In 2001, I flew on Space Shuttle Endeavour to the Space Station. We carried out studies on bone density loss in microgravity. That research contributed to the development of Prolia and Xgeva, drugs now used to treat bone loss in cancer patients. People are alive today in part because we went to space.

Two NASA engineers at Glenn Research Center developed a tiny implantable transmitter to monitor astronaut vital signs when they exercised in space. A company licensed and used it to build a monitor that warns heart failure patients of a potential crisis.

NASA needs medical diagnostics for astronauts millions of miles from a hospital. That challenge produced a portable device that tests a single drop of blood for diabetes, kidney function, and cardiovascular disease in minutes. It’s now being used by Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School. It exists because we‘re working to put humans on Mars.

NASA helped build the Search and Rescue Satellite-Aided Tracking system. Satellites carrying this technology link emergency beacons to rescue teams worldwide. It has helped more than 63,000 search and rescue operations.

World Central Kitchen uses data from NASA’s Earth Observing System satellites to build maps guiding staff distributing food and water in disaster areas. The satellites were built for science. Now, they’re saving lives on the ground.

I flew four shuttle missions. I know what it costs to get humans into space.

The innovation that comes from pushing humans to the edge of what’s possible finds its way back down here. Into hospitals, kitchens, and the hands of first responders. And also into yours.

That’s why I’ll keep fighting for NASA’s budget. Not just because I believe in science and exploration. Because I know what science and exploration makes possible here on Earth.

This country was founded on a few simple principles. Freedom, Democracy, and the idea that all of us are created equal.

Those principles have been tested over and over again.

From the Revolutionary War to the Civil War and the end of slavery. Through two World Wars, the fight against fascism, the Civil Rights Movement, and beyond. Every generation has worked to make our country better live up to its founding ideals.

Our history has never been simple. But what has always made our country exceptional is our willingness to keep pushing forward.

We’ve built the strongest democracy the world has ever known. We’ve invented, discovered, and explored in ways no other nation has. We learned to fly. We put people on the Moon. We continue to push the boundaries of what’s possible because Americans are willing to take on hard problems together. A lot of us were reminded of that earlier this year as we watched Artemis II fly around the Moon and travel farther than any human has ever before.

Twenty years ago this Independence Day, I launched on a mission to the International Space Station. As I looked back at Earth, I thought about how unlikely that journey really was.

I’m the son of two police officers. I went to public schools. I had the opportunity to become a Navy pilot, an astronaut, and now a United States Senator. In no other place is a path like mine possible.

Every generation before us has worked to preserve and strengthen the freedoms we enjoy and leave this country stronger than they found it. It’s our turn to do the same.

As America celebrates 250 years, we should all be asking ourselves a simple question: What do we want the next 250 years to look like?

Do we continue building on the values that have carried us this far: Freedom, democracy, and equality? Do we keep investing in the next generation of innovators, explorers, workers, and public servants? Do we keep choosing unity over division and solve problems together?

I think the choice is simple.

Those before us sacrificed to build this country and protect our democracy. Now it’s our responsibility to strengthen it for our kids and grandkids.

If we stay committed to those ideals and do the work to preserve them, then I have no doubt the next 250 years can be even better than the last.

Today we celebrate our freedoms. Tomorrow we get to work preserving them.

Happy Fourth of July.

It is already changing how people work, how companies operate, how our kids learn, and how countries compete.

Powerful, disruptive technology needs serious leadership.

That’s why President Trump’s decision to walk away from his own AI executive order this week is such a failure. Not because the order was perfect – it was not. From what has been reported, it would have created a voluntary process for government agencies to evaluate some frontier AI systems for risks and vulnerabilities before public release. I don’t think that goes nearly far enough for a technology changing this rapidly, but even that modest step was apparently too much once a few powerful tech executives pushed back.

That should bother everyone.

America cannot lead in AI if our policy is determined by whichever billionaire gets the President on the phone last. We need a strategy that supports innovation, protects workers, strengthens national security, and makes sure this technology benefits the country, not just a handful of big tech companies.

I have spent a lot of my life around advanced technology. In the Navy, at NASA, and now in the Senate, one thing is clear: when the stakes are high, you do not just hope everything works out. You test. You plan. You ask hard questions. You build safeguards. That is not anti-innovation. That is how serious people handle serious systems and innovate responsibly.

AI is going to shape the future of work, our energy grid, cybersecurity, and our competition with China. Getting this right matters for families in Arizona and across the country.

We should want American companies to lead the world. But we don’t do that by prioritizing short-term company profits above all else. We need to make sure AI tools are deployed safely and responsibly.

The President had a chance to show that he understands that. Instead, when powerful billionaires got him on the phone, he backed down.

That is a failure.

We can do better than that. And we have seen why we can’t rely on the whims of a president to do that. To truly lead, Congress needs to get in the game with real, forward-looking policy on AI.

Read my AI for America plan here with some of my ideas for how Congress can do just that.

This past Thursday, I spent the morning at the U.S. Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. I was there to hear the arguments in my lawsuit against Pete Hegseth for violating my First Amendment rights. I appreciate that the court made this case a priority because it has a significant impact on the First Amendment rights of over 2 million retired servicemembers.

This case matters. Let me tell you what also matters.

Right now, we have servicemembers putting their lives at risk because this President took our country to war against Iran without a strategic goal or a plan. Because of his reckless decision, parents can’t afford the gas to drive their kids to school, people can’t afford to drive to work and seniors can’t afford to drive to their doctor’s appointments.

Millions of Americans can’t afford rent, healthcare, and in many cases food. As this President builds his new gilded ballroom, upgrades his new plane, builds his arch, and works on his next business deal that personally enriches him and his family, the American people continue to suffer. I didn’t vote for Donald Trump but after he was elected I wanted him to succeed and I hoped that as President he would at least try to make some things better. Instead he kicked millions of Americans off of their healthcare and took away free lunches for kids in order to deliver a tax cut to millionaires and billionaires. And recently Donald Trump has asked Congress for $1.5 trillion for next year’s defense budget. That is more than double of what it was in my first year in the Senate just 5 years ago. It is nearly the amount that all other countries combined spend on defense. And this is for a department that is being managed by the least qualified secretary of defense in our country’s history. Where will this money go?

Some of it will be used to fund the President’s top priorities like Golden Dome, an idea that Donald Trump, a real estate developer, had after seeing the success of Israel’s Iron Dome system, which is essentially a point defense system. That’s very different than what he envisions, which is a shield against all ballistic and hypersonic missiles. I understand the physics of the challenge of intercepting hypersonic missiles in space or in the glide phase and it looks like they will spend hundreds of billions of dollars building a system that will not work. And even worse some of this money will certainly go to companies that Donald Trump’s sons have recently invested in.

The corruption in and around this President and his friends and family is almost unimaginable in its scale and scope. We have real problems that are being ignored and others that aren’t being addressed with a reasonable and rational approach. The top 1% of the wealthiest Americans now own more of our collective wealth than the middle class and if you are in the middle class you often can’t afford your life because this President and others in Washington DC have passed laws to give your money to them. It didn’t start with this President, but my hope is that perhaps it ends with him.

We have to get this country back on track. We have to pass policies that help hard working Americans so that their hard work pays off for them, not for someone else. We have to address our country’s growing debt and we have to find solutions that will improve people’s lives. Whether it is the outrageous cost of health care or the fact that young people can’t afford homes and young families can’t afford childcare — there are solutions to these problems. Corruption, cronyism, and a system designed to help the very few at the expense of the many is a significant challenge but it isn’t an insurmountable one.

An attempt on the president’s life is an awful thing for our democracy. I’m thankful Secret Service and law enforcement responded as quickly as they did before this gunman made it any closer to the president, many of his cabinet members, the press corps, and everyone else in that room.

Political violence is a growing problem in our country. It has led to violent acts against Americans and elected officials across the political spectrum. I refuse to accept that this is normal, or that we can’t do anything about it.

We have serious disagreements as a country. Some of those disagreements are passionate and personal. For 250 years, we have solved those differences at the ballot box. It’s a big part of what’s great and unique about our form of government.

That doesn’t mean we can’t be loud and clear when we think someone has a really bad idea, especially someone with power. That’s what a healthy democracy looks like. We all have the right to speak out about our government.

We also all have a moral and patriotic obligation to condemn political violence, no matter if the target is President Donald Trump, State Legislator Melissa Hortman in Minnesota, Charlie Kirk, or anyone else.

Here’s how we can turn this around. We talk to each other—in person, away from the social media algorithms that are designed to make us angry and divided. And that’s not just the job of elected officials. Frankly, Washington has a way of making this worse. These conversations start in our neighborhoods, in schools, and at the dinner table.

The other thing that has stayed with me is hearing the stories from journalists who were in the room, lying on the ground, texting their loved ones, and fearing for their lives, not yet knowing that the attacker had been stopped. That same experience isn’t unfamiliar to a whole generation of Americans. Far too often, kids are the ones sending those texts to their parents as they hide on the ground in their classrooms during lockdowns because of report of an active shooter, or in the worst instances, a gunman down the hall from or in their classroom. I’ve talked to parents who lost their children to gun violence and will never fully recover, and to kids who are traumatized from losing their friends or witnessing something in a school hallway that I might have seen in war. I know something about that phone call that changes everything. I’ll never forget when my wife, Gabby’s, chief of staff called me on January 8^th, 2011, to say Gabby had been shot in the head. That act of violence flipped our world upside down.

A week ago, it was family members in Shreveport, Louisiana whose worlds were flipped upside down when eight children were murdered and two others were injured in a shocking act of domestic violence. This was the deadliest mass shooting since January 2024.

Gun violence is now the leading cause of death for children and teens in America. The lax firearms laws that allow criminals, domestic abusers, and the dangerously mentally ill to get access to guns makes all of us less safe. It’s just wrong.

I refuse to accept that this should be normal in America and can’t be changed. Since Gabby was shot, I’ve already seen change start to happen. We know the steps we can take to strengthen gun laws while protecting the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. If we do that, and we reject the forces that are trying to divide us, everyone, from the president to our kids, will be safer.

These are challenging times, but we’re up for the challenge if we all work on it together.

I want to talk to you about public education, and what I’m doing to protect it. I’m the product of public schools, all the way up to the U.S. Merchant Marine Academy. It gave me opportunities I never would have had otherwise, and I believe every kid deserves that same fair shot, no matter their zip code or how much money their family makes.

That’s not just a policy position. It’s an American value. But the reality is public schools are being put at risk by private school voucher programs like the one in Arizona and an expansion that was tucked intoPresident Trump’s “big beautiful bill” passed last year.

That’s why I introduced the Keep Public Funds in Public Schools Act this week. It’ll undo that federal voucher program and keep public dollars where they belong: in public schools.

Here’s the thing: we already know how voucher programs like this one play out. Arizona’s own voucher program has directly led to school closures, declining enrollment, and over $10 million in taxpayer money spent on banned purchases—gift cards, luxury hotel stays, you name it. More than half of voucher recipients were already paying to send their kids to private school anyway. The families who have the means benefit most while everyone else gets left behind.

Now, Republicans in Washington have taken that failed experiment national. The program they created lets people claim up to $1,700 in tax credits for donations to private school scholarship funds. With no cap on the program, the real cost could be tens of billions of dollars a year. That’s money that should be going to make education better in public schools — reducing class sizes and paying teachers more, not to mention keeping neighborhood schools open. If this federal program is anything like Arizona’s experience, most of the benefit will be going to folks who can already afford to send their kids to private school.

Public schools helped build the strongest middle class in the world. They educate ninety percent of kids in this country. If we want to keep that promise alive, we need to invest in the schools that serve every kid. Not abandon them.

I introduced this bill with Senator Hirono, and we’ve already got 30 colleagues on board and 163 organizations backing us. Arizona educators, parents, and advocates have seen this movie before, and they know how it ends — and that’s why we’re all working together to save public education.

Public funds belong in public schools. Our kids and our country deserve it.

-Senator Mark Kelly

This mission did something remarkable: It captured the world’s attention, brought us together, and reminded us why science matters. We needed that.

Millions of people stopped what they were doing to watch. Families gathered around TVs. Kids looked up at the sky and wondered. For a moment, in a time when we don’t always agree on much, we were all pulling in the same direction.

We were all pulling for Reid, Victor, Christina, and Jeremy, who did their jobs with a smile and a calm that almost made you forget they were farther away from Earth than any humans had ever gone before.

They’ve become heroes to an entire generation of kids who are thinking about becoming scientists, engineers, and astronauts because of them. I remember growing up during the Apollo missions and thinking I’d be the first person to walk on Mars. I didn’t quite get there, but I think one of those kids dreaming today will.

As Americans, this mission reminded us who we are. We’re a country that takes on tough challenges and solves hard problems. And when we do it right, we inspire and bring people together in the process.

Artemis II did that better than anything we’ve seen in decades, and it reaffirmed that the United States (with the help of our partners at the Canadian Space Agency and the European Space Agency, of course) is still the world leader in space exploration.

It builds on a history that began with Gemini and Apollo, carried on through the space shuttle era, and continues today with the International Space Station — and now in a new era of Moon missions with Artemis.

I’m fortunate to have been able to play a part in that legacy. I got to see Earth from orbit four times over the course of my career at NASA. It’s been 15 years since my last trip to space, but I’ll never forget the perspective it brings.

When you look down from space, you don’t see red states or blue states. You don’t see borders or countries. You just see one planet — and a whole lot of people who have more in common than they don’t.

My final mission was in 2011. The world wasn’t perfect then either. When we landed Space Shuttle Endeavour for the last time down in Cape Canaveral, my wife, Gabby Giffords, was still in the hospital recovering from an assassination attempt 5 months earlier.

Our country was still divided then, but it was before the politics of division had become our expectation like it is today. The past 10 days felt different. It brought our country together, and my hope is that it’s more than just temporary.

Artemis II didn’t solve all of our problems or turn back the clock, but it did something important: It reminded us that we’re still capable of doing big things together.

This whole week had me thinking about Apollo 8. After the mission Frank Borman recalled receiving a telegram that said “Congratulations to the crew of Apollo 8. You saved 1968.”

I think a lot of us feel the same way right now. Artemis II may just have saved 2026 or a little part of it, and it reminded us of what we can do together as Americans.

It wasn’t perfect, and there were opportunities missed to improve it, but Donald Trump only knows how to break things, not fix them.

He thinks this somehow benefits us. He is wrong. Our allies no longer trust us. It was obvious in the more than a dozen meetings I had with Presidents, Prime Ministers and Defense and Foreign Ministers. And if you’re Denmark and Greenland, a “loss of trust” is a generous characterization of our new relationship. China is now more popular in Denmark than the United States. In Poland, the U.S. is 21 percent less popular than it used to be.

This means these countries are looking elsewhere for trade and security — that makes you poorer and less safe.

It will be incredibly hard to build what comes next, but we have to figure out a better path forward. Make no mistake, China is rising. Our ability to keep up with them and prevent a conflict depends on trusted, reliable alliances. So does ending the war in Ukraine in a way that keeps Putin from moving on to his next target. And so does growing our economy and protecting American workers in the age of AI.

I know there was celebration at the end of the Munich Security Conference. Unfortunately the champagne corks were popping in Beijing and Moscow.

As this year comes to a close and 2026 begins, I wanted to share some thoughts with all of you.

The past decade has been challenging for our country in many ways. We’ve seen leaders divide Americans for their own political gain and corruption taking root in our government, all while families have been struggling to keep up with higher and higher bills. At the same time, all of this has been cheered on, and even stoked, by our enemies abroad who seek to challenge America’s leadership in the world.

In his first term and now in his second, Trump has been undermining our Constitution like we’ve never seen from a President, both to entrench his own power and to enrich himself and his friends and family.

While he’s been busy doing that, he’s been letting the real challenges facing our country — like rising costs, millions losing health care, and threats from abroad — go completely unaddressed.

In 2026, our nation will pass 250 years old. It’s a remarkable achievement, but we cannot take our democracy for granted. It is on all of us to renew our commitment to democracy, the rule of law, and service to our community.

There is a better way to conduct our politics, and there is a higher path that America can take at home and on the world stage. This year let us seek that path, with faith over fear. Together, we can be civil, even when we disagree. As long as we hold on to our shared love of country, and our loyalty to the Constitution and all the freedoms it protects, there is no debate that can tear us apart.

Our enemies believe our differences will weaken us. They don’t understand — and have never understood — that the bond of all Americans is made stronger by our willingness to challenge one another, to learn from one another. It is how we grow, and how we will become a more perfect union.

When we remember and commit ourselves to this, there is no challenge that we cannot overcome together.

Because that is how we will finally lower costs for working families, who’ve been struggling to figure out how to put food on the table and keep a roof over their heads without having to give up their health care. That is how we will bring common-sense reforms that make sure Washington politicians are doing the right thing for Americans, and not their own bank accounts or big corporations. And that is how we will put aside partisan differences to bring our country together and put us on a better path forward.

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