Maryland Sen. Chris Van Hollen joins WTOP to discuss federal shutdown and ‘No Kings’ protest

Well, I certainly hope not. We would like to end the shutdown today.

I’ve now voted seven times on a plan that would reopen the government without giving Donald Trump a blank check, and also in a way that prevents this huge health care crisis that is upon us.

We need to diffuse this ticking time bomb on America’s health care, and what we’d like to do is sit down and negotiate with President Donald Trump. He’s refused to do that.

I’m glad he’s doing negotiations in the Middle East, but he’s not negotiating here at home to reopen the government.

As you know, the House Speaker Mike Johnson and the Republicans have been on, I think, a five-week paid vacation right now. They are totally AWOL. So in order to move forward, we do need everybody to come to the table.

Well, that would be news to the moms and dads and grandmothers and grandfathers and kids and people of all ages and walks of life who I’ve met this morning on the march, including thousands and thousands of Marylanders already.

Millions of people around the country are saying yes to our democracy, and yes to our rights, but no to kings, no to a lawless president who has been focused on stripping away people’s rights — whether their rights to due process, whether their rights to free speech, whether their rights to a fair justice system.

So these protests represent the very best of American democracy, and when Speaker Johnson and Republicans can’t win the argument, they decide to engage in that kind of language labeling these democratic protests as hateful.

But I will just tell you that we saw a great American portrait all morning. Today, people standing up for the country they love.

I hope so, yes. Because ultimately, especially for Republicans in Congress who’ve been a rubber stamp for Donald Trump.

The question is, are they more afraid of a Donald Trump tweet against them, or are they more worried about what their constituents think? And what we’re seeing is across the board, whether you’re Republican, a Democrat or anything else, people do not like this march toward taking their rights away.

And they certainly don’t like a government that seems to be focused on helping Donald Trump’s billionaire buddies at the expense of everybody else in America.

So this is an important day for American patriots. I mean, we fought a revolution to to make sure that we weren’t bowing down to kings, and that’s what today is all about. Peaceful protests across the country, and across Maryland, to stand up for our democracy and our Constitution.

Well, all it takes is a vote in the House and the Senate to get this moving and reopen the government. And we need to do so without giving Donald Trump a blank check.

Remember, Donald Trump has been shutting down parts of the government since day one. I mean, he brought in Elon Musk with his chainsaw. They illegally fired lots of federal employees. Now they’re holding federal employees hostage again to their agenda.

So what is required now is for the good of the country. The President needs to sit down and negotiate. I mean, he said his top priority was going to be to bring down prices and costs on Day One, he’s done everything else. He’s attacked our democracy. He has attacked our rights. But prices keep going up, and we are about to experience this huge spike in health care costs that we’re trying to address. And you know, Donald Trump says he cares about health care, but he’s nowhere to be found when it comes to sitting down to resolve this. We could do it today.

Here’s an example of an individual who was literally disappeared off the streets of Maryland, denied his due process, and sent to a gulag in El Salvador.

The Trump administration said they would never let him set foot on American soil, even though their lawyers admitted that he’d been wrongfully deported.

By the way, the people who admitted that in the Justice Department, they got fired, which tells you that this is an administration that punishes people for telling the truth.

But right now, he’s back in the American court system, and he is working to protect his rights. As a federal court judge said the other day, the administration continues to abuse its power.

In this case, the federal judge said there was some ample evidence to show that the Trump administration was engaged in a political prosecution. So at least now Abrego Garcia is in the American court system and not locked up in a gulag in El Salvador.