jr. to be secretary of health and human services. on c-span2, the senate returns at noon to continue workn the nominaonf lee zeldon to b epa administrator. lawmakers will also work on t nomination of doug bergum to be secretary. and then at 3:30 the senate small business and enepneurship will hold hearing of kelly, free c-span no video app and online at c-span.org. >> he talked about the federal funding freeze and cabinet confirmation process within the

senate. we know for sure that the international criminal court has

targeted american soldiers and if we don't take a stand against that now, they will do it again. and so i want to thank senators rich and cotton for their leadership on this issue. you'll hear from them, more about that in just a moment. the other issue as we all know on the floor these days is nominations and as you all know, the democrats made a big deal and blocked the the nomination of john ratcliffe, the cia and ultimately ended up getting 74 votes on the floor. that's going to be the case. they can block the votes but we will press on and get them confirm and they can do this the hard way or the easy way. they want to continue to obstruct and delay, we will continue to grind and grind and we will do that through the weekend if necessary. so i'm hopeful particularly on these noms that we know have brought bipartisan support and have come out of committees with big margins that they allow the president to get his people into place so that he can implement his agenda and we will work with him to make sure that that

happens. so i'm going to flip it now to our colleague senator rich. >> thank you very much, leader, first of all, you will recall that president trump placed sanctions on the icc before he left office, president biden immediately took those off, ever since then ranking member, chair of foreign relations committee i have been working to put those sanctions back on. i want to thank senator thune for his leadership and senator cotton on this important issue. it's been very well near full year since democrats obstructed this bill and i'm glad that republicans in both the house and the senate and the white house are taking action to protect american sovereignty, the sovereignty of american citizens and the rights of our ally israel but yet i'm glad a sizable number of house democrats voted for this bill not once but twice. i expect we will see democrat support here in the senate as

well. how much remains to be seen. when the international criminal court issued arrest warrants for israel prime minister benjamin netanyahu and former defense minister defending their country against brutal attack, the icc greatly exceeded its mandate. this move was clearly political, it's just another example of politicization and anti-semitism that has become endemic across a number of international organizations. the first objective of a court of justice is to recognize right from wrong. the icc greatly fell down on that -- on what is incumbent upon them any entity that would put the leader of hamas and the leader of israel in the same bucket and treat them the same, doesn't know right from wrong. this needs to end. it's past time to pass the legislation and sanction those responsible for this decision

and show the icc that it won't tolerate, we won't tolerate the corruption there. thank you very much. >> i think senator cotton is on the floor obviously with this issue so quick questions. [inaudible] >> well, i think they are clarifying it and i think this is not unusual for an

administration to pause funding and scrub how these programs, how they are being spent and interact with executive order that is the president signed. i think that's the main criteria they are using, does this implicate, do the executive orders implicate funding in this particular way. they have taken certain things off the table, some of you have asked specifically about programs, any program that directly benefits an individual, medicaid, snap, those types of programs are unimpacted by this, what is impacted obviously is dei, you know, the green new deal, things like that and so those are in direct contradiction with the eo's the president signed this week. >> major infrastructure -- >> and they're providing additional clarity and guidance on that and hopefully they will further clarify what exactly will be impacted by this, but i don't think it's an usual for an

administration to pause, they certainly did that, biden did that in 2021 with respect to funding for the border but senator, did you want to speak to that? >> very briefly. look at this from a 50,000-foot stand to begin with, for all of this you who haven't noticed, it's a different way in washington, d.c. the president of the united states wants to do something about inflation. where does the president start, government overspending and particularly when it's deficit spending. we are going in debt a trillion dollars every one hundred days, the best way to start going after inflation is to ratchet that back. what he has said let's pause for 90 days, this is a work-in progress. everybody take a deep breath, stay calm, every one of these programs is going to be looked at. he didn't say while we are going to do 2-year study, blah, blah, 90 we are going the look at it and it's working. i talked to secretary rubio several times over the weekend and on monday because of questions from my colleagues,

questions from you, questions from a lot of people, how is this going to go down, well, the way it's working, there's constant input on programs going in right now that are being looked at. one of the best things that's happened about it is we have from foreign relations and intelligence, we tried to get information out of these agencies and, man, it is tough as you all know. now that the agencies realize their programs are on the chopping block, they're coming, they are running out of their holes in mass showing us information that we've been trying to get. this is going to work, everybody stay calm, we will get this done and we will reduce spending, thank you.

>> the u.s., israel are not members of the icc and if they are going the target american citizens, obviously we are going to impose sanctions, it's a fairly straightforward bill and there are questions about who all might be in the periphery impacted by that. the united states and israel are not members of unlawful court, this court is targeting american citizens and in this case obviously targeting the prime minister of israel. so we think it's important to stake a stand on that.

as i said earlier, the executive orders give a lot of guidance about what the administration's priorities are and i think that the funding will end up following that. >> during news conference the senate's democratic leader chuck schumer criticized the trump's administration to freeze federal funding