YouSaid · the spoken record
Brian Schatz
We hold 37 passages that may be Brian Schatz’s. We do not publish them until we can confirm who spoke. See the correction.
On the record 2021–2026
congress · podcast
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“And the cyber security controls are going to have to be more robust than ever, but, like, that does not seem at all inconsistent with American values. And if you want us to win the AI race--the quickest way to lose it is to allow a terrible incident to happen without any Federal guardrails, and then I think, figuratively speaking, the pitchforks will be coming.”
Senate29 September 2026Source ↗
“But the threshold question is: Should this be voluntary or mandatory? And if you are saying you are open to some sort of mandatory regime with the caveats that you have expressed, I think that is progress. I will make one final point. I think we get a little hung up on anthropomorphizing the tech itself, including this idea that the values are going to be imbued in the AI. The AI gets given a task. It doesn't have ideas of its own. It doesn't have thoughts of its own. It doesn't have consciousness. It doesn't have feelings. And so this idea that we are going to have American, patriotic, liberty-loving AI and they are going to have the other kind I think is a misunderstanding of what we are actually talking about right now, which is we actually just want normal cyber security controls for this incredibly powerful tech.”
Senate29 September 2026Source ↗
“So that is a lovely way to understand this body, but we are all that is left, and we have to work on a nonpartisan--forget bipartisan--on a nonpartisan basis to make sure that humans remain in control of the technology. With that and with the permission of the Senator from Virginia, I yield to my friend the junior Senator from New Jersey who knows more about national security and who is, I think, appropriately alarmed at the potential impacts of inaction in the U.S. Senate.”
Senate29 September 2026Source ↗
“I actually haven't heard of any substantive disagreements with what we are proposing--I am sure they exist--but in terms of Member interaction, in terms of the expert community, in terms of my Republican colleagues, people aren't saying: I hate this bill. I have an ideological objection to it. It won't work. They are not saying that. They are just saying: We are doing another process and give that time. And my judgment is that we don't have the luxury of time. You know, the Senate is supposed to be the cooling saucer that allows the hot liquid from the House to cool off, and then we can deliberate, right? Well, the House is out of town, and they did not send us anything to drink.”
Senate29 September 2026Source ↗
“I think that we have an opportunity to tee up legislation that takes down--that doesn't reduce to zero--but that takes down the risk of something really horrifying happening to people in the United States of America. So this is about humans in control, this is about keeping politics out of it, and this is about taking down the short-term risk of something really terrible happening. To the extent that it is possible in this polarized time and in this election season, we tried like heck to display enough discipline on our own to not introduce a bunch of stuff that was going to freak a bunch of other people out.”
Senate29 September 2026Source ↗
“This bill is trying to thread that needle of being nonpartisan, on the level, not a setup, not designed as an electoral bludgeon but simply to try to take down the acute risk that is right in front of us. So that is why we are trying to be modest enough to actually be able to look the Commerce Committee chairman in the eye and say: There are no tricks or traps here. This is what we have come to conclude is the safest way forward in the very short run. It also doesn't preclude Senator Cruz and Leader Thune and Senator Klobuchar and others from legislating in this space because there is lots more to do, but right now, we are facing something rather precipitous. The other question is, Are we going to do something after something terrible happens or not?”
Senate29 September 2026Source ↗
“How much time do we have?'' but I think nobody is disagreeing that the risk is nonzero of something terrible happening if we don't have a basic architecture of these labs having to not just test before they commercially upload something but to have a safety regime from the very beginning because, as we now have learned, this is a unique kind of product that could become dangerous even before it is released to the public. So the question is, Comprehensive versus not--and as much as Senator Warner and I talk about our pet rocks--I have a bunch of bills in the AI space that are important. Of course, I think mine are the best. I am sure Senator Kim and Senator Warner think theirs are the best. But the point is, we are not going to come to a resolution on this.”
Senate29 September 2026Source ↗
“Do we trust--not any individual CEO or board of directors, but do we trust that companies that are rolling toward the biggest IPOs in human history will voluntarily regulate themselves as opposed to maximize the value of that IPO, maximize shareholder profit? We have traditionally tried to strike the right balance, and Democrats and Republicans don't always see the sort of level of regulation necessary on an eye-to-eye basis, but I think at some level, there are 100 of us who believe that when it comes to serious risk to public safety, that those should not be voluntary safety regimes. They should be mandatory. They should be Federal. It shouldn't be every legislature. It shouldn't be some announcement from a bunch of tech CEOs. It has to be in Federal statutory law. Now, the third question is, Should we do this comprehensively or not?”
Senate29 September 2026Source ↗
“Madam President, you know, this is about a couple of very simple questions. The first question is, Humans in control of technology or not? That is the first question. Even the mechanisms that we are accustomed to, for instance, in aviation, where you say ``Before this plane can take off, we have to certify to its safety,'' don't really get at the fundamental problem because what we have is technology that is equivalent to a plane being able to take off on its own while it is still being built. So the question is first, Humans in control or not? The second question is, If we agree that humans should be in control, should this be voluntary or not?”
Senate29 September 2026Source ↗
“I ask for the yeas and nays.”
Senate28 September 2026Source ↗
“With that, with the permission of the ranking member, I want to bring in the Senator from New Jersey, who has a background in tech and has a background in national security that I think adds a lot to this conversation.”
Senate24 September 2026Source ↗
“You need a Federal statute, and then the private sector can work toward compliance on that Federal statutory standard. But you don't want 90 percent of the AI companies--the frontier models, the hyperscalers--complying and then the other 10 percent saying: Wait, I don't have to do that, do I? I don't have to do that, do I? So all we are asking is that this bipartisan proposal--and it is bipartisan. We are working on it in very, very good faith to try to narrow the scope of disagreement but not narrow it to the point that we pass nothing but, rather, narrow it to the point where we pass something that takes down the immediate risk and allows us to look our constituents in the eye and say: We did something on this very, very serious and urgent matter.”
Senate24 September 2026Source ↗
“So the configuration of these sandboxes has been like that--for experimentation, almost casual, very entrepreneurial. But the problem is, these things can escape control at the sandbox level so it is not enough for predeployment testing. We also need third-party review of the process at every stage because we don't know at which point an agent--an AI--or a swarm of agents could escape human control. Then, at the end of it, we need postdeployment breach notification, analysis, transparency so that, if there are big, dangerous events, we know how to prevent them from happening in the future. So that is all this bill does. It says: Let's get third-party review all the way through the process and then all the way up to predeployment testing. Then, if something goes badly, we have transparency on the back end.”
Senate24 September 2026Source ↗
“First of all, it is predeployment testing, but one of the things, I think, we have all learned is that, by the time a company is ready to deploy what they call a frontier model, it has been through some testing. So it is important to test it before it is commercially available, but the truth is that the Hugging Face incident, in particular--that thing jumped the fence way, way earlier than when you would do the predeployment testing. So we need third-party review from the jump. And the thing about a sandbox--and I was taught this term of art about 10 years ago, and I remember talking to my tech expert in my office: What is a sandbox? And they said: You should think of it like an actual sandbox, sort of where you experiment, where there are no wrong answers, where it may get a little messy.”
Senate24 September 2026Source ↗
“So what we sat down on a bipartisan basis to do with AI safety groups, with companies that are in the business--with experts--is to say: How do we reduce the acute risk now, not the societal risk over the long run, not to balance the equities between whatever it may be 2, 3, 4 years from now. How do we take down what some people are calling civilizational risk? Some people find that too apocalyptical. Fine. Let's not call it risk of extinction. Let's not call it civilizational risk. Let's just call it a high risk of something very terrible happening, and that should be enough for us to be on the floor to say: Well, why don't we try to take down that risk? There is a very straightforward pathway.”
Senate24 September 2026Source ↗
“This code is capable of escaping our control, and it is potentially capable of something they call recursive self-improvement, which means the code can write its own code and that humans would find the code that was written by AI so inscrutable as to not be able to control it at all. So what we are proposing--and I want to reiterate what Senator Warner said. When we were in private conversation, he said: Nobody can bring their pet rock to this conversation. What do I mean by ``pet rock''? Everybody has got a bill on AI. By the way, they are really important things--energy use, the safety of children, the future of work, the future of intellectual property--but we are not going to solve that in a 10-day period.”
Senate24 September 2026Source ↗
“Madam President, I want to thank the Senator from Virginia and ranking member of the Intelligence Committee and also thank Senator Kim, the Senator from New Jersey, both of whom have real expertise in this area and as it intersects with public policy. This is really about one simple thing, and that is, humans in control of the code and not the code in control of the humans. We are at a seminal moment in world history, not just in American history, where it is possible for this code to escape human control. That is not an apocalyptic statement from a person who wants to make a point in a political context; that is a fact that is new to all of us.”
Senate24 September 2026Source ↗
“Hurricanes and floods and tornadoes and fires do not pick and choose their targets based on how the last election went. This week, it is Hawaii. It was Texas and Indiana earlier this summer. It will be somewhere else next. There, but for the grace of God, go I. And so we need to step up here. States and localities are lurching from one disaster to the next, and they need help. And every day Congress pretends like we don't know what is happening, more and more people get hurt. I yield the floor.”
Senate23 September 2026Source ↗
“The most obvious answer is to scale up clean energy and reduce pollution as aggressively as we possibly can. But let's be clear: That will not happen overnight, and that will not stop the warming planet overnight. And so we need a plan to help communities to prepare for and respond to disasters in the here and now. We have to improve evacuation routes. We have to harden powerlines. We have to pre-position equipment and supplies. We have to make sure that people have access to air conditioning and heating. Clearing underbrush to slow or stop the fires, building infrastructure to reduce the risk of flooding--these are the kinds of steps that we need to be taking right now to protect people. Most of my colleagues here know that disasters are not a partisan issue.”
Senate23 September 2026Source ↗
“And the world's eight hottest months ever on record have all been in the last 3 years. You can chalk that all up to being a terrible coincidence or maybe it is the weather fairy acting up; or you can trust your own eyes because we all see it and feel it. You feel it when you go to the park and your kids can't breathe because of the smoke from a wildfire that is burning hundreds of miles away. You feel it when you have to board up your windows and gather up supplies, as yet another storm approaches. You feel it when you move to a new State and find out that you can't get home insurance anymore. You do not need a fancy science degree to understand what is happening nor do you even need to love the outdoors to want to do something about it, because we are all paying the price for our inaction. And so what do we do about it?”
Senate23 September 2026Source ↗
“But the reason for the change, the reason I feel so strongly that it is time that we name the problem, as uncomfortable as it is, is that we can't go on like this. Disasters used to be an unfortunate reality you had to deal with from time to time, and now we're getting back-to-back hurricanes on top of historic floods that dumped more than 2 trillion gallons on the State earlier this year and catastrophic fires that leveled Lahaina 3 years ago. This is not normal. Now, it is true that we are in an El Nino year--and particularly a bad one at that--but this is not isolated to just this year nor is it limited to the great State of Hawaii. For 3 years in a row, now, we have had more than 20 disasters nationwide, each costing over a billion dollars in damages.”
Senate23 September 2026Source ↗
“Senate, and that is that there is a reason these destructive disasters are piling up, one after another, leaving communities exhausted and governments depleted. It is the warming planet. Now, look, when someone is sitting in the dark without power for days or worse, and they have lost a loved one or their home, they don't want to hear about how dryer fields and warmer oceans are the culprit of their pain. And they are right. In the immediate aftermath of a disaster, our collective obligation--but especially the government's obligation--is to set politics aside and to help, not to make a point that you always wanted to make or to say, ``I told you so,'' but to help. And so I have always hesitated to talk about disasters in this context.”
Senate23 September 2026Source ↗
“We can argue about everything else later--what to do about AI's energy use, what to do about the future of work, what to do about intellectual property, and all of that. But, first--first--we need to address the risk that is right in front of us. I know my colleagues have proposals in this space, and I am also working on legislation with Senator Warner. But the bottom line is this: We have to act now. And I want to be clear, if there is no movement in the coming days to seriously address this issue, Senator Warner and I will be back on here on the floor, attempting to pass bills to get this done. People are counting on us to protect them, and there is no excuse for inaction. Hawaii Mr.”
Senate23 September 2026Source ↗
“Mr. President, when the people building AI warn us about the potential for their models to cause serious harm, we must take them seriously. And this is not a question of whether you like progress or even how likely you think the worst-case scenario is. This is a question of who is in charge of this technology, whether we are going to ensure that people remain in control or if--for some inexplicable reason--we are going to allow machines to rapidly and continuously get more powerful than us, knowing full well the risks. The good news is that nothing is inevitable at this stage. What we do or don't do right now will decide what happens next with this technology. And so Congress must not leave town without taking action to reduce catastrophic risk.”
Senate23 September 2026Source ↗
“Throughout his career, he has successfully prosecuted complex cases involving espionage, terrorism, public corruption, narcotics trafficking, and violent crime, earning multiple awards from the Department of Justice and the FBI, including the prestigious J. Michael Bradford Award recognizing the Nation's most outstanding assistant U.S. attorney. His extensive experience, steadfast commitment to the rule of law, and record of public service make him well qualified to continue leading the U.S. Attorney's Office for the District of Hawaii, and I support his nomination. ____________________”
Senate6 August 2026Source ↗
“Mr. President, I rise today in support of the nomination of Kenneth Sorenson to serve as U.S. Attorney for the District of Hawaii. Mr. Sorenson has devoted four decades to the Department of Justice, serving with distinction as an assistant U.S. attorney, first assistant U.S. attorney, criminal chief, senior litigation counsel, and most recently as acting and interim U.S. attorney.”
Senate6 August 2026Source ↗
“You have a President of the United States whose stated policy on tariffs, on energy, on Iran, on healthcare, and on food is to raise the price of everything. That is not a sort of accidental outcome of his economic policy; it is his economic policy to raise the price of everything. People are going broke, and they are doing it to you on purpose. I yield the floor.”
Senate5 August 2026Source ↗
“Gas is over 4 bucks, right now, nationally, and it is even higher in Hawaii at $5.45. Diesel is $1.60 more than it was a year ago, which means that we are all paying more at stores for deliveries and transportation. In Hawaii, electricity bills went up 20 percent in 1 month--20 percent in 1 month--because of skyrocketing oil prices. Food prices continue to climb everywhere as the closure of the Strait of Hormuz extends a global fertilizer shortage. It is common for Presidents to have to deal with the problems related to the economy. Specifically, what can be a real political killer is the question of inflation, but this is very unusual, and it may be unprecedented in American history.”
Senate5 August 2026Source ↗
“They are banning wind and solar energy, which is not only clean and helps us to address the climate crisis, it is just the quickest and cheapest energy that we could possibly get on the grid. It is not like we are in 1970 and we are arguing with the climate crisis versus the price that people pay on their utility bills. The way to address the climate crisis is to do a lot more wind and solar, and the benefit is that it is the cheapest form of energy. Yet, this President has banned wind and solar energy through their administrative actions, and that is spiking the price of utilities across the country. This is all before you factor in the war in Iran. In addition to being a spectacular failure that has achieved very little of Trump's own stated goals, it has also caused gas and energy and food prices to spike everywhere.”
Senate5 August 2026Source ↗
“If I have a catastrophic health event, it makes more sense for me to just declare bankruptcy than it would to be delinquent on other payments. Here is another one--a 38-year-old from Alabama: [I] can't afford insurance, [I] can't afford health care without insurance, so basically just hoping and praying I don't get sick . . . People are having to gamble on their health so that the richest people to ever live can pay even less in taxes. And the price hikes aren't over yet because premiums are set to rise by double digits again next year according to proposals from insurers. Aside from healthcare, the Republican tax bill also compounded Trump's ban on wind and solar energy.”
Senate5 August 2026Source ↗
“This sounds like the kind of thing a partisan would say, and it is, but it is also true that the way they paid for tax cuts for the wealthiest people and the wealthiest corporations on this planet--the way they literally paid for it--was to take away people's healthcare. Without the enhanced premium tax credits, ACA premiums went up by close to 60 percent. As a result, millions of Americans are living without healthcare this year. Millions of Americans are living without healthcare this year not by choice but by force. I want to read some of what those people had to say about it. A man in Texas said: The prices are simply too high. I don't think we could afford our mortgage if I had to pay for health insurance.”
Senate5 August 2026Source ↗
“So it wasn't as if you could avoid the hit by not shopping at a particular store for a particular thing. People in Hawaii are very expert at figuring out ``OK, turkey is high; let's get chicken. Pork is high; let's get beef.'' The difference now is that there is no escape. Literally everything is up. That is because the President of the United States has decided, through this Iran war, through the tariffs, through the energy bans, through the Medicaid and Medicare cuts, through the ACA cuts, through the nutrition cuts, to make literally every aspect of your life more expensive. Then came the One Big Beautiful Bill where, in order to cut taxes for billionaires, Trump and the Republicans slashed subsidies for affordable healthcare and food assistance. I want you to understand.”
Senate5 August 2026Source ↗
“Mr. President, the price of everything is up, and that is on purpose. It is on purpose because Donald Trump made it so. We are not in the middle of a pandemic or a recession or a national emergency, but the President of the United States has decided that Americans should pay more for everything--food, gas, electricity, healthcare, housing, clothes, everything. So while he is busy lining his pockets with crypto schemes and insider-information subscription programs, regular people can't afford their lives. Now, I say he is doing this on purpose because these are deliberate policy choices he has made. First, it was the tariffs that jacked up the prices of goods across the board. Tomatoes--tomatoes--went up 40 percent. Coffee went up by 20 percent. Clothes and car seats went up by 20 percent. Electronics shot up by hundreds of dollars.”
Senate5 August 2026Source ↗
“And this is not like the USAID thing, where we gave them a pile of money and gave them the authority to do a bunch of grants and then they canceled a bunch of grants and moved things around. I may have objected to that, but that was permissible. What they are doing now is not permissible. PEPFAR money is not a choice they get to make; it is a choice we already made. Gavi money is not a choice they get to make; it is a choice we already made. The Global Fund money is not a choice they get to make; it is a choice we already made. These are things in statutory law. They are not the Ford Foundation, where they say: Well, we have changed our grant criteria. This is a matter of Federal law, and they have to follow it. I yield the floor.”
Senate22 July 2026Source ↗
“The good news is that we have reestablished the bipartisan principle that we should still be present in the world, that we should still alleviate suffering, that we should still provide economic assistance, that we should still respond to disasters, that we should still do foreign military financing, and that all of that is the right thing to do because we are the good guys. And, also, all of that is the right thing to do because it is way cheaper than any military engagement, and winning hearts and minds is just a hell of a lot cheaper than going to war. And so we reestablished that principle in the legislative context. But now the State Department has to start executing on what the law says.”
Senate22 July 2026Source ↗
“One more example: The State Department set up a $200 million fund to make private sector investments in and around Armenia, and the guy they appointed to lead it just so happens to be one of Trump's ballroom donors and has deep business ties in the region. You could have made a credible argument that USAID strayed from its central mission by supporting societal and cultural activities, that it tried to do too many things in too many places and that actually focusing our efforts on a few key priorities was a better strategy. But they didn't do that. They have just picked their own rightwing version of wokeness to fund with taxpayer dollars. And so we are only partially through metabolizing what has happened to foreign aid globally and in the United States.”
Senate22 July 2026Source ↗
“So the idea--I went to Lindsey, I went to Marco, I went to Mario Diaz-Balart, I went to Lois Frankel, I went to John Thune, and I went to others, and I said: Look, you are pushing on an open door. If the principle here is USAID should stick to its knitting, stay in a narrow couple of lanes--foreign military financing, economic assistance, disaster response, and humanitarian assistance--and we should do nothing superfluous, you are pushing on an open door. If you would like USAID to be a little more aligned with the State Department and not working sort of against each other's interests--even in country--fine, you are pushing on an open door. So that is what we tried to ratify in the last appropriations bill. But here is the crazy thing. It is not that they are not spending money on ideological projects.”
Senate22 July 2026Source ↗
“I am not here to get talked out of the United States being the good guys because healthcare polls higher, because the cost of gasoline polls higher. I am not deciding what to put into a 30-second spot. I am deciding how to use the power given to me by the people of the State of Hawaii, and I think they care about whether people die unnecessarily because of the stupidity of this Congress. And I want everybody to know what is happening now, in addition to all that money being still throttled. So there were parades and festivals and other things that were funded that ended up on a FOX News chyron that were embarrassing to USAID. And I would say about two-thirds of them were just flatly untrue, but some of them actually happened.”
Senate22 July 2026Source ↗
“And so we got through this process on the appropriations side to reestablish the principle that USAID, in its new iteration, under mostly the State Department, is still a bipartisan priority. And there are lots of people who believe that. But the State Department is not executing on these dollars. And the consequences are geopolitical, but they are also human. People are still literally dying because we are not pushing this money out. And just so you know that I don't think this is an entirely partisan question, there were Democrats, people who consider themselves Democratic strategists, who said out loud--who said out loud--that Democrats were walking into a trap because USAID doesn't poll well. I don't care if it polls well. I am not here to have a pollster tell me that I shouldn't care that kids are getting malaria.”
Senate22 July 2026Source ↗
“The richest man in the world wanted to send USAID to the wood chipper, and this Congress and this Senate ratified those decisions. And yet we worked with the Secretary and we worked with appropriators on both sides of the aisle and we worked with the great, late Senator Lindsey Graham--may his memory be a blessing--to reestablish the principle that the United States is the good guys and that it is not just the example of our power but the power of our example that makes the United States the indispensable Nation. We are the good guys. And when a batch of aid medicine or communications infrastructure or food arrives with that little patch with ``United States of America'' on it, people go: Help is on the way. The good guys are here.”
Senate22 July 2026Source ↗
“They eliminated a tiny portion of the tens of billions of dollars that get pushed out every year--tiny-- and I mean we are talking tens of millions versus tens of billions. That was like cultural stuff and arguably--arguably--progressive or leftwing, a tiny portion of it. But I want everybody to understand what they did in the process. They cut previously bipartisan priorities, and lots and lots of people died. These are not bureaucratic mixups. Every day that this money doesn't get to where it is supposed to go, every contribution worth hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars is delayed, people go hungry, people get sick, people die. That is what has made what happened last year at USAID particularly cruel.”
Senate22 July 2026Source ↗
“Last week, after months of fighting to release funding, the administration finally made a $661 million contribution to the Global Fund, which will help to fight deadly epidemics like HIV/AIDS, TB, and malaria by providing medicines and strengthening health infrastructure. But even then, the administration is still withholding close to $2 billion in additional contributions, all while HIV prevention is falling, malaria is surging, and we are trying to contain multiple outbreaks globally, including Ebola. When the Congress got all animated about attacking USAID, it was because: Hey, we want to help PEPFAR; we want to help Gavi; we want to help the Global Fund. We want to be the good guys around the world, but let's not do all this cultural stuff. Let's not waste all this money on superfluous stuff. And do you know what is happening?”
Senate22 July 2026Source ↗
“Sure, this is a jurisdictional dispute. Sure, this is a legal matter. A, this is a law, not a suggestion. B, this just doesn't go through HHS; they have no jurisdiction here. Why am I so animated about it? It is because little kids are not getting vaccinated right now. Gavi, the global Vaccine Alliance, they come to us, and they articulate to us that children across the planet are getting sick unnecessarily because they are not getting vaccinated. What happened was, because of the COVID pandemic and the disagreement about mandatory COVID vaccines, now certain people are so brain-poisoned that we think we shouldn't even prevent disease in children. And kids are dying because the United States is sitting on its butt, not disbursing money that is a matter of law. Here is another example with the Global Fund.”
Senate22 July 2026Source ↗
“Yet we are still having to fight tooth and nail with the State Department officials to get money out to the people in places around the world that are counting on the United States of America. Let's take funding for Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. For months, the administration has been withholding $600 million which is meant to help millions of children get vaccinated against preventable diseases, including Ebola, cholera, and mpox. And even though the Secretary has told us repeatedly, including in a hearing last month, that he will personally see to it that this money is released, it is still stuck. Why? Because people at HHS, who have their own views and theories about vaccines, keep blocking it. Here is the thing: This funding is in the State Department's budget. HHS has no jurisdiction here. And I want to be really clear about this.”
Senate22 July 2026Source ↗
“Foreign Aid Mr. President, it shouldn't be this difficult to get the State Department to follow the law. Earlier this year, when we passed the State and Foreign Operations appropriations bill on a bipartisan basis, we were very clear that the spending requirements in it were not suggestions; they were a matter of law. We are not asking the State Department to do us a favor and spend the money we provided; we made a law.”
Senate22 July 2026Source ↗
“Senate and a grateful nation, I thank Sergeant Major Marshall, his wife Jillian, son Miles, and their entire family for the commitment, sacrifices, and contributions they have made throughout his honorable military service. Congratulations on completing an exceptional and successful career. ____________________”
Senate15 July 2026Source ↗
“military, while also advising our team on defense and veterans' issues. His dedication and professionalism were evident in every task he undertook. For the past 3 years, he has served in the Army's Senate liaison office, where he has played a crucial role in answering congressional requests for information, staffing engagements between Army senior leaders and Members of Congress, and leading congressional delegations abroad to conduct defense oversight. Sergeant Major Marshall's lengthy and diverse career was filled with experiences that have enriched him both as a soldier and a person.”
Senate15 July 2026Source ↗
“Enlisting as a combat documentation production specialist in 2006, Sergeant Major Marshall began his service as a combat photographer at 55th Signal Company (Combat Camera) and completed one combat deployment in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom. He held various tactical and operational positions, including roles at American Forces Network Livorno, the Army Entertainment Detachment, the Cyber Center of Excellence Noncommissioned Officer Academy Detachment, the Defense POW/ MIA Accounting Agency, and 9th Psychological Operations Group (Airborne). Sergeant Major Marshall was competitively selected to serve as an Army congressional fellow for the fiscal year 2023 and was assigned to my office. During his fellowship, he gained valuable insights into the workings of Congress and its relationship with the U.S.”
Senate15 July 2026Source ↗
“Throughout his career, Sergeant Major Marshall has personified the highest standards of Army professionalism and the soldierly values of loyalty, duty, respect, selfless service, honor, integrity, and personal courage to the Army and our Nation. Many of us on Capitol Hill have enjoyed the opportunity to work with Sergeant Major Marshall and it is my privilege to recognize his achievements. Sergeant Major Marshall is a distinguished leader whose career in the U.S. Army has been marked by unwavering dedication and exceptional service. Born and raised in St. Louis, MO, Sergeant Major Marshall embarked on his military journey with a commitment to excellence that would define his decades-long career.”
Senate15 July 2026Source ↗
“Mr. President, I rise today to pay tribute to an exceptional noncommissioned officer in the U.S. Army, SGM David J. Marshall, who currently serves as the deputy chief for the Army's Senate Liaison Division and will retire from Active Duty after 20 distinguished years of active Federal service at the end of this year.”
Senate15 July 2026Source ↗