One of my chief criticisms of U.S. international policy is that Congress has largely abdicated its foreign policy-making responsibilities to the executive branch.

Unfortunately, the state of national security under the Trump administration is far from strong.

Health care, whether I like it or not, is at the foundation of my public service.

I served on the committee in the U.S. House that wrote the Affordable Care Act. I defended it back home in endless town halls. I got elected to the Senate, and when no one wanted to stand up for the ACA in its early days, I took up the cause, going to the Senate floor nearly every week to extol its virtues.

There is no doubt Assad deserves every missile we fire at him, but there's one big problem with air strikes - there is absolutely no proof it has any deterrent effect on Assad. To the contrary, history tells us these strikes will most likely quicken the pace of his assault on his own people.

What we do in Connecticut is ban assault weapons. We ban high-capacity magazines. We have true universal background checks, and we require everybody to get a permit from their police department before they can carry a pistol.

In 2013 and 2014, I traveled to Ukraine three times with Senator John McCain.

I worry that there are financial ties between the Trumps and the Saudi royal family.

The world is a mess, and while there is no simple pill America can administer to fix things, what we know is that there is significant room for progressives to articulate a foreign policy vision that is truly our own.

We simply believe that we should lean into the world with something other than the pointed edge of a sword.

From the outside, Qatar and U.A.E. likely look like twins - small, oil-rich Sunni monarchies that are largely friendly to the U.S. But their philosophies on the region are very different - Qatar does not fear Islamism as does the U.A.E.

The American people didn't send us to Congress to post our sympathies on social media. You can do that without going through the trouble of getting elected to Congress. This job is about setting rules that better protect us and our children.

Sympathy is important, but it rings hollow if not followed by action.

I would be a rich man if I had a quarter for every time one of my Republican colleagues on the Foreign Relations Committee utters some variation of the sentence, 'President Obama doesn't have a strategy to defeat ISIS.' It's their calling card on the committee - and on the campaign trail.

America doesn't have the moral authority or weight to tip the scales in this fight between moderate Islam and less tolerant Islam. Muslim communities and Muslim nations need to be leading edge of this fight.

The Saudis helped the U.S. ensure that the Russians never got a meaningful foothold in the Middle East.

The political alliance between the House of Saud and the conservative Wahhabi clerics is as old as the nation, and the alliance has resulted in billions funneled to and through the Wahhabi movement.

Congress should pass legislation that mandates increased information sharing for any country that wants to participate in the Visa Waiver Program.

The European Union needs a comprehensive, continent-wise, transnational counter-terrorism center that has the authority to track threats across borders.

Terrorist groups are working and communicating across E.U. borders - our efforts to track those groups must do so as well.

The United States has the best intelligence-gathering operation in the world. We should provide a greater level of training and assistance to the E.U. to help them develop a more robust counter-terrorism platform.

There are numerous groups across the country, both local and national, that are working to prevent gun violence in our communities.

If we want our laws to change, we need to elect people who are willing to change them.

I can't stand the idea of a veteran risking her or his life for this country, suffering the wounds of battle, and then being kicked to the curb as a result of those wounds. But that is exactly what has happened to tens of thousands of men & women who have fought and bled for our country.

Our veterans made a commitment to our country when they signed up.

Too many families know what it's like to have to choose between providing care for a family member and keeping their job.

Social media is such a key organizing and communication tool, and I've made a major commitment to use it as a way to make the legislative process as transparent as possible.

For far too long, Washington has denied the American citizens of Puerto Rico vital human services and adequate health care funding.

Whenever I travel abroad, I try to visit U.S. troops just to say thanks.

There is just no substitute for seeing a disaster area firsthand and getting the chance to speak in person to victims and responders.

If you want to change our gun laws, the best thing you can do is find a group that speaks to you and get involved.

As lawmakers, our job is to listen to our constituents. If our phones are ringing off the hook with people demanding to know where we stand on an issue, we pay attention.

Creating deep and meaningful change in this country takes time - years and sometimes decades.

Here's the problem - under both Obama and Trump, American military forces and assistance have provided just enough support to anti-Assad forces to keep the resistance going, but never enough help to actually dislodge Assad from power.

American foreign policy needs to be driven by what will get results and what is legal, not by what satisfies our primal instincts of revenge.

The most popular health care plan in the country is Medicare. It delivers the best care at the lowest cost - it's better than any other part of our health care system. But most people can only get it when they're over 65. I don't think you should have to wait that long.

The Choose Medicare Act will let people of all ages buy into Medicare as their health care plan, and it would let any business also buy into Medicare and offer it to its employees.

Connecticut farmers keep our economy running.

People are working hard, they're doing everything we ask of them, and they are still struggling. It's not enough to just have a job. We need to make sure that these are good-paying jobs that pay the rent and put food on the table. Jobs that have benefits like health care and that allow people to save for retirement.

I've never met a Democrat in Congress who wants open borders or who doesn't believe in enforcing immigration laws.

I don't expect everyone to agree with me. Frankly, I'd be shocked if they did.

When I got to the Senate, I made overhauling our nation's mental health laws one of my top priorities.

The Mental Health Reform Act was passed by Congress and signed into law by President Obama in 2016. It was one of my proudest moments in Congress.

Washington can be a frustrating place.

Helping people get the skills they need to set them up for a rewarding career helps keep people in Connecticut, and it ensures that we have a workforce that's ready to fill the thousands of manufacturing jobs of the future.

The list of erratic actions from Mohammed bin Salman is long: the jailing of royal family members, the detention of the Lebanese prime minister, a nonsensical feud with Qatar, the growing internal repression of political speech, and the disastrous war in Yemen.

Saudi Arabia is an important country to the United States.

Our nation, in a short quarter-millennium, catapulted itself to global preeminence by solving the world's greatest problems and exporting those solutions to the rest of the world.

Participatory democracies. Open economies. Web-based communication. All American innovations to the great conundrums of the globe.

The gun lobby is certainly politically powerful, but it loses as many races as it wins.