Jeff Merkley Tells Marco Rubio His Actions Led To 'The Death Of 100s Of 1000s Of Children'—Then Rubio Responds

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At Wednesday's Senate Appropriations Committee hearing, Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) questioned Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Transcript

00:00Senator Merkley.

00:03Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

00:06Second chance to ask some questions of you today.

00:08Thank you for testifying to multiple committees.

00:11Back in March, you noted that you had revoked some 300 student visas

00:16using the 1952 Immigration and Nationality Act,

00:20which specifically says the Secretary of State can revoke a visa

00:23if an alien's activity in the U.S. would have a serious adverse foreign policy consequence.

00:31And that issue of 300, what's the number up to now?

00:36How many visas have you revoked?

00:37I don't know the latest count, but we probably have more to do.

00:41Can you give us an estimate?

00:42Probably in the thousands at this point, depending.

00:45Not all of them are under that statute.

00:47Some are people.

00:48So there's two visa revocations.

00:49I don't want to go into SEVIS.

00:50It's a separate issue.

00:51No, no, no.

00:52They're related, but we can't conflate them because they're two different.

00:54One is the one you've just cited, National Interest of the United States.

00:57Some of the visa revocations are happening.

01:00Because somebody violated the terms of their visa.

01:02They dropped out of school or they got convicted of a crime or some criminal investigation.

01:05Those are separate from what you've said.

01:07So 300 in March, but now 1,000.

01:10How many under this 1952 Act?

01:12I'd have to get you a good answer, but probably under 1,000.

01:15But I'd have to get you the right answer.

01:16I don't want to speculate about the exact number.

01:19And I'll tell you, this particular thing does bother me.

01:24And you testified in Louisiana Immigration Court a pretty expansive interpretation of that 52 law,

01:31saying that it could be for citizens.

01:33It extends to any non-citizen for past, current, or expected beliefs, statements, or association.

01:41And that expected really caught my mind.

01:43This power rests solely.

01:45This 1950 law rests solely with you.

01:48And your interpretation sounds like you're saying if you, the Secretary of State,

01:53think you expect someone's beliefs or statements, past, current, or future,

01:58then you can toss their visa.

02:02The visa's not a right.

02:03It's a privilege.

02:05All right.

02:05So I will just say, and then I'm going to go on to another topic.

02:08I profoundly disagree.

02:10The Fifth Amendment is very powerful in protecting citizens and non-citizens like with due process.

02:16I know this will be adjudicated in court,

02:18but the idea that one individual could, on their opinion of someone's future activity or expected activity,

02:24that one individual being our Secretary of State, can toss somebody's visa,

02:29seems to me an extraordinary violation of due process.

02:34I want to ask you to defend it now.

02:36I'm happy to put it in writing for you to give us a follow-up and explain it better.

02:41But I do think it's a fundamental attack on freedom,

02:46because due process is the guardian of the gate to keep a government from taking away people's life or liberty.

02:53And liberty is what happens when you take away a visa without due process.

02:58I want to turn to the issue my colleagues have mentioned,

03:02and that is there is a legal way to restructure the Secretary of State's department and USAID specifically.

03:10But what we saw on February 3rd was Elon Musk say,

03:14over the weekend, I tossed USAID into the wood chipper.

03:18That's a pretty profound weekend.

03:20It didn't involve consultation with Congress over the consequences.

03:25There was no rewriting of the law.

03:28There was no discussion of what funds could be delayed, frozen, redirected.

03:33And the result is different groups have estimated how many people have died to date

03:39and will die over the course of a year or a prolonged period as a result of the destruction

03:45of the weekend of February 1st and 2nd.

03:49Did Elon Musk have your support in putting USAID into the wood chipper?

03:56Well, I don't think that's an ex-post, or I guess you're imagining a social media post,

04:01is not a government act.

04:02Not at all.

04:03That's a quote.

04:04That's what he said.

04:04Yeah, that's okay.

04:05That's what he said.

04:05But ultimately, what happened as acting director is all these decisions have to come to me.

04:09Does actions have your full support?

04:11The ones that I signed off on, yes, which is the ones that happened.

04:13Of what Elon Musk did with USAID?

04:15No, no.

04:16But understand, these are contracts.

04:17All these contracts.

04:18Did he do it without or with your support?

04:19That's what I'm trying to understand.

04:21Well, not with my support, it was my actions.

04:24His Doge team did a lot of cancellations very, very quickly,

04:28and it fired a lot of people.

04:29It just wasn't clear to me whether that had your support or not.

04:32No, no, the Doge team didn't do anything.

04:34I did it.

04:35I was the one that made the decisions.

04:36I went through contracts, literally spreadsheets, line by line.

04:39I remember being in a hotel, I believe, in Guatemala,

04:41going through line by line on spreadsheets of contracts that were canceled,

04:45contracts that were approved, contracts that were amended.

04:49These are all contracts.

04:50So, in that case, I'll put the responsibility with you since you're taking credit for it

04:55rather than with Elon Musk.

04:57But the Boston School of Public Health has a kind of a website where they post their estimated deaths

05:07as a result of the actions that were taken to dismantle USAID.

05:12And they're updating it continuously.

05:14So, if you go to it, the numbers keep changing.

05:16They have a one-year estimate, but they also have what they estimate has happened to today.

05:21And as of today, they estimate that the actions taken in putting USAID in the wood chipper,

05:27child malnutrition, 53,500 more deaths.

05:31And I'm rounding off because the numbers are continuously changing.

05:33Child diarrhea, 45,400 more deaths.

05:36Child pneumonia, 59,200 more deaths.

05:39Malaria, 25,100 more deaths.

05:43So, what happened that weekend has resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of children.

05:49And the estimate for the end of this year is much, much higher.

05:53This happened because the law was not followed for consultation with Congress,

05:58analysis, bringing in experts, holding hearings.

06:01How do you kind of accept what you just put forward,

06:06that it was your action to cancel these contracts,

06:09that your contracts in this fashion, freezing fund,

06:12firing individuals, has resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of children?

06:16That's false. That's fake.

06:18That's just not true.

06:20That's a study based on if we canceled every one of these programs permanently.

06:24Okay, and I'm reading it right here because I'm glad you brought it up.

06:26It assumes a near total freeze in U.S. foreign aid for HIV, AIDS, tuberculosis, malaria, and other diseases.

06:34There is not a total freeze.

06:3685% of PEPFAR recipients are receiving their care right now.

06:40But the numbers you're saying, those aren't real numbers.

06:43I understand that's what the school said in the worst case dramatic scenario.

06:46And even then I think it's exaggerated.

06:47But there's just no evidence of the fact that, I don't remember the numbers here,

06:51100,000 children have starved to death in the last four months

06:53because the United States made reductions to the USAID.

06:57Well, that, first of all, is pretty atrocious.

06:59That would mean that nobody else in the world is doing anything.

07:01We're taking care of the entire planet?

07:03Well, I must say, I think your response is not fit with what the published results were.

07:08But there's other groups that have done this as well.

07:10There's a study in Nature with health care experts from a whole number of leading universities.

07:14And they said, basically, if you shut down USAID, and it may not be fully shut down,

07:19but my colleagues who follow this closely say, you know, it's 80, 90% shut down.

07:24And Nature study, or published in Nature, said, look, because of what has happened,

07:31we will see some 15 million additional deaths over 15 years just from HIV,

07:38producing 14 million orphans, and another 10 million people, children and adults,

07:43dying from malnutrition, tuberculosis, diarrhea, malaria, and other diseases.

07:50And there's even higher numbers from the Friends of the Global Fight Against AIDS.

07:54I think it's this rash shutdown without due process of law that is not coming and doing it

08:00in collaboration with rewriting the law, freezing funds, canceling these contracts without constitution,

08:07that you have exacted enormous harm on the world.

08:11Again, those numbers you're saying are staggering and unrealistic.

08:14The reality of it is that what you're saying is that unless the United States funds foreign aid

08:18at these levels in perpetuity, the world's going to suffer 15 million deaths in 15 years,

08:24and every country should be voting for everything we want at the UN.

08:26The number was 15 million in the study of nature, yes, from the shutdown of these programs.

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