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WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, delivered the following opening remarks at a Committee hearing Thursday on the nominations of Susan Thornton to serve as Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs; Andrea Thompson to serve as Undersecretary of State...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released the following statement Thursday after the White House released a statement about the 2017 cyberattack Russia perpetrated across Europe, Asia, and the Americas: “It is well past time that the White House is acknowledging the...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released the following statement Monday after the Trump Administration released its Congressional Budget Justification for Fiscal Year 2019: “Unfortunately, this budget request reflects exactly what we have come to expect from the...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Ben Cardin (D-MD), Sherrod Brown (D-OH) and Bob Menendez (D-NJ) – all lead authors and negotiators of the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act – introduced a Senate resolution today calling upon President Trump to exercise mandatory sanctions authorities under CAATSA in response...

Newark, NJ – US Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, issued the following statement after Syrian forces shot down an Israeli F-16 fighter jet returning from a mission of striking Iranian targets in Syria. The airstrikes were ordered in response to an illegal intrusion into Israel’s...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Bob Menendez (D-N.J.), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released the following statement Thursday after Venezuela’s National Electoral Council (CNE) announced a presidential election for April 22: “The announcement of a snap presidential election marks yet another step by...

BALTIMORE – U.S. Senator Ben Cardin, Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released the following statement. “No one should be confused about what happened today: the president, once again, chose politics over national security. The president and his enablers in Congress have bent over backwards to release...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released the following after President Trump issued a misleading statement about K.T. McFarland’s withdrawal of her nomination to be the Ambassador to Singapore: “The President’s statement about the withdrawal of K.T....

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Tim Kaine (D-Va.), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Ben Cardin (D-Md.), the Committee’s ranking member, released the following statement after the Trump Administration announced it would extend Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for Syrians currently in the U.S., but failed to renew the...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking Committee, led twenty of their Democratic Senate colleagues Tuesday in a letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, expressing their concern that six months after Congress...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released the following statement Monday after the Trump Administration briefed Senate staff about Russian defense and intelligence sector sanctions issues, per the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, which mandated...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking Committee, and U.S. Reps. Steny Hoyer (D-Md.), the House Democratic Whip, and Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.), Ranking Member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee, wrote to President...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, led seven of his bipartisan colleagues Wednesday in a letter to UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, requesting that she use the influence of her office and the tools within the international organization, “to isolate the Cambodian government,...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, delivered the following speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate Thursday, reflecting on U.S. foreign policy one year into the Trump Administration: “I come to the floor today to reflect on the troubling foreign policy of President...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, wrote to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson Wednesday, urging him to rescind the U.S. Agency for International Development’s mission statement, revise it to reflect the Agency’s independence and commitments to democracy promotion...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released the following statement after Secretary of State Rex Tillerson announced a new policy toward Syria that includes an indefinite U.S. troop deployment: “I am extremely disappointed that the Trump Administration announced a...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senators Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and Jeanne Shaheen (D-N.H.), Ranking Member of the SFRC Subcommittee on State Department and USAID Management, led the Committee’s Democrats in a letter to Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and USAID Administrator Mark Green...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, released the following statement Tuesday after World Food Programme cranes were delivered to Hudaydah, Yemen, to support humanitarian relief:  “I welcome the delivery of the U.S.-funded World Food Programme’s mobile cranes...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the co-author of the Iran Nuclear Agreement Review Act, released the following statement Friday after the White House announced President Trump would continue waiving sanctions against Iran as part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of...

WASHINGTON – U.S. Senator Ben Cardin (D-Md.), Ranking Member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and the co-author of S. 2144, the Safe Environment from Countries Under Repression and in Emergency (SECURE) Act, a bill that would allow qualified Temporary Protected Status (TPS) recipients to apply for legal permanent residency, released...