each
other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.”.
The PRESIDING OFFICER. The Senator from Missouri.