This week the Unites States Senate took up the National Defense Authorization Act, a bill which broadly sets our nation’s defense priorities. Congress has passed an NDAA every year since 1961.

In the past, the Senate would have debated and voted on dozens of amendments before final passage of this bill. But not this year. This year there has been a single roll call vote on an amendment that changed the name of a Department of Defense fellowship program. It passed 97-0. This was hardly a consequential issue.

No other amendment has been voted on.

It’s not that senators don’t have amendments to vote on. More than 600 amendments have been filed. But because one senator did not want to allow a vote on one specific amendment, because he feared it would pass, all other amendments have been blocked.

The amendment in question is based on a bipartisan piece of legislation called the Due Process Guarantee Act, which is cosponsored by Sen. Dianne Feinstein (R-CA) and myself.

The purpose of the amendment is simple. It’s to make sure that the U.S. government has no authority and claims no authority to indefinitely detain U.S. citizens apprehended on U.S. soil.

Now most people might ask why on earth would we need legislation stating something so obvious. The fact is we shouldn’t. It is the inexorable command of the fourth, fifth, and sixth amendments. Why then do we need this amendment?

Well, seven years ago, when Congress was passing the 2012 National Defense Authorization Act, it included a provision that purported to give the U.S. government the authority to detain U.S. citizens captured on U.S. soil without trial.

I tried to fix it at the time, but it didn’t happen. The following year, when the Senate took up the 2013 National Defense Authorization Act, I introduced an amendment that is substantially identical to the one that I’m trying to seek a vote on today.

And that amendment passed by a bipartisan supermajority vote of 67. That is more than the 60 votes needed to end debate in the Senate and it is more than the 67 needed to pass a constitutional amendment or override a presidential veto.

Unfortunately the conference committee trying to reconcile competing House and Senate versions of the bill quietly removed the amendment. No explanation was given for its removal.

Over the subsequent six years I’ve tried repeatedly to get another vote on this amendment. Promise after promise has been made to help me get a vote. But it hasn’t panned out.

This week, however, an opportunity became available to file the amendment and at least force a vote on a motion to table it. A successful motion to table would have killed the amendment. But that motion failed 68-30. That means a veto-proof majority of the Senate wants at least a vote on whether this amendment should be added to the bill.

But still one senator is blocking that vote.

It did not used to be this way. The Senate used to vote on dozens of amendments for every bill that became law. And since senators were actually given a real opportunity to shape legislation, senators were also much less likely to try and stop legislation with a filibuster.

But that is not the way today’s Senate operates. Today the leadership of both parties wants as few amendment votes as possible. Not only does this minimize potentially controversial votes, it also centralizes power in the leadership offices. When no one is allowed to amend legislation by vote on the Senate floor, the only way changes to legislation can be made are through “manager’s packages” and “amendments in the form of a substitute.” These all-or-nothing up-or-down packages are completely controlled by party leaders.

If the Senate is going to lay claim to any type of status as the world’s greatest deliberative legislative body, we’ve got to start voting on amendments again. And we can start by voting on the Due Process Guarantee Act.

The laws of the United States and the principles that govern the behavior of decent people everywhere dictate that we should correct this error in the law.

Last week, the Trump administration proposed new rules to finally bring federal policy back in line with federal law. This should not be controversial in a republic committed to the rule of law.

But this new policy touches the question of abortion, which tempts all three branches of our federal government to turn truth, justice, and the law inside.

President Trump is resisting those temptations and affirming that the law should do what it says.

The particular law in question is the Public Health Service Act. Every year, it allocates hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to public health centers across the country.

Under the 1970 statute, no Public Health Service dollars “shall be used in programs where abortion is a method of family planning.”

That is, the bill was explicitly written to fund health care for lower-income communities - including family planning services - but not to fund or facilitate abortion.

Yet in the 1980s, the General Accounting Office found that abortion providers were co-locating their non-abortion and abortion-providing services, and just keeping two sets of books.

In response, regulations correcting this obvious abuse of the law were implemented, and upheld by the Supreme Court.

But then subsequent Democratic presidents rescinded these regulations, leaving the abortion industry free to indulge its ever-growing appetite for Americans’ blood and treasure.

This is the unacceptable status quo that the Trump Administration would correct.

By reinstating some of those prior regulations, President Trump is following through on his campaign promise to get taxpayer money out of the abortion industry.

This is to his great credit. Wherever you stand on the question of legalized killing of unborn children, it is essential that we draw the line at taxpayer funding of it.

The new rule would indeed reduce the flow of federal dollars to abortion providers, including the billion-dollar behemoth of the grisly industry, Planned Parenthood.

And even a modest step in this direction – in this case, about 15 percent - is to be commended.

In addition to incremental reform, this new rule is also a clarifying test.

After all, it does not deny Planned Parenthood or any co-located clinics anything. It simply offers them a choice.

If, despite their billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies and private donations, Planned Parenthood can’t afford two local facilities – one for abortion and one for non-abortion care and counseling – they will just have to choose which clinic to keep open.

They will have to decide - or perhaps, just publicly admit - what business they are really in: health care or abortion - life or death.

Of course, we already know the answer. As the New York Times recently put it, abortion is to Planned Parenthood what the internet is to Facebook.

That’s why Planned Parenthood is widely expected to lead a lawsuit to block the regulation as soon as it is implemented.

Our abortion-on-demand legal regime today is doubly unjust. First, because it was created by judges rather than elected lawmakers, and second, because it denies the undeniable humanity of the unborn.

President Trump’s new policy would improve the law on both counts. It would bring the administration of the law back into line with Congress’s clear, statutory text, and it would signal that in this White House, the protection of innocent human life will be the guiding principle it should be in civilized society.

Our nation is struggling through one of the worst public health crises in its history. Approximately 64,000 people died from drug overdoses in 2016 and opioids accounted for nearly two-thirds of those deaths.

This plague has not spared Utah. In fact, Utah is one of the states hardest hit by the opioid crisis. On average, nearly six Utahns die every week from opioid overdoses and opioid deaths now outnumber deaths from motor vehicles and firearms.

This epidemic has affected every community in our great state; urban and rural, rich and poor, churchgoing and not. Practically every family, no matter where we come from, has a story to share about how this tragedy has touched our lives.

There is a power in that togetherness. Through our shared pain and experience, we can work together to identify solutions. In fact, we have already started.

Last May, District Agent in Charge of the State of Utah Brian Besser and Utah Attorney General Sean Reyes brought together leaders in law enforcement, medicine, and the law to form the Utah Opioid Task Force. And just this last week, I joined this Task Force as a co-chair.

At the time of the Task Force creation, I was working with my staff on the Joint Economic Committee to produce an in-depth study on the numbers behind the opioid crisis as part of the Social Capital Project.

According to my Social Capital Project report, while four out of five heroin addicts began their addictions with heroin in the 1960s, today three out of four heroin addicts began abusing drugs with opioids obtained through a doctor or through someone else’s prescription. The report also found that 40 percent of opioids taken by opioid abusers were obtained freely from friends and family with legal prescriptions. These sobering findings underscore the importance of reducing opioid prescriptions on the front end and disposing of unused opioid prescriptions on the back end.

Just as importantly, the report discovered that individuals who are disconnected from their families and who are either never married or divorced are much more susceptible to opioid addiction, highlighting how important social connectedness is to fighting this epidemic.

These results complemented the work the Task Force was doing in that state. They discovered that we cannot arrest our way out of this problem. While there definitely are bad guys in this story—such as the dealers who take advantage of others by manufacturing and distributing opioid-synthetics—there are many more innocent people who were drawn into opioid addiction after a work or sports accident.

These people need our love and support. But there is more we can do to make sure innocent people aren’t swept up in this epidemic. As task force member and University of Utah professor Dr. Jennifer Plumb has told us, doctors have been overprescribing opioids for years because they have underestimated how addictive they are. Likewise, patients have come to believe that opioid prescriptions are the best way to deal with their pain, even when other pain-management methods may be better suited to their needs.

Thankfully, opioid prescriptions are declining as we spread awareness about their destructive potential. We also have partnered with federal, state, and local governments to help promote Utah Take Back Day, a biannual effort to collect unused prescription medications lying around in people’s homes. Just this past April, more than three dozen Utah law enforcement agencies removed more than 17,000 pounds of unused prescription drugs from Utah homes.

This is a fight we can win, and these are significant achievements. We know this because Utah already is seeing results: Our state was one of just 14 where opioid deaths actually fell last year.

But there is more we can do. We need to keep up the work and identify new ways to combat this epidemic. So please join our effort. You can help us solve this problem by sharing your experiences and ideas.

Only through our combined efforts Utah will beat the opioid epidemic.

President Trump announced airstrikes in Syria in a televised address last Friday.

The airstrikes, carried out by American, British, and French forces, targeted sites associated with the chemical weapons stockpile of Syrian dictator Bashar al Assad.

Sophisticated attacks like this require coordination with our allies. They require planning, unity, and resolve.
According to the Constitution, they also require express authorization from Congress.

Yet for the past decade, presidents from both parties have ignored the Constitution in order to carry out unauthorized military strikes in Libya, Yemen, and other hotspots.

That dangerous trend continued on Friday.

President Trump consulted foreign powers before the attack, but he did not consult the American Congress.

Fortunately for the nation, the unauthorized strikes were carried out without casualties to civilians or American troops. But it would be a mistake to think this operation was a slam dunk. No act of war is risk-free.

And indeed, in the run-up to this attack, a Russian diplomat warned that Russia would “shoot down U.S. rockets and even the sources that launched the missiles.”

Imagine what could have happened if Russia had followed through on this ominous threat.

Russia could have attacked the American destroyers, submarines, and bombers used in this operation. American personnel could have died.

In an instant, our “methodically planned” attacks could have spiraled into a bigger conflict with the world’s second-largest military—all without input from Congress or the American people.

Victory in war requires sobriety and above all national unity, which is precisely why the Constitution established a collaborative procedure for going to war in absence of an imminent threat to the United States.

The Constitution empowers Congress to make decisions about whether or not to go to war. It empowers the president, as commander-in-chief, to lead the troops once war has been declared.

The Founding Fathers divided these responsibilities to ensure that the nation would be united in purpose when it went to war. They did not want a solitary figure to make those fateful decisions without consulting his fellow Americans.

Think of the Constitution’s war-making process like a game of baseball.

In America’s sport, the most successful pitchers work in perfect unison with a catcher, who sizes up the batter and determines his weaknesses. The catcher can see the entire field, while the pitcher’s focus is on the batter in front of him.

The catcher flashes hand signals to the pitcher telling him which pitches to throw and where to throw them. Sometimes the catcher will even advise the pitcher to walk a particularly threatening batter.

The Constitution established a similar relationship between all the players on Team USA.

When the president is facing down an opponent, he needs to get the signal from Congress before proceeding.

In his address last Friday, President Trump stated he is “prepared to sustain” airstrikes in Syria until chemical weapons attacks stop.

It is far from clear that Congress and the American people are willing to assent to a sustained military campaign of this kind.

While many of my colleagues have expressed support for the president’s unauthorized strikes, it is unclear how many are willing to go on record by voting for another dangerous and costly war the Middle East.

If these colleagues believe a war in Syria is in the best interests of the country, they are free to bring a specific Authorization for the Use of Military Force to the floor in Congress. While Senator Corker’s AUMF is a valiant effort to reassert Congress’s authority, the current language is too broad.

Similarly, if President Trump truly believes a war in Syria is in the best interests of the United States, he must convince the nation of that fact. And I applaud those who spoke out, encouraging the president to come to Congress first.

Securing authorization from Congress is the most important step he can take to rally Team USA for what surely will be a dangerous and costly endeavor.